The Myth of the Jewish Menace In World Affairs: Or the Truth About the Forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion

By Lucien Wolf

In 1920, with concerns about the increase in Jewish political influence growing, Anglo-Jewish journalist and writer Lucien Wolf published a series of three articles in the British press arguing against the myth of the Jewish menace in world affairs as it was being portrayed in newspapers such as The Morning Post or by intellectuals like G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. Wolf also took great pains to debunk the infamous Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, which had been published for the first time in English that year, and accusations that Jews were behind the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia three years earlier. The three articles were revised and updated by Wolf and published in book form in 1921.

In this new edition, Simon Harris places the text in its historical context and discusses the points raised by Wolf. As the publication of the English translation of the Protocols approaches its centenary, the underlying themes of Wolf's essays are as relevant today as they were a century ago.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9780244446277

Book preview

The myth of the Jewish menace in world affairs

or

The truth about the forged Protocols of the elders of Zion

Lucien Wolf

A European Freedom Publication

 Copyright © 2019 European Freedom/Simon Harris

Table of Contents

Foreword to the 2019 Edition

PREFATORY NOTE

I. THE DEMONOLOGY OF THE MORNING POST

II. THE FORGED PROTOCOLS

III. JEWS AND BOLSHEVISM

Foreword to the 2019 Edition

This edition of The Myth of the Jewish Menace in World Affairs or The Truth About the Forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion is the second in a series semi-forgotten texts in the public domain that European Freedom will be republishing over the coming months. The pamphlet is by Anglo-Jewish journalist and commentator Lucien Wolf and is much more recent than the first publication, Osman Bey's 1878 essay The Conquest of the World by the Jews. It was originally published by Macmillan in 1921 and is a compilation and update of three articles, The Jewish Menace, The Forged Protocols and Jews and Bolshevism that Wolf had written for the Manchester Guardian, the Spectator, and the Daily Telegraph during the previous year.

Historical Context

The publication of The Myth of the Jewish Menace provides a necessary counterbalance to The Conquest of the World by the Jews as the main topic of the series is not the Jewish Question but rather the central concern is to take a critical look at theories concerning the  occult power behind the historical events in the period spanning the late 18th to the early 20th century. Most writers on the subject identify a combination of the Illuminati, the Freemasons, the Jesuits, the so-called Black Nobility and even Luciferians as well as the Jews.

The context in which Lucien Wolf's pamphlet was published is 1920-21 and a world beginning to recover from the after-effects of World War One and slowly becoming aware of the horrors of the Jewish-led Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. The Myth of the Jewish Menace is subtitled The Truth About the Forged Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. The Protocols had been published in Russia in 1905, at the same time as the failed revolution and a little over a decade before the successful Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

Translations of The Protocols were published in various countries, including France and Germany, in 1918 and 1919 and English translations had been published both in Britain and the United States in 1920. Jewish involvement in and support for the Bolshevik Revolution was also widely recognised by the public so tensions amongst the Jewish communities was running high.

About Lucien Wolf

Lucien Wolf, the author of The Myth of the Jewish Menace, was born into a Jewish family in London in 1857 and was a journalist, diplomat and historian. He was an important advocate for Jewish rights but was strongly opposed to political Zionism and famously engaged in an exchange of pamphlets and articles on the subject with one of the other prominent Anglo-Jewish intellectuals of his day, Israel Zangwill. In 1911, Wolf contributed articles on Zionism and Anti-Semitism to the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

When the Balfour Declaration, announcing British support for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, was made public on November 2nd 1917, Wolf and other members of the British Jewish establishment, including Lionel Nathan de Rothschild and Claude Goldsmid Montefiore, founded the anti-Zionist League of British Jews. As an assimilationist, Wolf saw Jewry as a spiritual and religious identity rather than as a nation and believed that political Zionism inflamed anti-Jewish feelings. In an article of the day, he wrote No wonder that all anti-semites are enthusiastic Zionists.

The Myth of the Jewish Menace

In the three essays contained in this book, Wolf is concerned with refuting a very different series of attacks against Jewry, which were a result of seeing the horrors of Jewish-led Bolshevism following the 1917 revolution in Russia and the subsequent publication of  Victor E. Marsden's English translation of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion in 1920.

The Myth of the Jewish Menace is written very much from the perspective of an assimilationist Jew and in it, Wolf is responding to what he perceives as unwarranted attacks by the British establishment and press against the Jewish community. He raises concerns about the opinions of prominent authors, Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton, both of whom had recently published books discussing the Jewish Question, as well as about Winston Churchill, whose 1920 article Zionism versus Bolshevism: A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People, Wolf doesn't actually name but certainly alludes to.

He is most preoccupied, though, by a series of 17 articles which had been published in the Morning Post under the title The Cause of World Unrest earlier in 1920. Under the editorship of H. A. Gwynne,