How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them

by Jason F. Stanley

The Protocols, recall, is a forgery that is written like an instruction manual by “the elders of Zion,” supposed leaders among Jews, to other Jews, to take over and dominate the world on behalf of the Jewish people. It begins by instructing the reader to “infect the opponent with the idea of freedom, so-called liberalism.” According to The Protocols, liberalism weakens the “opponent” (here, the Christian), by drawing Christians into recognizing the equal rights of Jews. If Christians accept liberalism, they will be led to give equal respect and equal recognition to other religious groups, thereby ceding their dominant traditional position: Political freedom is an idea but not a fact. This idea one must know how to apply whenever it appears necessary with this bait of an idea to attract the masses of the people to one’s party for the purpose of crushing another who is in authority. This task is rendered easier if the opponent has himself been infected with the idea of freedom, SO-CALLED LIBERALISM, and, for the sake of an idea, is willing to yield some of his power. It is precisely here that the triumph of our theory appears; the slackened reins of government are immediately, by the law of life, caught up and gathered together by a new hand, because the blind might of the nation cannot for one single day exist without guidance, and the new authority merely fits into the place of the old already weakened by liberalism.