PROTOCOL XVIII
Measures of secret defense. Observation of conspiracies from the inside. Overt secret defense -the ruin of authority, Secret defense of the King of the Jews. Mystical prestige of authority. Arrest on the first suspicion.
When it becomes necessary for us to strengthen the strict
measures of secret defense (the most fatal poison for the prestige of
authority) we shall arrange a simulation of disorders or some manifestation
of discontents finding expression through the co-operation of good speakers.
Round these speakers will assemble all who are sympathetic to his
utterances. This will give us the pretext for domiciliary perquisitions and
surveillance on the part of our servants from among the number of the goyim
police.
As the majority of conspirators act out of love for the game, for the sake of talking, so, until they commit some overt act we shall not lay a finger on them but only introduce into their midst observation elements. . . It must be remembered that the prestige of authority is lessened if it frequently discovers conspiracies against itself: this implies a presumption of consciousness of weakness, or, what is still worse, of injustice. You are aware that we have broken the prestige of the goy kings by frequent attempts upon their lives through our agents, blind sheep of our flock, who are easily moved by a few liberal phrases to crimes provided only they be painted in political colours. We have compelled the rulers to acknowledge their weakness in advertising overt measures of secret defence and thereby we shall bring the promise of authority to destruction.
Our ruler will be secretly protected only by the most insignificant guard, because we shall not admit so much as a thought that there could exist against him any sedition with which he is not strong enough to contend and is compelled to hide from it.
If we should admit this thought, as the goyim have done and are doing, we should ipso facto be signing a death sentence, if not for our ruler, at any rate for his dynasty, at no distant date.
According to strictly enforced outward appearances our ruler will employ his power only for the advantage of the nation and in no wise for his own or dynastic profits. Therefore, with the observance of this decorum, his authority will be respected and guarded by the subjects themselves, it will receive an apotheosis in the admission that with it is bound up the well-being of every citizen of the State, for upon it will depend all order in the common life of the pack.
Overt defense of the kind argues weakness in the organization of his strength.
Our ruler will always among the people be surrounded by a mob of apparently curious men and women, who will occupy the front ranks about him, to all appearance by chance, and will restrain the ranks the rest out of respect as it will appear for good order. This will sow an example of restraint also in others. If a petitioner appears among the people trying to hand a petition and forcing his way through the ranks, the first ranks must receive the petition and before the eyes of the petitioner pass it to the ruler, so that all may know that what is handed in reaches its destination, that, consequently, there exists a control of the ruler himself. The aureole of power requires for its existence that the people may be able to say: "If the king knew of this," or: "the king will hear of it."
With the establishment of official secret defense the mystical prestige of authority disappears: given a certain audacity, and everyone counts himself master of it, the seditionmonger is conscious of his strength, and when occasion serves watches for the moment to make an attempt upon authority. . . For the goyim we have been preaching something else, but by that very fact we are enabled to see what measures of overt defense have brought them to.
Criminals with us will be arrested at the first more or less well-grounded suspicion; it cannot be allowed that out of fear of a possible mistake an opportunity should be given of escape to persons suspected of a political lapse or crime, for in these matters we shall be literally merciless. If it is still possible, by stretching a point, to admit a reconsideration of the motive causes in simple crime, there is no possibility of excuse for persons occupying themselves with questions in which nobody except the government can understand anything. . . And it is not all governments that understand true policy.
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