The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Historical Hoax)

Claim: A text first published in Russia in 1903, purporting to be the minutes of a secret Jewish plan for global domination through control of finance, media, and governments.

Origins: Produced by the Russian secret police (Okhrana) as political propaganda, plagiarizing an unrelated 1864 French satirical pamphlet by Maurice Joly that criticized Napoleon III, with the target group swapped to Jewish people. It was translated and circulated internationally in the 1920s, including in the U.S. (by Henry Ford's newspaper) and Nazi Germany, where it was used as core propaganda material to justify persecution.

Why it's false: Proven a forgery as early as 1921 by The Times of London, which traced its plagiarized sections directly to Joly's original pamphlet. No historian or serious researcher today disputes its fabricated nature.

Impact: One of the most consequential and destructive hoaxes in modern history — it fueled global antisemitism throughout the 20th century and was cited by the Nazi regime to help justify the Holocaust. It continues to circulate in extremist and antisemitic circles today despite being thoroughly and repeatedly debunked. This entry documents it as a historical case study in propaganda and hate, not as a credible claim.