A Rumor About the Jews: Reflections on Antisemitism and "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" [Hardcover]

Stephen Eric Bronner (Author)

Book Description

"The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is among the most infamous documents of antisemitism. A forgery created in Russia by the czarist secret police and quickly translated into a host of languages, it portrayed Judaism as a worldwide conspiracy dedicated to the destruction of Christian civilization. The appearance of the Protocols sparked a number of bloody pogroms and it helped shape the thinking of right-wing movements worldwide from Hitler's Nazis to contemporary antisemitic groups in Russia, the Middle East and the United States. A work of intellectual history, A Rumor About the Jews expresses the connection between antisemitism and the overarching political assault upon the enlightenment legacy taking the reader on a historical journey that provides a new and penetrating understanding of an insidious ideology and its broader implications.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In this book, Bronner (political science and comparative literature, Rutgers Univ.), who won the Michael A. Harrington Prize for Moments of Decision: Political History and the Crises of Radicalism, places The Protocols of the Elders of Zion within a broader framework, arguing effectively that acceptance of the notorious forgery had as much to do with reactions against liberalism and democracy as it did with anti-Semitism. According to the author, the popularity of the Protocols stemmed from political anti-Semitism, linking Jews to the "evils" of the Enlightenment (from the viewpoint of the reactionaries), rather than the usual religious and social reasons for anti-Semitism. Although it does not replace Norman Cohn's Warrant for Genocide (Serif, 1998), which remains the standard English-language source on the early history of the Protocols, this book makes an original and valuable contribution to the literature. (Readers might be interested to know that Russian historian Mikhail Lepekhine has determined that Mathieu Golovinski was the author of the infamous Protocols.) For some reason, the CIP for this book uses the subheading "juvenile literature," which it is not. Recommended for Judaica and intellectual history collections. --John A. Drobnicki, York Coll., CUNY
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a work purporting to be the text of a secret plan by the Jews to enslave Christian civilization under a new world order, run by the leading elders of Zion. The tract was written by the Russian secret police in 1903 and was translated into a multitude of languages; international sales of the tract were astronomical during the 1920s and 1930s. Bronner begins with 24 selections from the Protocols that should provide a sense of what fascists considered important about the tract. The author examines premodern religious bigotry in which Christians believed that Jews were working together with the devil, and he recounts the story behind the fabrication of the Protocols. Bronner, a professor of political science and comparative literature at Rutgers University, discusses what he calls the "career" of the tract; how it inspired pogroms and other anti-Semitic acts by fanatics in the last century. The book's final chapter examines contemporary anti-Semitism. George Cohen

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 177 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1 edition (April 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312218044
• ISBN-13: 978-0312218041
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,583,873 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the best history of the Protocols and its ramifications, April 14, 2000

By 

Larry Mark "editor of MyJewishBooks.com" (nyc) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Rumor About the Jews: Reflections on Antisemitism and "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" (Hardcover)

With the whole tzuriss over the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" reaching such a boiling point, I wish to recommend this excellent history of the topic. Rutgers Political Science Professor, Stephen Eric Bronner, whose parents fled Nazi Germany and settled in the German Jewish enclave of Washington Heights in Manhattan, provides this remarkable analysis into the antecedents of THE PROTOCOLS, the reasons it was published in 1903 by the Russian Imperial Secret Police, the groups that used the Protocols for their political ends, the legal suit that was brought against the book in the 1930's in Switzerland, the early opponents to this popular fictitious Antisemitic tract, and the current state of antisemitism, whether it be social, religious (judeophobia), or political.

18 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Clarifying and Alarming, April 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: A Rumor About the Jews: Reflections on Antisemitism and "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" (Hardcover)

Mr. Bronner's book not only manages to crystalize the reason for the forgery but explains the rationale for how the historical remainder of the 20th century proceeded as a result of the "Protocols.." No small feat. In addition, the book is made more valuable because the author doesn't get self conscious about being too objective. Normally, being slightly subjective would detract from a scholarly work such as this. Instead it brings the clarity and understanding the topic truly deserves. If you really want to understand antisemitism without the usual variety of historical apologetics, this is the work to read. The bar has been raised, writers!

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A study of Anti-semitism from a Secular Jewish Viewpoint, August 22, 2002

By 

southpaw68 "southpaw68" (florida) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: A Rumor About the Jews: Reflections on Antisemitism and "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" (Hardcover)

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is still worth reading about since it one of those books that it helped start a social movement of increased intolerance and violence towards Jews in Nazi Germany. It is still taken seriously in the present-day middle east.

Author Stephen Bronner's most interesting point is that the Protocols was written in reaction against modernity and its components of a republican state, rule of law, democratic liberalism, universal suffrage, universal equal rights, and separation of church and state. The reactionary forces of the church and aristocracy were against the liberal forces of Jews, freemasons, and the middle class mainly because they wanted to hold on to their arbitrary power over their subjects.

Another observation is that Bronner shows why many Jews support cosmopolitanism and separation of church and state so much; those two things the Protocols opposed with nationalism and the church. Such ideas give the Jews more freedom and equality than they would have under a Christian government or a nation that defines its true citizenry on the basis of race. Nationalism often has a racial component to it as opposed to a cosmopolitanism that pretends that race does not matter.

In the last chapter, Bronner analyzes contemporary anti-semitism and racial nationalism. He advocates that more conservative Jews should even give up their cultural and genetic heritage to the inevitable march of progress, modernity, and cosmopolitanism. Those who resist multiculturalism will be the inevitable losers. To be a racial nationalist is to join forces with the likes that support the values of anti-semites. He poses the question that once antisemitism is removed from society, the Jews themselves may vanish because they will no longer be the persecuted 'others'. But of course, one can think that there are seeds of destruction in excessive cosmopolitanism also.

The Protocols are reprinted in the book. It is clumsily written propaganda, but it came along at the right time and it plays upon fears that people still have today: autocratic world government, destruction of Christianity, planned economic depressions, indoctrination of children in schools of values parents are against, control of the news media that doesn't tell the truth, mindless entertainment to distract citizens from their vanishing freedoms and wealth, and planned spread of diseases for population control. Bronner gives the history of the creation and appearance of the Protocols in Russia in 1905 when the reactionary and anti-semitic monarchy enthusiastically supported its discimination.