The Protocols and a New American Regime

By Lawrence Erickson

Things are defined by what they are, but they are also defined by what they are not. Frequently, the best way to understand a concept is to understand its opposite, to see it in contrast to something drastically different. For this reason, I believe that the best illiberal thinkers are likely to be the ones who are familiar with both liberalism and illiberalism.

Now, one might say that we could easily achieve this by reading someone who lived in Spain with and without Franco, or Italy with and without Mussolini. There are millions of people who experienced fascism and liberalism, as well as many who experienced communism and liberalism.

The problem with this is that fascism and communism cannot really be called the purest or best examples of illiberalism. Fascism was hardly a well though out ideology in itself, and it generally only arose as a desperate way of trying to block the rise of communism. In many ways, fascism resembled a military junta, a government existing primarily to ward off the threat of something else. This can be seen most clearly with Franco, who was a general and handed his power back to the king upon his death, who quickly liberalized the country. Fascism never really had the idea of long term succession in mind.

Communism, on the other hand, was mainly focused on Marxist economic ideology, with the authoritarianism being a mostly unintentional byproduct, and communist states historically went to great lengths to deny their authoritarianism, frequently calling their states “Democratic Republics.”

Therefore, any study of illiberalism should probably focus on the form of it that actually showed and intended for long term staying power, and that is of course monarchy and aristocracy. The list of countries that experienced a clean break from authoritarian monarchy and into liberalism is smaller than might be imagined. Places such as England and Scandinavia experienced a more gradual transition, whereas much of the rest of Europe rapidly transitioned into fascism or communism.

France therefore ends up being one of our best case studies, with a quick transformation from the Ancien Régime into the relatively liberal period of the Bourbon Restoration and the July Monarchy. Being the first and the largest European state to make such a swift break from monarchy, it also became a center of intellectual discussion on the topic.

One of the best illiberal minds in France of this time was the writer Honoré de Balzac. Unlike other conservative voices such as Burke, Balzac was a committed Royalist and did not just view the monarchy as a better alternative to violent revolution or something that should exist within a constitutional framework. While Balzac did not himself live under the Ancien Régime, he lived among its remnants and participated in the fight over whether it should be restored.

Balzac’s criticism’s of liberalism were unique. Whereas most illiberal thinkers opposed liberalism because they saw it as leading to chaos and instability, Balzac predicted the exact opposite. He believed that authoritarianism was the natural government for man, and so he foresaw that any period of liberal chaos would inevitably lead to a new authoritarianism, except one that was hidden, secret and evil, rather than open, overt and noble.

Balzac’s prediction ended up being the more prescient one. Superficially, one may look at our current government in America as chaotic, with constant feuding between Republicans and Democrats. For those who have looked deeper though, it is clear that there is remarkable unity on most issues of consequence, and absolute unanimity when it comes to subservience to organized Jewry and the State of Israel. When our congress gives the Israeli Prime Minister 58 standing ovations, it’s clear that we are living under the exact hidden despotism that Balzac predicted.

As I discussed in my last article, Balzac was likely the author of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, possibly the most precise and devastating diagnosis of the issues with modern liberal democracy that has ever been written. This should be unsurprising, as Balzac was a realist, known for his ability to depict every part of society so well that even communists admired him for not letting his reactionary ideology tinge his social panorama with bias. Therefore, we will be examining the Protocols in-depth in this article, highlighting Balzac’s analysis of major problems and proposing some solutions that can address these issues without an impossible return to the monarchy and landed aristocracy of old.

Theme 1

The first issue we will examine is the nature of liberal democracy itself, probably the most significant theme in the Protocols. One of the key observations in the Protocols is the naivete of political freedom:

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.

…is it possible for the masses of the people calmly and without petty jealousies to form judgments, to deal with the affairs of the country, which cannot be mixed up with personal interests? Can they defend themselves from an external foe? It is unthinkable, for a plan broken up into as many parts as there are heads in the mob, loses all homogeneity, and thereby becomes unintelligible and impossible of execution…

Nature abhors a vacuum, and a society cannot exist without leadership. Ultimately, someone is going to be in charge. In theory, this is “the people” in a democratic society. However, since the masses have very little experience, knowledge, or interest in serious politics, then society inevitably ends up controlled by whoever is most skilled at manipulating them. Balzac notes that this fact is largely understood by political actors, who only appeal to the masses for the sake of damaging their political rivals, not because they actually intend to carry out the impossible task of handing power to the masses. This can be most obviously seen in the nature of debates on free speech. It has been widely remarked on how the communist revolutionaries in Russia constantly attacked the Tsar for his suppression of speech, before proceeding to do the exact same thing themselves once in power.

Once we acknowledge that the idea of a society run by the people is simply a fantasy, then the question becomes: who do we want to have in power? Right now, it is Jewry that has picked up the slackened reins of our government, riding our nation like it’s a chariot. This is clearly undesirable, but if they are removed from power then someone will have to take their place. In Nazi Germany and Putin’s Russia, the overthrow of Jewry resulted in a single, all-powerful dictator coming in to replace them. While this may work as long as the dictator is alive, the fascist problem of succession again rears its head, and it is likely that the successor will not be as bold, competent, or idealistic as the initial revolutionary leader, and will also lack the legitimacy that came from being the one to end the hard times. As such, the revolutionary regime could quickly become a tin-pot dictatorship.

If rule by the people is not possible and rule by one man is dangerous and unstable, then the remaining possibility is rule by a minority, commonly known as aristocracy. Ideally we would want our aristocrats to be the “philosopher kings” described by Plato, the best of the best of our society. Since political power technically runs through the minds of the people in America, our current aristocracy is unfortunately mostly the media and business elite, who have the money and mass influence to manipulate them. The problem therefore lies in our selection mechanism. Instead of mass elections, we will need a better way to pick our elite, which we will discuss later in the article.

On the ruins of the natural and genealogical aristocracy of the goyim we have set up the aristocracy of our educated class headed by the aristocracy of money. The qualifications for this aristocracy we have established in wealth, which is dependent upon us, and in knowledge, for which our learned elders provide the motive force.

Theme 2

The next problem with liberal democracy is the way that the open, unrestricted and competitive political system selects for those who are the least moral and most machiavellian, willing to use any tactics necessary to climb from the streets to the highest halls of power.

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 resource 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…

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.

Some may say that competition produces the best, but that’s only if the game requires virtue to win. If we selected our leaders with a game of blackjack then card-counters would become our kings. Selecting our leaders with a game of politics that is open to all means that the masters of bribery, deceit and treachery take power. Anyone who is skilled with creating media hit pieces against their enemies or who has the tact and resources to bribe or blackmail others will become powerful in our society. If power was restricted to a narrower set of people who have gone through a vetting process to ensure virtue, then the careers of these kinds of opportunists would be over before they started.

As for our elected representatives, it is simply those who are most willing to sell themselves to these skilled and powerful interests who rise in our system. These interests exploit a natural desire in men that Balzac refers to at the beginning of the Protocols:

It must be noted that men with bad instincts are more in number than the good… 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 the sake of securing their own welfare.

If, by chance, someone slips through this process who is not a player of the political game, such as Donald Trump, they are quickly rendered completely impotent through their lack of understanding.

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. Only one trained from childhood for independent rule can have understanding of the words that can be made up of the political alphabet.

Ideally, we want to change the method for selecting our elites from a game of scheming to a clear and orderly evaluation of virtue and competence.

Theme 3

[Anarchy] leads inevitably to despotism — not any longer legal and overt, and therefore responsible despotism, but to unseen and secretly hidden, yet nevertheless sensibly felt despotism in the hands of some secret organization or other, whose acts are the more unscrupulous inasmuch as it works behind a screen…

Of all the issues with liberal democracy, possibly the worst is the impunity it bestows upon those in power. Since it appears that our elected representatives are the ones in power, they are the ones who are punished when things are going wrong in the form of losing an election. However, the real sources of power with money and media influence are typically also in control of the victorious politician. Therefore, there is simply no bottom to how bad our country can become, because conditions that would cause a revolution in a dictatorship will only lead to a veneer of change in a liberal democracy. This impunity also encourages ever more reckless and destructive behavior from those hidden figures who actually pull the levers.

Eventually, the hidden force may grow so strong that it decides to take the mask off, and then you find yourself living under despotism with none of the checks and balances that may exist in an openly authoritarian system.

Our power in the present tottering condition of all forms of power will be more invisible than any other, because it will remain invisible until the moment when it has gained such strength that no cunning can any longer undermine it.

In the aftermath of October 7th, Jewry took action to purge three Ivy League Presidents, multiple members of congress, and mass arrest students all across the country. In the UK, 12,000 people a year are arrested for online speech. This is compared to just 1,000 people who are in prison for speech related reasons in the openly authoritarian Russia. It is sure that if President Putin took similar action to what Jewry has done recently, the outcry would be enormous, and he would either be forced to back down or the people would be able to form countermeasures given that they would have an accurate understanding of the power they were dealing with. The hidden nature of power in our system allows it to act with far more breadth and with far less constraint then may otherwise be possible.

Imagine that one single leader had been in charge of America from 1960 until today. In that period, our population has become by far the most unhealthy in the world, our cities have become nearly uninhabitable thanks to crime and poor infrastructure, we have had multiple disastrous foreign wars, our economy is saddled with record levels of debt, censorship has become ubiquitous, and our culture has become consumed with smut, promiscuity, and messaging hostile to the majority of the population. Almost everyone on both sides perceives high levels of corruption and incompetence in all of our leading institutions. If that leader had been up for election every four years, he never would have made it past the 1970’s. Instead, no change occurs, since we just keep replacing one failed leader with another cog in the same system.

In addition, this façade ensures that we spend our resources training our politicians for leadership even though they will never really be governing. For those with actual power, they receive no training in responsibility or altruism. It is essential that those in power in our society are open and transparent about their power, so that they can be properly trained and cannot act without consequence or regulation.

From the premier-dictators of the present day the goyim peoples suffer patiently and bear such abuses as for the least of them they would have beheaded twenty kings.

Theme 4

Liberalism produced Constitutional States, which took the place of what was the only safeguard of the goyim, namely, Despotism; and a constitution, as you well know, is nothing else but a school of discords, misunderstandings, quarrels, disagreements, fruitless party agitations, party whims –in a word, a school of everything that serves to destroy the personality of State activity. The tribune of the “talkeries” has, no less effectively than the Press, condemned the rulers to inactivity and impotence, and thereby rendered them useless and superfluous, for which reason indeed they have been in many countries deposed.

Partisanship has become a defining aspect of modern democratic governance. The naturally tribal nature of groups in society has produced a leadership that is also divided and tribal. Decisions are rarely made for the good of the whole country, but rather for what will appease the impulses and desires of the group that the politician finds himself representing. This has in large part made it impossible to carry out any reforms from congress. On top of that, when there are bipartisan politicians, they are usually representing interest groups that have a foothold in both parties.

This paralysis of the government may be a benefit in a society that is functioning well and simply needs the government to stay out of the way, such as 19th century America. For a society that is broken and desperately in need of repair, it is woefully insufficient.

Theme 5

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.

Liberal Democracy prizes itself on uplifting representatives of “the people.” See Marco Rubio bragging about his parents being a “dishwasher and a maid.” The problem with this is that these people who have lived in want will be incredibly tempted when someone shows up with a pallet full of cash in exchange for political favors. Even the wealthy in our modern society are forced to compete constantly to maintain their wealth, and will be susceptible to the same influences. For the old nobility who had their wealth baked into law, having had it for centuries and expecting their descendants to have it in perpetuity, any sort of bribery would probably be much less effective.

Power will always be surrounded by those who want to buy a share of it, and so political power naturally becomes a path to enrichment for bright and ambitious young people today. So long as this is possible, corruption will be unstoppable.

Theme 6

…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.

It is remarkable that for all the talk on the left of trusting experts, there has been no extension of this principle to the electoral system, which they have always wanted to be as expansive as possible. Literacy tests were considered abhorrent, so were any other basic restrictions on democracy. The fact that nearly half the population chooses not to vote is considered outrageous, and liberals have advocated for mandatory voter registration and online voting, so that these people who are so uninterested or uninformed about politics that they don’t even bother to vote can be forced to participate in selecting the leaders of our nation. If there is something wrong with your car, you see a mechanic, but if you’re performing the all-important task of choosing a leader, then democracy enthusiasts want the decision to be made by those who care least about the outcome!

Most agree that we should consult experts when we have a problem, and we should logically apply that principle to leader selection as well. The fact that we give someone who is mentally disabled or a career criminal the same say in choosing our leader as genuine experts in governance should be seen as a major flaw in our system, not a commendation. One may see the masses as a check on the power of the expert class, but their lack of independent thought means that they usually just end up controlled by a more corrupt and unscrupulous faction of the expert class itself. The fact that most people lack the time and interest to make these decisions responsibly enables the poor and incompetent behavior that we discussed in our leaders above.

In all ages the peoples of the world, equally with individuals, have accepted words for deeds, for they are content with a show and rarely pause to note, in the public arena, whether promises are followed by performance.

Solutions

Before we get into solutions to these dilemma, it will be helpful to sort the above discussion into some simple axioms:

1. There will always be a person or group of people who govern society.

2. That group will never be the people as a whole, who do not act independently.

3. The group should be selected based on a process that will result in the most virtuous and competent rising to the top.

4. Their power should be clear, defined, and not subject to external influence so as to ensure accountability for governance in our society.

5. There should be some sort of checks and balances on their power.

6. They should make decisions based on the what would be best for the country as a whole, rather than for narrow partisan interest.

7. They should be immune from bribery, explicit or implicit.

8. They should be the most well informed and knowledgeable people in our society.

If looked at in a vacuum, I think almost everyone would agree these axioms are true. However, we simply accept as part of the process that our own system will exist in defiance to them. Some governments, such as the Chinese government, have attempted to use similar principles and had major success in many areas, but their excessive authoritarianism and disregard for axiom #5 has largely scared off Western admirers. Balancing power and preventing tyranny are always the main challenges of an illiberal system. I believe it is possible to have a hierarchical system that also respects the rights of citizens to criticize their leaders, encourages debate on important issues, and prevents the concentration of power into the hands of one man, political party, or institution.

To craft our system, the first thing to be done is to identify the centers of power in society. This is not as easy as it was in the Middle Ages, when there was a mostly direct correlation between land wealth and power. In the modern era, we will certainly have to account for the mass media, the universities, social media, and certain private corporations. This major oversight of our founders likely came from the fact that they lived before these institutions became so powerful, and therefore did not recognize the need to keep them in check.

Most of our traditional media is organized into a small handful of companies, and so the leaders of these companies should certainly be recognized as major wielders of power. The same is true with our major social media companies, who control what we can say on the internet. Even putting these leadership positions up to public elections would be preferable to what we have now, where narrow private interests can influence us without any acknowledgment that it is occurring.

The administrators of our elite universities would also be on the list, given that they shape the minds of our incoming elite. For private corporations, the situation would be more ambiguous. One would not want to arbitrarily seize large corporations, as this would deter investment. Given that these companies primarily exert influence through using their money to lobby the government, it may be better to attack the role of money in politics rather than to attack the money itself.

Once these institutions are removed from the hands of special interests, they should also be kept safe from the hands of the government. It is an extreme temptation for any state to simply use the media to regurgitate its propaganda. One finds it hard to imagine the Chinese media ever seriously criticizing Xi Jinping or the CCP, even if such criticism were warranted. Therefore, I suggest that each of these institutions should function mostly autonomously, modeled on how the Federal Reserve functions. It has been recognized how important it is to have our central bank free from both private and presidential influence, so that our economic policy is objective and not determined by the interest of the president’s reelection campaign or by the personal profits of a cabal. This same respect should be given to the media and universities, which are at least as critical, if not more so. While the administrators of these institutions should come from a central government, the central government should have no role in their functioning or decision making outside of that. Some ways in which the independence of the Federal Reserve is ensured are the following:

-14 year terms for governors, so that they are separate from fleeting political winds.

-Cannot be removed due to policy disagreements, only for misconduct or criminal activity.

-A clear and unbiased objective. In the Fed’s case, this is maximum employment and stable prices. For the media, it should be avoiding lies and especially lies of omission, the most common way that our current media lies.

-Not dependent on congress for funding.

-Operations are not affected by congressional legislation or presidential executive order.

Similar rules should apply to any other institutions that are designated as centers of power. We want to have a clear understanding of who is running these institutions and the gravity of the power they wield, while also ensuring that the people chosen to run them are altruistic, moral and free to be independent in their decision making.

After identifying the centers of power, the next task will be to pick the people that will be running them. Instead of the dogfight for hidden positions of power that we have now, I would suggest that we should establish separate universities explicitly designed for preparing people to rule and channeling them into those positions, or perhaps our Ivy League schools could simply be converted into this. For deciding who gets into them, the best method would probably be Ron Unz’s idea for Ivy League schools of a lottery among our highest achieving students. The lottery system would eliminate many of the excesses that can result from an overly competitive environment, such as those discussed in Theme 2. These schools would train people not for private employment, but exclusively for their roles as public servants, while emphasizing the enormous responsibility they have as such.

To ensure that these schools do not attract the corrupt and sociopathic, it should be required that those in these administrative positions be required to give up the possibility of significant wealth. An asset limit of say, $5 million, should be imposed on these people, as well as their children and spouses. This will also prevent the kind of loophole corruption that we have seen with Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson funneling money through their wives, or Joe Biden funneling money through his son, or the Clinton’s doing so through their foundation. It will also prevent those like Jared Kushner from nepotistically profiting off of government service.

Giving up wealth will also solve one of the main flaws of the Ancien Regime, the feeling it evoked among the lower classes that those in power were using that power to enrich themselves.

By themselves, these reforms would drastically improve our governance. However, I believe a few more reforms could also improve the decision making of even our best and brightest. The tendency among people to fall into group think and succumb to peer pressure is one of the largest flaws in decision making that exists with human beings. Even tenured professors, who cannot be fired and should in theory be among our brightest, frequently embraced or bowed to the “woke” wave due to this fear of being ostracized. Among intelligent idealists, there is always the possibility of an irrational ideological movement sweeping through and totally detaching a portion of them from reality, with this portion then bullying the rest into the same way of thinking. In the past, this also happened with Marxism and Boasian anthropology.

During the age of wokeness, one of the only areas where the ideology was seriously pushed back on was anonymous online message boards. Those who are anonymous can point out flaws in ideas without fear of blacklisting or social shaming, and can also call attention to unpopular but important truths. Therefore, while it should be public knowledge who our leaders are, most of their discussions should happen anonymously.

To make use of the modern age, our highest council of leaders and the independent institutions should utilize an exclusive and anonymous online forum. Members could post a topic, and if the topic has enough support it should trigger a written debate between a representative from each side of the issue. If the one arguing for a change in policy is voted the winner of the debate, then the issue should be put to a vote. The policy suggestion, debating, and voting on the winner of the debate should all be anonymous so that peer pressure does not factor in and each idea can be argued in its purest sense, even if some of the arguments are controversial. This will ensure our leaders are operating with the best possible information. However, the final vote that actually decides whether the policy will go through or not should be public, so that our leaders cannot make decisions without accountability if the policy turns out to be foolish.

Contrary to popular belief, most of those in our elite are not actively malicious or dishonest. If they believe something that is wrong, it is most likely because they have not been exposed to the strongest arguments from the other side, as the people putting forward these arguments are viciously attacked, ostracized, censored, or denied a platform for putting forward what they have to say. If this system were in place, it is very unlikely that our American Pravda could have ever been as effective as it is.

While this council should be mostly comprised of those who have made it through our training schools, it would be wise to also include representatives from every swath of society, although they would not have voting power, only the ability to propose topics. Sometimes important ideas can come from the most unexpected places and it is important for stability that everyone feels they have some representation. The decisions would ultimately be made by our assigned leaders, but every part of society would have the opportunity to raise their concerns.

Should there be a “president” in this system? Yes, it would be wise to have one member of the council be elected by the council as their leader. However, this person should be more of a first among equals, as giving them too much power would increase the possibility of tyranny or corruption given that one man is more fallible than a council of people.

Also, to prevent stagnation, members of the council should serve perhaps ten year terms, and when they are not on the council they could work in a non-decision making role in the state bureaucracy. While graduates of the training schools should automatically receive a role in the state, they should probably not be allowed on the council until they are older.

Ultimately, I do not believe that this would require drastic changes in our system. Our current senators, most of whom are highly corrupt, could simply be replaced by a lottery among experienced civil servants who graduated from these schools and the Senate could become the council. Eliminating senate elections and allowing anonymous discussion would remove pressure from donors, media moguls, and even their own peers so that they could make the best decisions possible. This would not be that dramatic of a change since senators were not chosen with a public election until 1913. The House of Representatives could remain, but in the purely advisory capacity that we discussed above. Eliminating the need for House approval of legislation would be the only change required. The Senate would then elect a President with limited powers and also appoint graduates to administrate the independent institutions of the media, social media, universities, and other sectors deemed too powerful to leave unregulated. The independence of these institutions would ensure that there are checks and balances on the power of the Senate. If any senator engaged in misconduct or criminal activity, the independent media would quickly discover it and he could be removed by a vote of his fellow senators.

Depending on what the situation allows for, the system could be designed in a more or less democratic way. If eliminating presidential elections invited a backlash from the people, we could instead allow a democratic presidential election but only out of a handful of candidates from the Senate that have passed a vote of approval from the Senate. All political funding for the candidates would come from the Senate and the media institution would be responsible for accurately reporting on their backgrounds. Outside influence would be extremely minimal and the restricted nature of the candidates would render the result essentially the same as if the Senate itself were selecting the president, but the mere fact of allowing voting in the election would likely satisfy the people. Additionally, requiring that the senators are baptized Christians could act as another anchor against unhinged ideologies, but the possibility of implementing that restriction would depend on the political climate at the time.

Among everything, the reliability of the media is possibly the most important factor in the functioning of this system. It is in our current system as well, and the media’s failings can probably be pointed to as the main reason for the failings of our country. Hence, in our next article we will discuss the media and the Protocols depiction of it more in-depth.