10.06
Main article: Protocols of the Elders of Zion
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an antisemitic canard, published in 1903, alleging a Judaeo-Masonic conspiracy to achieve world domination. It propagandized the idea that a cabal of Jewish masterminds, which has coopted Freemasonry, is plotting to rule the world on behalf of all Jews because they believe themselves to be the chosen people of God. The Protocols has been proven by scholars, such as Christian theologian Göran Larsson, to be both a hoax and a clear case of plagiarism. There is general agreement that the Okhrana, the secret police of the Russian Empire, fabricated the text in the late 1890s or early 1900s by plagiarizing it, almost word for word in some passages, from The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, a 19th century satire against Napoleon III of France originally written by Maurice Joly, a French lawyer and Legitimist militant.
Partly responsible for feeding many antisemitic and anti-Masonic hysterias of the 20th century, The Protocols is widely considered to be influential in the development of other conspiracy theories related to a New World Order (such as the notion of a Zionist Occupation Government), and reappears repeatedly in contemporary conspiracy literature. For example, the authors of the 1982 controversial book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail concluded that The Protocols was the most persuasive piece of evidence for the existence and activities of the Priory of Sion. They speculated that this secret society was working behind the scenes to establish a theocratic “United States of Europe” (politically and religiously unified through the imperial cult of a Merovingian sacred king from the Jesus bloodline, who occupies both the throne of Europe and the Holy See) which would become the hyperpower of the 21st century. The Priory of Sion, itself, has been exhaustively debunked by journalists and scholars as a hoax.