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The Plot: The Secret Story of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
by Will Eisner
Foreword by Umberto Eco

“A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” - V.I. Lenin

There’s a reason that despite being presented as a graphic novel, The Plot is classified as a work of non-fiction and belongs under the category of history. The Plot was finished by author Will Eisner in the last month of his life. One of comics’ acknowledged masters passed away in January 3, 2005. As an author the book is a product of life-long research and as a Jew, a personal one. It tackles the continued perpetuation of a document called the Protocols of the Elders of Zion despite having been debunked by numerous scholars and authors before Eisner.

Eisner wanted to reach out to a broader audience, the younger folk who may have not the time to plow through a more scholarly, verbose work. Not that Eisner took some short-cuts in presenting his refutation of the Protocols. He made sure all his references are well-documented and duly footnoted. His desire is only to stop the century-old lie which has been used by hate-mongers such as the Nazis andthe Ku Klux Klan. It has even managed to deceive the likes of Winston Churchill and industrialist Henry Ford (who later retracted his publications). Think of the Protocols as a more insidious Da Vinci Code against the Jews.

Propaganda

The story Eisner tells in The Plot is how the Protocols, which started out as a fake document from Tsarist Russia, transformed into a contemporary source for global anti-Semitism.

Mathieu Golovinski, an agent of the Russian secret police who specializes in forging evidence, stumbles upon an old novel by Frenchman Maurice Joly. Joly wrote “The Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu” as criticism against Napoleon III, as the thinly-veiled Machiavelli.

Golovinski plagiarizes Joly’s work often word for word to create a new document that make it appear that Jewish leaders have met secretly and formulated a plot to take over the world. The forged document was then presented to Tsar Nicholas II as evidence they have ‘found’ purporting the conspiracy of the Jews against Russia and the rest of the world.

After the execution of the Tsar and his family and the 1917 Revolution in Russia, the documents resurfaced again in the London Times in the 1920s. By then it has snowballed and being accepted as the truth. Russian immigrants who have fled Communist Russia possessed the truth connecting Golovinski and Joly’s work approached the London Times. The paper exposed the documents as a fraud in 1921. By then however, other groups in Europe and America have adopted the Protocols and presented it as evidence of the Jewish conspiracy.

Modern Incarnations

Despite mounting historical evidence from various scholars of different nationalities, the Protocols continues to be published today.

Eisner reports that in 2000 a group called the Christian Defense League in Louisiana in the US distributed copies of Henry Ford’s The International Jew. In Lebanon, the brother of former President Nasser published a Lebanese edition of the Protocols. In San Diego in 2001, Eisner reports of a pamphlet being distributed by an ethnic student association which encourages the reading of the Protocols. Anti-Semitism is alive and well in 2005 and the Protocols are still being sold in bookstores worldwide.

The Medium is the Massage

Eisner work in The Plot showcases his awesome understanding of sequential art. He uses various techniques to present historical events. He doesn’t just present you with the dates and facts but also the rationale of the actions being taken and the disastrous outcome. He tells a story - a true story - recreated in his own unique style. It engages you and more importantly asks the reader the more important question: with all this evidence of a forgery why would any human being with a functioning brain choose to believe the Protocols as true?

The Plot is certainly a worthy book to cap Will Eisner’s career. He has shown again that graphic novels can go beyond telling stories of superheroes and mad villains. Here is Eisner showing other comic authors that the search for the truth is not exclusively the province of books and newspapers. That’s one legacy they should be proud of.