The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Arthur Miller

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are denounced as fake. What's new?

It's true that they are not authentic in the sense that they were actually written by an Elder of Zion. They were almost certainly written by a racially conscious Gentile observer of the Jews, and a remarkably prescient one at that. But history has vindicated him, as they have proven quite accurately prophetic.

Consider that icon of moral probity and fountainhead of wisdom, the playwright Arthur Miller, and his second most successful production, The Crucible.

As one academic Miller authority, Christopher Bigsby, puts it,


"The language of The Crucible is not authentic in the sense of reproducing archaisms or reconstructing a seventeenth-century lexis. It is authentic in that it makes fully believable the words of those who speak out of a different time and place but whose human dilemmas are recognizably our own."

In other words, hey, it sounds good.

In actual fact, The Crucible is historical fraud and libel. Using the names of actual historical characters, it invents relationships-illicit relationships-where there were none, and it elicits a conclusion not supportable by the historical record.

But, it is "authentic". By the exact same standard, the Protocols are as well. The difference is that they are also correct. In contrast, Miller's play was written as allegory to justify the trashing of anti-Communism in the United States.

Notice that if the term "McCarthyism" is ever used today, it is by the blightwing, never the Left. The reason is that history has vindicated McCarthy and most of the old time Communist hunters, twice over: first when the Soviet archives were opened up to Western researchers, and secondly when the VENONA crypto archives of intercepted Soviet traffic were released from the US intelligence community. While occasional gaffes occurred, the vast majority of those denounced as Communists by these forces in the 1950s, were in fact Communists in active contact with and working for or with the Soviets.

To be sure, Miller got his, to a certain degree, in the end. His career as a playwright foundered when he debuted the play, After the Fall, which portrayed his late former wife Marilyn Monroe in a most unflattering light, and by the end of his life circumstances revealed his true motives in marrying Monroe-primarily as a way, in his own mind, of 'going over on' his enemy-friend-rival Elia Kazan-and the devastating effect this ill-founded union had on the fragile but enormously emotive, and enormously well-loved by her fans, Monroe. Even in Jew-liberal New York, he often was confronted by the quiet but perceptible contempt of those-Jewish or not-who could not squelch the knowledge of what a plain old fink he was.

Earlier, I said no healthy person exults in the unnecessary suffering of any animal. But for Miller, suffering was necessary, and I hope he did suffer a little as he lay on his deathbed.

Not that it matters.