The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
antisemitic hoax text
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an antisemitic hoax and forgery purporting to detail a Jewish plot for global domination. Largely plagiarized from several earlier sources, it was first published in Imperial Russia in 1903 (circulating in pamphlets since 1902), translated into multiple languages, and disseminated internationally in the early part of the 20th century. It played a key part in popularizing belief in an international Jewish conspiracy.
The text was exposed as a work of black propaganda by the British newspaper The Times in 1921 and by the German newspaper Frankfurter Zeitung in 1924. Beginning in 1933, distillations of the work were assigned by some German teachers, as if they were factual, to be read by German schoolchildren throughout Nazi Germany. It remains widely available in numerous languages, in print and on the Internet, and continues to be presented by some antisemitic groups as a genuine document. It has been described as "probably the most influential work of antisemitism ever written".
Creation
The Protocols is a fabricated document purporting to be factual. Textual evidence shows that it could not have been produced prior to 1901: the document alludes to the assassinations of Umberto I (d. 1900) and William McKinley (d.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is antisemitic hoax text. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Protocols, Elders and Zion, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q26193. VIAF identifies the subject as 301270043. The Library of Congress control number is n50075009. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1903, 1902, 1921 and 1924.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.