My proposition is this: the history of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion has been so muddled, so embroidered and embellished, that the damage to the historical truth concerning it is irreparable. A realistic, evidence-based assessment of that work, to replace the inflated, sensational, overwrought distortion of its importance—which is what the world possesses at this moment—may well be beyond us. Blame for this state of affairs cannot be laid at the feet of the scoundrels and lunatics who perpetrated and promoted the fraud. Rather it is the legacy of the debunkers, who since the 1920s and continuing into the present moment, have, in an undeniably good cause, allowed themselves too great a latitude in their methods, arguments, and applications of the rules of evidence. The essay advances several general explanations for this state of affairs and then relates them to a number of individual cases: the putative role of the Protocols in the worldview and practical politics of Adolf Hitler; the claims that the Protocols served as nothing less than the “warrant for genocide,” that is, the Holocaust; and the book's alleged capacity to mobilize mob action against Jews.

At any rate, the fact of the plagiarism has now been conclusively established, and the legend may be allowed to pass into oblivion.