Will Eisner - Michael Schumacher [171]
The Protocols, Eisner learned, had a long, winding, secretive history dating back to nineteenth-century France, where a satirist and political gadfly named Maurice Joly wrote a book entitled The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu. Published in 1864, the book attempted to present a similarity between the political philosophy of Machiavelli and Napoleon III’s dictatorial reign. Not much came of the book, and Joly died, a suicide, in 1878.
The book resurfaced three decades later, although not by its original title and authorship. In the pre-revolution turmoil under Czar Nicholas II, Russian traditionalists feared that the czar was leaning toward adopting modern, much more liberal government policies in the near future. Something had to be done to convince the czar that this would be harmful to the country. The traditionalist leadership proposed that a document be produced—a document that would serve two functions. First, it would show how modernization would be harmful; and second, it would distract the czar by producing a new enemy of the state. That enemy would be the Jews.
The document, a book called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, outlined a plot by influential Jewish leaders, supposedly hatched at an international meeting, in which the Jews planned a way of achieving world domination. The major points of the plan—and the heart of The Protocols—written by Mathieu Golovinski, a Russian agent, propagandist, and forger living in Paris—were lifted, almost verbatim at times, from Joly’s now forgotten work. The Jews, the book insinuated, were behind the liberal reforms being proposed for Russia. The Protocols worked as intended: Czar Nicholas II dismissed his most trusted adviser, liberal factions fell out of favor, and ultimately, pogroms eliminated much of the Jewish population.
Years later, in 1921, Philip Graves, a correspondent for the Times of London, researched The Protocols and, by comparing The Protocols with The Dialogue in Hell, exposed the book as a fraud. This should have been the end of the book’s credibility, but as Eisner learned, it was a powerful propaganda tool, easily sold to the masses looking for a group to blame for its troubles. In 1920, automaker Henry Ford had published a series of articles in his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, which used The Protocols as a source; he recanted six years later, well after the Times of London exposé. A suit in Switzerland, filed to prohibit the Nazis from distributing The Protocols, once again exposed the fraudulent nature of the book—to no avail. The book would not go away. The Ku Klux Klan had used the book in its campaign against the Jews, and it was used similarly in countries around the world.
While conducting his research, Eisner discovered that there was no shortage of books or newspaper and magazine pieces on The Protocols, but this was scholarly material aimed at the academic community—at people already interested in it and aware of the book’s history. To Eisner, these were worthy endeavors, but they were really a matter of preaching to the choir. Sequential art would reach a lot more readers. For Eisner, it had been an effective educational tool in the past, whether used to show a soldier how to maintain his equipment or to inform an inner-city kid about job possibilities, and it could work now to dispel the myths and misconceptions about a propagandistic book.
“Am I trespassing onto academic territory?” he wondered aloud in an interview with journalist and author David Hajdu. “I didn’t see the signs saying ‘No comics allowed.’ I refuse to acknowledge limitations in the art form. I say, ‘Don’t bother me with the formal details—we’ve got to climb a hill.’ At this point in my life, I feel, ‘What the hell.’ If I’m wrong, I won’t be around to find out about it anyway.”
Eisner divided his book project into three parts. The opening portion of the book would address the history of The Protocols and how the book came to be written. The second part