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41
professional secrecy; like the augurs of old, not one of their numbers will give away the
secrets of his sources of information unless it be resolved to make announcement to them.
Not one journalist will venture to betray this secret, for not one of them is ever admitted to
practice literature unless his whole past has some disgraceful sore or other…these sores
would be immediately revealed. So long as they remain the secret of a few the prestige of
the journalist attracts the majority of the country – the mob follows after him with
enthusiasm.
Our calculations are especially extended to the provinces.
It is indispensable for us to
inflame there those hopes and impulses of the provinces. Naturally, the source of them will
always be one and the same – ours.
What we need is that, until such time as we are in
plenitude of power, the capitals should find themselves stifled by the provincial opinion of
the nation i.e., of a majority arranged by our agentur.
What we need is that at the
psychological moment the capitals should not be in a position to discuss an accomplished
fact for the same reason, if for no other, that it has been accepted by the public opinion of a
majority in the provinces.
That we are in the period of the new regime transitional to that of our assumption of full
sovereignty we must not admit any revelations by the press or any form of public dishonesty;
it is necessary that the new regime should be thought to have so perfectly contented
everybody that even criminality has disappeared… Cases of the manifestation of criminality
should remain known only to their victims and to chance witnesses – no more.
PROTOCOL NO. 13
The need for daily bread forces the goyim to keep silence and be humble servants. Agents
taken on to our press from among the goyim will at our order discuss anything which it is
inconvenient for us to issue directly in official documents, and we meanwhile, quietly amid
the din of the discussion so raised, shall simply take and carry through such measures as
we wish and then offer them to the public as an accomplished fact. No one will dare to
demand the abrogation of a matter once settled, all the more so as it will be represented as
an improvement… And immediately the press will distract the current of thought towards
new questions (have we not trained people always to be seeking something new?). Into the
discussions of these new questions will throw themselves those of the brainless dispensers
of fortunes who are not able even now to understand that they have not the remotest
conception about the matters which they undertake to discuss.
Questions of the political are
unattainable for any save those who have guided it already for many ages, the creators.
From all this you will see that in securing the opinion of the mob we are only facilitating the
working of our machinery, and you may remark that it is not for actions but for words issued
on this or that question that we seem to seek approval.
We are constantly making public
declaration that we are guided in all our undertakings by the hope, joined to the conviction,
that we are serving the commonweal.
In order to distract people who may be too troublesome from discussions of questions of the
political we are now putting forward what we allege to be new questions of the political,
namely, questions of industry. In this sphere let them discuss themselves silly! The masses
are agreed to remain inactive, to take a rest from what they suppose to be political activity
(which we trained them to in order to use them as a means of combating the goy
governments) only on condition of being found new employments, in which we are
prescribing them something that looks like the same political object. In order that the
masses themselves may not guess what they are about we further distract them with
amusements, games, pastimes, passions, people’s palaces… Soon we shall begin through
the press to propose competitions in art, in sport of all kinds: these interests will finally
