Marc Levin sets out with camera and crew to survey the increasing audience and readership of a peurile tract that purports to be the Jewish master plan to rule the world, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion." What can account for the rising sales of this fictional conspiracy theory, let alone its survival on book shelves?

The quick answer would seem to be the refuge people of little reason have always found in scapegoating. In this regard, the early 21st century appears to be no better illuminated than the early 11th. The consistency of thinking expressed by Levin's subjects, street people, businessmen, convicts, etc. seem to add up to a very large number who have no tendency toward requiring fact or evidence to be a basis for belief.

"It must be right because it pretty much says what I've always thought," these people are saying. That's enough for them, and they quickly reject any logic that might refute or undermine it. No appeal to reason gets very far with these folks, nor does any rational argument about how adopting a position of cultural condemnation might affect their own community and its well being.

Given someone to blame for the ills of the world, as the tract offers, provides these folks the jolt of positive feeling and superiority that compensates for a sense of inferiority or lack of achievement. Accusing others is a high caffeine kick for the spirit, a tonic of self-respect. And it requires no effort, especially of the mind. All you need to do is believe.

As for the writing of the "Protocols...," if this comes from "elders" there's some significant retardation involved. That, or the twisted mentality produced by generations of inbreeding. Probably, a little of both to appeal to those with resonating standards. Anyone with a drop of rationality has to wonder how it can become the basis for adopting the delusion that there were no Jews killed on 9/11 because they were responsible for it. Jews responsible for Islamic madmen flying into the World Trade Towers? It would be an outrageous thought if it weren't so contradictory to reality and intellectually lame.

The documentary is not skillfully made, but its point is made. It amply exposes wide receptivity toward the outlandishness of the tract and its spawn of delusionary beliefs.

It's that pitiful need for something to prop up feelings of self-worth that leads so many young men to buy into the illusions of paradise if they're only willing to strap a vest of explosives around their torso and rip themselves to shreds. It's a good thing that, in most western countries, no charismatic leader has emerged to corral these deranged saps into training for the death of the infidel... at any cost.

                                      ~~  Jules Brenner