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Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy And the Protocols of the Elders Of Zion by Norman Rufus Colin Cohn  (9)
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Editorial Reviews
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 Beliefnet
"Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," a pamphlet crafted by the secret police of Imperial Russia in the late 1890s, purports to be the minutes of meetings of Jewish leaders plotting to take over the world. Though first printed in a gold-leaf edition intended for the tsar, "Protocols" quickly found its way into the hands of more ordinary folk. Even after it was exposed as a fake, the pamphlet sparked pogroms, was lauded by Nazis, and is passed around like Scripture by right-wing militia members today.
Stephen Eric Bronner, a Rutgers University political scientist whose family escaped for Hitler's Germany, traces the history of "Protocols" in his slender new book. "A Rumor About the Jews" is cleanly written, and the charged emotions that have marred many assessments of "Protocols" are blessedly absent. But the book has little else to recommend it. Bronner's suggestion that "Protocols" married anti-Semitism with a larger attack on Enlightenment thinking can be found in most Western Civ textbooks. And his digressive assertion, in the concluding pages, that "anti-Semitism is no longer a threat in the terms of times past" is no more innovative. (Beliefnet, May 2000)
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