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We Need a Manhattan Project for the Climate
With a viral plague descending on the world now, I am struck by how similar this century’s 20’s are to the last century’s. The plague then, following the Spanish flu pandemic, was political. In 1921, a piece of fake news caught the attention of a young house painter named Adolph Hitler. In its earliest editions, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion had nothing whatever to do with either Jews or anti-Semites. It was a literary parody propaganda written in the 1860s to rally popular opinion against Napoleon III. Around 1895, the pamphlet was modified by the czarist Russian secret police stationed in Paris to portray anti-monarchists as part of a global Zionist conspiracy.
Alfred Rosenberg introduced Adolf Hitler to the Protocols with an edition printed by automobile magnate Henry Ford under the title The Jewish Peril. It came at a pivotal time when Hitler was still developing his worldview, pre-Mein Kampf. He referred to the Protocols frequently with approval in political speeches throughout his career, despite having been told that they were faked. So, too, did Joseph Goebbels. To them, the notion of Russian secret police fake news was hogwash. The Protocols were gospel.