UMBERTO ECO : THE PRAGUE CEMETERY by Umberto Eco
"Notice, for example, on this page," I said, "how importance is given to the spread of ideas by atheist philosophers to demoralize the Gentiles. And listen here: 'We must cancel the concept of God from Christian minds, replacing it with arithmetical calculation and material needs.'"
I had assumed that everybody hates arithmetic. Remembering Drumont's complaints about obscene publications, I decided that, at least for the more orthodox reader, the idea of spreading easy, vapid entertainment for the masses would have seemed excellent for the conspiracy. "Listen to this," I said to Golovinsky. "'To prevent the population from discovering new kinds of political action, we will distract it with novel forms of amusement: athletic games, pastimes, hobbies of various kinds, taverns, and we will invite them to compete in artistic and sporting competitions . . . We will encourage the unrestrained love of luxury and will increase salaries, but this will bring no benefit to the worker, because we will at the same time increase the price of basic commodities on the pretext of an agricultural crisis. We will undermine the system of production by sowing the seeds of anarchy among workers and encouraging them to abuse alcohol. We will seek to direct public opinion toward any kind of fantastical theory that might seem progressive or liberal.'"
"Good, good," said Golovinsky. "But is there anything here for students, apart from the arithmetic? Students are important in Russia. They are troublemakers who have to be kept under control."
"Here we are," I said. "'When we are in power, we shall remove from educational programs all subjects that might harm the spirit of young people, and we shall make them into obedient citizens who love their sovereign. Instead of allowing them to study classics and ancient history, which contain more bad than good, we shall make them study the problems of the future. We shall cancel from human memory the record of past centuries, which could be unpleasant for us. With a methodical education we will be able to eliminate the remnants of that independence of thought which has served our purposes for a considerable time. We shall double the tax on books of fewer than three hundred pages, and these measures will force writers to publish works that are so long they will have few readers. We, on the other hand, will publish low-priced works to educate the public mind. Taxation will lead to a reduction in reading for pleasure, and no one who wants to attack us with their pen will find a publisher.' As for the newspapers, the Jewish plan envisages a sham freedom of the press that ensures greater control over opinions. According to our rabbis, as many magazines as possible must be bought up, so that they express apparently different views, to give the impression of a free circulation of ideas, though in reality they will all reflect the ideas of the Jewish rulers. They observe that it won't be difficult to buy up journalists, as they are all of the same Masonic brotherhood, and no publisher will have the courage to reveal what they all have in common because no one is allowed into the world of journalism who hasn't been involved in some shady activity in their private life. 'All newspapers will, of course, be prevented from reporting on crime, because the people will believe that the new regime has stamped out criminal behavior. But there is hardly any need to worry about press restrictions, since the people, weighed down as they are by work and poverty, won't notice whether or not the press is free. Why should the proletarian worker be concerned about whether the gossipmongers have the right to gossip?'"
"This is good," exclaimed Golovinsky. "Our troublemakers are always complaining about supposed government censorship. They have to understand that a Jewish government would be worse."
"On this point it gets better: 'We have to beware of the pettiness, inconstancy and lack of common sense of the crowd. The crowd is blind and has no insight; it listens one moment to the Right, one moment to the Left. Is it possible for the masses to administer the affairs of state without confounding them with their own personal interests? Are they able to organize a defense against foreign enemies? That is absolutely impossible, because any plan, when divided into as many parts as the minds of the mass, loses its value and therefore becomes unintelligible and impracticable. Only an autocrat is capable of planning on a vast scale, assigning a role to each body in the mechanism of the state machine . . . Civilization cannot exist without absolute tyranny, because civilization can only be promoted under the protection of the ruler, whoever he is, and not by the mass.' There we are. And look at this other document: 'Since there has never been such a thing as a constitution that has emerged from the wishes of a population, the plan of command must spring from a single source.' And read this: 'We shall control everything, like a many-armed Vishnu. We will have no need of the police: one third of our subjects will control the other two thirds.'"
"Magnificent."
"And here's another: 'The crowd is barbaric, and behaves barbarically at every opportunity. Look at those terrible alcoholics, reduced to idiocy by drink, whose consumption is limitless and tolerated by liberty! Should we allow ourselves and our families to do the same? Christians are led astray by alcohol; their young people are rendered mad by premature excess at the instigation of our agents . . . In politics pure force is the only winner, violence must be the principle, cunning and hypocrisy have to be the rule. Evil is the only way of achieving good. We must not stop at corruption, deception and betrayal: the end justifies the means.'"
"There is much talk about communism in Russia. What do the rabbis of Prague think about it?"
"Read this: 'In politics we must be able to confiscate property without hesitation if, by doing so, we are able to bring down others and gain power for ourselves. For the worker we will appear to be liberators, feigning to love him according to the principles of brotherhood proclaimed by our Freemasonry. We will say we have come to free him from the oppressor, and will invite him to join the ranks of our armies of socialists, anarchists and communists. The aristocracy, who exploited the working classes, were nevertheless interested in ensuring they were well fed, healthy and strong. But our purpose is the opposite: we are interested in the degeneration of Gentiles. Our strength consists in keeping the worker in a state of penury and impotence, since by doing so we keep him subject to our will, and in his own surroundings he will never find the power and energy to rise up against us.' And then there's this: 'We shall bring about a universal economic crisis using all secret means possible, with the help of gold, which is all in our hands. We will reduce vast hordes of workers throughout Europe to ruin. These masses will then throw themselves with alacrity upon those who, in their ignorance, have been prudent since their childhood, and will plunder their possessions and spill their blood. They will not harm us, since we will be well informed as to the time of the attack and will take the necessary measures to protect our interests.'"
"Do you have anything on Jews and Freemasons?"
"Of course, here we are. It could hardly be clearer: 'Until we have achieved power, we shall establish and increase the number of Masonic lodges throughout the world. These lodges will provide our main source of information; they will also be our propaganda centers. In these lodges we will bring together all socialist and revolutionary classes of society. Almost all international secret police agents will be members of our lodges. Most of those who join secret societies are opportunists who seek to make their own way and have no worthy purposes. With such people it will be easy for us to reach our goal. We must, of course, have complete control over Masonic activities.'"
"Excellent!"
"Remember also that wealthy Jews look with interest at anti-Semitism that affects poor Jews, because it induces kinder-hearted Christians to feel compassion toward their entire race. Read this: 'Anti-Semitic demonstrations were also very useful for Jewish leaders, as they stirred compassion in the hearts of certain Gentiles toward a population that was apparently ill treated. This then served to secure much sympathy among Gentiles for the Zionist cause. Anti-Semitism, which took the form of persecution of low-class Jews, helped leaders to control them and keep them in servitude. They accepted this persecution because they intervened at the appropriate mo
I had also found a large number of overly technical pages that Joly had dedicated to loan and interest-rate mechanisms. I didn't understand much about it, nor was I sure whether taxation had changed since Joly's time, but I relied on my source and gave Golovinsky pages and pages that would probably have been of interest to an artisan trader who had fallen into debt, or indeed into the maw of usury.
Finally, I had been listening recently to discussions at La Libre Parole about the metropolitan railway that was to be built in Paris. It was an old story that had been going on for decades, but it was not until July of '97 that an official plan had been approved, and the first excavations had just begun for a line between Porte de Vincennes and Porte de Maillot. There was still little to be seen, but a Métro company had been established, and La Libre Parole had been waging a campaign for more than a year against the large number of Jewish shareholders involved. I thought it was useful, then, to link the Jewish conspiracy to the railway and had therefore written: "All cities will have metropolitan railways and tunnels. From there we will blow up all the world's cities, along with their institutions and all their documents."
"But if the meeting in Prague happened such a long time ago," asked Golovinsky, "how could the rabbis have known about metropolitan railways?"
"First of all, if you go and look at the last version of 'The Rabbi's Speech,' which had appeared about ten years ago in Le Contemporain, the meeting in the Prague cemetery took place in 1880, when I think there was already a metropolitan railway in London. Anyway, it's quite enough that the plan sounds like a prophecy."
Golovinsky was much taken by this passage, which he thought to be, in his words, most promising. Then he observed: "Don't you think that many of the ideas expressed in these documents contradict each other? For example, the Jews want to ban luxuries and superfluous pleasures and punish drunkenness, and then, in the next breath, to encourage sport and entertainment, and turn the workers into alcoholics."
"The Jews are always saying one thing and then the opposite — they are liars by nature. But if you produce a document many pages long, people won't read it all in one go. We have to try to obtain one wave of revulsion after another, and when someone is scandalized by a statement they have read today, they forget the one that had scandalized them yesterday. And if you read carefully, you will see that the rabbis of Prague want to use luxury, entertainment and alcohol to reduce the common people to slavery now, but once they have gained power, they will force the people to lead far more temperate lives."
"That's quite true, excuse me."
"You see," I concluded with legitimate pride, "I've pondered over these papers for decades and decades, since I was a boy, and know them inside out."
"You are right. But I'd like to end with a very powerful statement, something that will stick in the mind and symbolize the iniquity of the Jews. For example: 'Ours is an ambition that knows no limits, a voracious greed, a desire for ruthless revenge, an intense hatred.'"
"Not bad for a cheap novel. But do you think the Jews, who are anything but stupid, are likely to say something that would immediately condemn them?"
"I wouldn't be so worried about that. The rabbis are talking in their cemetery, sure that no one can hear them. They have no shame. The crowds must feel a sense of outrage."
Golovinsky was a good collaborator. He took, or pretended to take, my papers as genuine, but did not hesitate to alter them when it suited him. Rachkovsky had chosen the right man.
"I think," said Golovinsky finally, "I have enough material for what we shall call 'The Protocols of the Assembly of Rabbis in the Prague Cemetery.'"
The Prague cemetery was slipping out of my control, but I was probably contributing to its success. With a feeling of relief I invited Golovinsky to dinner at Paillard, on the corner of rue de la Chausséed'Antin and boulevard des Italiens. Expensive, but superb. Golovinsky clearly appreciated the poulet à l'archiduc and the canard à la presse. But someone who came from the Steppes may well have tucked into choucroute with the same enthusiasm. It would have cost me less, and I could have avoided the waiters' suspicious looks at a customer who masticated so noisily.
* * *
"But I'd like to end with a very powerful statement,
something that will stick in the mind and symbolize
the iniquity of the Jews. For example: 'Ours is an
ambition that knows no limits, a voracious greed, a
desire for ruthless revenge, an intense hatred.' "
* * *
But he ate with relish, his eyes glinting with excitement, perhaps because of the wine or— I don't know — out of some real religious or political passion.
"It'll be a fine piece of writing," he said, "that reveals their deep hatred as a race and as a religion. Their hatred gushes forth from these pages, it seems to overflow from a vessel full of bile. Many will understand that we have reached the moment of the final solution."
"I've already heard this expression from Osman Bey — you know him?"
"By reputation. But it's obvious. This accursed race has to be rooted out at all costs."
"Rachkovsky doesn't seem to share that view. It's better, he says, to keep the Jews alive as a good enemy."
"A myth. It's always easy to find a good enemy. And don't imagine, just because I work for Rachkovsky, that I share all his views. He taught me himself that while you're working for one master today, you must prepare yourself to serve another one tomorrow. Rachkovsky won't last forever. In Holy Russia there are those with much more radical ideas than his. The governments of western Europe are too cowardly to decide upon a final solution. Russia, on the other hand, is a country full of energy and bright hope, thinking always of total revolution. It's from there that we must expect the decisive gesture, not from these Frenchmen who continue to ramble on about egalité and fraternité, not from those German boors who are incapable of grand gestures . . ."
I had already guessed as much after my nocturnal meeting with Osman Bey. Abbé Barruel had decided not to pursue my grandfather's allegations after reading his letter because he feared a general massacre. But what my grandfather had wanted was probably exactly what Osman Bey and Golovinsky were predicting. Perhaps my grandfather had condemned me to making his dream come true. Oh, God! Fortunately it wasn't up to me to eliminate an entire people, but I was making a contribution in my own modest way.
And it was, after all, a profitable business. The Jews would never pay me to exterminate all Christians, I thought, since there are too many Christians and if it were possible they would do it themselves. Wiping out the Jews, when all is said and done, would be possible. Despite their numbers, God Almighty succeeded in drowning all of humanity during the time of the Flood, and the Jews were a minuscule percentage of the earth's inhabitants in Noah's time.
I wouldn't have to destroy them myself— I am (as a rule) a man who recoils from physical violence — but I knew how it had to be done, since I lived through the days of the Commune. Take gangs of men who are well trained and indoctrinated, and drag anyone you meet with a hooked nose and curly hair straight up against the wall. You'd end up losing a few Christians but, in the words of the bishop who had to attack Béziers when it was occupied by the Cathars, it is better to be prudent and kill the lot. God will recognize his own.
As it is written in their Protocols, the end justifies the means.
27
DIARY CUT SHORT
20th December 1898
Having handed over to Golovinsky all the remaining material for those cemetery Protocols, I felt an emptiness. "And what now?" I wondered, like a young student after graduation. Cured of my split consciousness, I no longer
I had completed my life's work, which had begun when I read Dumas' Balsamo in the attic in Turin. I think of my grandfather, his eyes staring into the distance as he described the specter of Mordechai. Thanks to my work, all the Mordechais in this world are on their way to a tremendous raging pyre. But what about me? There's a certain melancholy when a duty is completed, a melancholy greater and more impalpable than the sadness of a steamship voyage.
I continue to counterfeit wills and sell a few dozen hosts a week, but Hébuterne doesn't come to see me any longer — perhaps he thinks I'm too old — and I might as well forget about the army, where my name must have been erased from the minds of those who remembered it, if any of them are still there, now that Sandherr lies paralyzed in a hospital bed and Esterhazy is playing baccarat in some smart London brothel.
It's not that I need the money— I've saved up quite enough — but I'm bored. I have gastric upsets and can't even enjoy good food. I make myself broth at home, and if I go to a restaurant I am kept awake all night. Sometimes I vomit. I pass water more often than I would wish.
I still visit the offices of La Libre Parole, but Drumont's anti-Semitic ranting no longer interests me. As to what happened in the Prague cemetery, the Russians are now working on that.
The Dreyfus case still simmers away. Today there's a lot of fuss over a surprise article by a Catholic Dreyfusard in La Croix, a newspaper that has always been rabidly anti-Dreyfusard (what wonderful times they were when La Croix campaigned in support of Diana!), and yesterday the front pages were full of news about a violent anti-Semitic demonstration in place de la Concorde. A satirical newspaper recently published a double cartoon by Caran d'Ache: in the first, a large family is sitting happily at table as the father cautions the others not to discuss the Dreyfus affair; the caption under the second explains that someone has mentioned it, and we see a furious dustup.