excerpts from the Victor Marsden translation of the Protocols:
                                 -1-
  ...Putting aside fine phrases we shall speak of the significance of each
thought: by comparisons and deductions we shall throw light upon surround-
ing facts.
        What I am bout to set forth, then, is our system from the two
points of view, that of ourselves and that of the goyim.
        It must be noted that men with bad instincts are more in number
than the good, and therefore the best results in governing them are
attained by violence and terrorization, and not by academic discussions.
Every man aims at power, everyone would like to become a dictator if only
he could, and rare indeed are the men who would not be willing to sacrifice
the welfare of all for securing their own welfare...
        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 himself has 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.
        In our day the power which has replaced that of the rulers who
were liberal is the power of Gold. Time was when Faith ruled. The idea of
freedom is impossible of realization because no one knows how to use it
with moderation. It is enough to hand over a people to self-government for
a certain length of time for that people to be turned into a disorganized
mob...
        Whether a State exhausts itself in its own convulsions, whether
its internal discord brings it under the power of external foes-in any
case it can be accounted irretrievably lost: it is in our power. The
despotism of Capital, which is entirely in our hands, reaches out to it a
straw that the State , willy-nilly, must take hold of: if not-it goes to
the bottom...
        Is it possible for any sound logical mind to hope with any success
to guide crowds by the aid of reasonable counsels and arguments, when any
objection or contradiction, senseless though it may be, can be made and
when such objection may find more favour with the people, whose powers of
reasoning are superficial? Men in masses and men of the masses, being
guided solely by petty passions, paltry beliefs, customs, traditions and
sentimental theorism, fall a prey to party dissention, which hinders any
kind of agreement even on the basis of a perfectly reasonable argument...
        The political has nothing in common with the moral. The ruler who
is governed by the moral is not a skilled politician, and is therefore
unstable on his throne. He who wishes to rule must have recourse both to
cunning ... and to make-believe. Great national qualities, like frankness
and honesty, are vices in politics, for they bring down rulers from their
thrones more effectively and more certainly than the most powerful enemy.
Such qualities must be the attributes of the kingdoms of the goyim but we
must in no wise be guided by them...
        Our power in the present tottering condition of all forms of power
will be more invincible than any other, because it will remain invisible
until the moment when it has gained such strength that no cunning can
under-mine it.
        Out of the temporary evil we are now compelled to commit will
emerge the good of an unshakeable rule, which will restore the regular
course of the machinery of the national life, brought to naught by
liberalism. The result justifies the means. Let us, however, in our plans,
direct our attention
not so much to what is good and moral as to what is necessary and useful.
        Before us is a plan in which is laid down strategically the line
from which we cannot deviate without running the risk of seeing the labour
of many centuries brought to naught. In order to elaborate satisfactory
forms of action it is necessary to have regard to the rascality, the
slackness, the instability of the mob, its lack of capacity to understand
and respect the conditions of its own life, or its own welfare. It must be
understood that
the might of a mob is blind, senseless and unreasoning force ever at the
mercy of a suggestion from any side. The blind cannot lead the blind
without bringing them into the abyss; consequently, members of the mob,
upstarts from the people even though they should be as a genius for wisdom,
yet having no understanding of the political, cannot come forward as
leaders of the mob without bringing the whole nation to ruin...
        Our countersign is-Force and Make-Believe. Only force conquers in
political affairs, especially if it be concealed in the talents essential
to statesmen. Violence must be the principle, and cunning and make-believe
the rule for governments which do not want to lay down their crowns at the
feet of agents of some new power. This evil is the one and only means to
attain the end, the good. Therefore we must not stop at bribery, deceit
and treachery when they should serve towards the attainment of our end. In
politics one must know how to seize the property of others without
hesitation if by it we secure submission and sovereignty.
        Our State, marching along the path of peaceful conquest, has the
right to replace the horrors of war by less noticable and more
satisfactory sentences of death, necessary to maintain the terror which
tends to produce blind submission. Just but merciless severity is the
greatest factor of strength in the State: not only for the sake of gain
but also in the name of duty, for the sake of victory...
        Far back in ancient times we were the first to cry among the
masses of the people the words "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," words many
times repeated since those days of stupid poll-parrots who from all sides
flew down upon these baits and with them carried away the well-being of
the world, true freedom of the individual, formerly so well guarded against
the pressure of the mob. The would-be wise men of the goyim, the
intellectuals, could not make anything out of the uttered words in their
abstractness; did not note the contradiction of their meaning and inter-
relation; did not see that in nature there is no equality, cannot be
freedom; that Nature herself has established inequality of minds, of
characters, and capacities, just as immutably as she has established
subordination to her laws; never stopped to think that the mob is a blind
thing, that upstarts elected from among it to bear rule are, in regard to
the political, the same blind men as the mob itself...
        In all corners of the earth the words "Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity" brought to our ranks, thanks to our blind agents, whole legions
who bore our banners with enthusiasm. And all the time these words were
canker-worms
at work boring into the well-being of the goyim, putting an end everywhere
to peace, quiet, solidarity and destroying all foundations of the goya
States. As you will see later, this helped us to our triumph; it gave us
the possibility, among other things, of getting into our hands the master
card -the destruction of the privileges, or in other words of the very
existence of the aristocracy of the goyim, that class was the only defense
peoples and countries had against us...
        Our triumph has been rendered easier by the fact that in our
relations with the men whom we wanted we have always worked upon the most
sensitive chords of the human mind, upon the cash account, upon the
cupidity, upon the insatiability for material needs of man: and each one
of these human weaknesses, taken alone, is sufficient To paralyze
initiative, for it hands over the will of men to the disposition of him who
has
bought their activities.
                                 -2-
        Our international rights will then wipe out national rights, in
the proper sense of right, and will rule the nations precisely as the
civil law of States rules the relations of their subjects among themselves.
        The administrators, whom we shall choose from among the public,
with strict regard to their capacities for servile obedience, will not be
persons trained in the arts of government, and will therefore easily
become pawns in our game in the hands of men of learning and genius who
will be their advisers, specialists bred and reared from early childhood
to rule the affairs of the whole world. As is well known to you, these
specialists of ours have been drawing to fit them for rule the information
they need from our political plans from the lessons of history, from
observations made of the events of every moment as it passes. The goyim
are not guided by practical use of unprejudiced historical observation,
but by theoretical routine without any critical regard for consequent
results. We need not, therefore, take any account of them-let them amuse
themselves until the hour strikes, or live on hopes of new forms of
enterprising pastime, or on the memories of all they have enjoyed. For them
let that play the principal part which we have persuaded them to accept as
the dictates of science (theory). It is with this object in view that we
are constantly, by means of our press, arousing a blind confidence in these
theories. The intellectuals of the goyim will puff themselves up with their
knowledge and without any logical verification of them will put into effect
all the information available from science, which our agentur specialists
have cunningly pieced together for the purpose of educating their minds in
the direction we want.
    Do not suppose for a moment that these statements are empty words:
think carefully of the successes we arranged for Darwinism, Marxism,
Nietzsche-ism. To us [Illuminists], at any rate, it should be plain to see
what a disintegrating importance these directives have had upon the minds
of the goyim...
    In the hands of the States today there is a great force that creates
the movement of thought in the people, and that is the Press. The part
played by the Press is to keep pointing out requirements supposed to be in-
dispensable, to give voice to the complaints of the people, to express and
create discontent. It is in the Press that the triumph of freedom of speech
finds its incarnation. But the goyim States have not known how to make use
of this force; and it has fallen into our hands. Through the Press we have
gained the power to influence while remaining ourselves in the shade;
thanks to the Press we have got the gold in our hands, notwithstanding that
we have had to gather it out of oceans of blood and tears. But it has paid
us, though we have sacrificed many of our people. Each victim on our side
is worth in the sight of God a thousand goyim.