Understanding the Enduring Appeal of the Theory of the Jewish Conspiracy

That great classic of anti-Semitic literature, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, has found its way into the news recently: last week, an FBI Twitter account, apparently without any malicious intent, tweeted a link to excerpts of the work in its archives; a few days ago, a speaker was removed from the roster at the Republican National Convention when it was found out that she had disseminated a series of anti-Semitic tweets that cited the Protocols as evidence. Why, asks Steven J. Zipperstein, has this book—published in Russia in 1903, but purporting to have been written by a leader of a Jewish conspiracy for world domination—remained so popular when other works of anti-Semitism have deservedly faded into oblivion: