FAILURE TO DISCLOSE

PROTOCOL No. 1

This is a secret which has not been revealed. Three hundred of Us, each of whom knows all the others, govern the fate of the world, and We alone choose Our successors.

The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.

What We are about to set forth, then, is Our system from the two points of view, that of Us and that of Them.

It must be noted that Those with bad instincts are more in number than the good, and therefore the best results in governing Them are attained by violence and terrorisation, and not by academic discussions. Those with bad instincts aim at power. Every one would like to become a dictator if only They could, and rare indeed are Those who would not be willing to sacrifice the welfare of all for the sake of securing Their own welfare.

What has restrained Them? What has served for Their guidance hitherto?

In the beginnings of the structure of society, They were subjected to brutal and blind force; after words - to Law, which is the same force, only disguised, in order to draw the conclusion that by the law of nature right lies in force.

Political freedom is an idea but not a fact. This idea one must know how to apply whenever it appears necessary, with the bait of an idea to attract the masses of the people to one's party for the purpose of crushing another who is in authority. This task is rendered easier if the opponent has himself been infected with the idea of freedom, or LIBERALISM, and, for the sake of an idea, is willing to yield some of his power. It is precisely here that the triumph of Our theory appears; the slackened reins of government are immediately, by the law of life, caught up and gathered together by a new hand, because the blind might of the nation cannot for one single day exist without guidance, and the new authority merely fits into the place of the old already weakened by liberalism.

In Our day the power which replaced that of the rulers who were liberal is the power of Gold. Time was when Faith ruled. The idea of political freedom is impossible to realize because no one knows how to use it with moderation. It is enough to hand over a people to self-government for a certain length of time so that They can turn themselves into a disorganized mob. From that moment on, We get internecine strife which soon develops into battles between classes, in the midst of which States burn down and their importance is reduced to that of a heap of ashes.

Whether a State exhausts itself in its own convulsions, or whether its internal discord brings it under the power of external foes - in any case it can be accounted irretrievably lost: IT IS IN OUR POWER. The despotism of Capital, which is entirely in Our hands, reaches out a hand that the State must take hold of. If not - it goes to the bottom.

Should anyone of a liberal mind say that such reflections as the above are immoral, We put the following question: If every State has two foes and if in regard to the external foe it is allowed and not considered immoral to use every manner and art of conflict, as for example to keep the enemy in ignorance of plans of attack and defense, to attack him by night or in superior numbers, then in what way can the same means in regard to a worse foe, the destroyer of the structure of society and the commonweal, be called immoral and not permissible?

Is it possible for any sound logical mind to hope with any success to guide crowds by the aid of reasonable counsels and arguments, when any objection or contradiction, senseless though it may be, can be made and when such objection may find more favor with the people, whose powers of reasoning are superficial? Humans en masse, and the men of the masses, being guided solely by petty passions, paltry beliefs, traditions and sentimental theorems, fall prey to party dissension, which hinders any kind of agreement even on the basis of a perfectly reasonable argument. Every resolution of a crowd depends upon a chance or packed majority, which, in its ignorance of political secrets, puts forth some ridiculous resolution that lays in the administration a seed of anarchy.

The political has nothing in common with the moral. The ruler who is governed by the moral is not a skilled politician, and is therefore unstable on his throne. He who wishes to rule must have recourse both to cunning and to make-believe. Great national qualities, like frankness and honesty, are vices in politics, for they bring down rulers from their thrones more effectively and more certainly than the most powerful enemy. Such qualities must be the attributes of Their kingdoms, as We must in no wise are guided by them.

Our right lies in force. The word "right" is an abstract thought and proved by nothing. The word means no more than: Give me what I want in order that thereby I may have a proof that I am stronger than you.

Where does right begin? Where does it end?

In any State in which there is a bad organization of authority, an impersonality of laws and of the rulers who have lost their personality amid the flood of rights ever multiplying out of liberalism, We find a new right - to attack by the right of the strong, and to scatter to the winds all existing forces of order and regulation, to reconstruct all institutions and to become the sovereign lord of Those who have left to Us the rights of Their power by laying them down voluntarily in their liberalism.

Our power in the present tottering condition of all forms of power, will be more invincible than any other, because it will remain invisible until the moment when it has gained such strength that no cunning can any longer undermine it.

Out of the temporary evil We are now compelled to commit, will emerge the good of an unshakable rule, which will restore the regular course of the machinery of the national life, brought to naught by liberalism. The result justifies the means. Let Us, however, in Our plans, direct Our attention not so much to what is good and moral as to what is necessary and useful.

Before Us is a plan in which is laid down strategically the line from which We cannot deviate without running the risk of seeing the labor of many centuries brought to naught.

In order to elaborate satisfactory forms of action it is necessary to have regard to the rascality, the slackness, the instability of the mob, it's lack of capacity to understand and respect the conditions of it's own life, or it's own welfare. It must be understood that the might of a mob is a blind, senseless, and unreasoning force; ever at the mercy of a suggestion from any side We control. The blind cannot lead the blind without stumbling into the abyss; consequently, members of the mob, upstarts having no understanding of the political, cannot come forward as leaders of the mob without the mob fearing they will only lead the whole nation to ruin.

Only one trained from childhood for independent rule can have understanding of the words that can be made up of the political alphabet We have created.

A people left to itself, i.e., to upstarts from its midst, brings itself to ruin by party dissensions excited by the pursuit of power and honors and the disorders arising therefrom. Is it possible for the masses of the people calmly and without petty jealousies to form judgment, to deal with the affairs of the country, which cannot be mixed up with personal interest? Can they defend themselves from an external foe? It is unthinkable; for a plan broken up into as many parts as there are heads in the mob, loses all homogeneity, and thereby becomes unintelligible and impossible of execution.

It is only with a despotic ruler that plans can be elaborated extensively and clearly in such a way as to distribute the whole properly among the several parts of the machinery of the State: from this the conclusion is inevitable that a satisfactory form of government for any country is one that concentrates in the hands of one responsible person. Without an absolute despotism there can be no existence for civilization which is carried on not by the masses but by their guide, whosoever that person may be. The mob is savage, and displays its savagery at every opportunity. The moment the mob seizes freedom in its hands it quickly turns to anarchy, which in itself is the highest degree of savagery.

Behold the deluded, shackled with such attachments and burdens, the right to pursue same comes along with freedom. It is not for Us and Ours to walk that road.

Our countersign is - Force and Make-believe. Only force conquers in political affairs, especially if it be concealed in the talents essential to statesmen. Violence must be the principle, and cunning and make-believe the rule for governments which do not want to lay down their crowns at the feet of agents of some new power. This evil is the one and only means to attain the end, the good. Therefore We must not stop at bribery, deceit and treachery when they should serve towards the attainment of Our ends. In politics one must know how to seize the property of others without hesitation if by it We secure submission and sovereignty.

Our State, marching along the path of peaceful conquest, has the right to replace the horrors of war by less noticeable and more satisfactory sentences of death, necessary to maintain the terror which tends to produce blind submission. Just, but merciless severity, is the greatest factor of strength in the State: not only for the sake of gain but also in the name of duty, for the sake of victory, we must keep to the program of violence and make-believe. The doctrine of squaring accounts is precisely as strong as the means of which it makes use. Therefore it is not so much by the means themselves, as by the doctrine of severity that We shall triumph and bring all governments into subjection to Our super-government. It is enough for Them to know that We are too merciless, for all disobedience to cease.

Far back in ancient times, We were the first to cry among the masses of the people the words "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity". Words many times repeated since those days by stupid poll- parrots who, from all sides around, flew down upon these baits and with them carried away the well-being of the world - true freedom of the individual - formerly so well guarded against the pressure of the mob. The would-be wise men, the intellectuals, could not make anything out of the uttered words in their abstractedness; did not see that in nature there is no equality, cannot be freedom: that Nature herself has established inequality of minds, of characters, and capacities, just as immutably as she has established subordination to her laws: never stopped to think that the mob is a blind thing, that upstarts elected from among it to bear rule are, in regard to the political, the same blind men as the mob itself, that the adept, though he be a fool, can yet rule, whereas the non-adept, even if he were a genius, understands nothing in the political - to all those things They pay no regard. Yet all the time it was based upon these things that dynastic rule rested: the father passed on to the son a knowledge of the course of political affairs in such wise that none should know it but members of the dynasty and none could betray it to the governed. As time went on, the meaning of the dynastic transference of the true position of affairs in the political was lost, and this aided the success of Our cause.

In all corners of the earth the words "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," brought to Our ranks, thanks to Our blind agents, whole legions who bore Our banners with enthusiasm. And all the time these words were worms at work boring into Their well-being , putting an end everywhere to peace, quiet, solidarity and destroying all the foundations of Their States. As will be seen later, this helped Us to Our triumph: it gave Us the possibility, among other things, of getting into Our hands the master card - the destruction of the privileges, or in other words of the very existence of Their aristocracy, that class which was the only defense peoples and countries had against Us. On the ruins of Their eternal and genealogical aristocracy, We have set up the aristocracy of Our educated class headed by the aristocracy of money. The qualifications for this aristocracy We have established in wealth, which is dependent upon Us, and in knowledge, for which Our learned elders provide the motive force.

Our triumph has been rendered easier by the fact that in Our relations with the men, whom We wanted, We have always worked upon the most sensitive chords of the human mind, upon the cash account, upon the cupidity, upon the insatiability for material needs of man; and each one of these human weaknesses, taken alone, is sufficient to paralyze initiative, for it hands over the will of men to the disposition of him who has bought Their activities.

The abstraction of freedom has enabled Us to persuade the mob in all countries that Their government is nothing but the steward of the people who are the owners of the country, and that the steward may be replaced like a worn-out glove.

It is this possibility of replacing the representatives of the people which has placed at Our disposal, and, as it were, given Us the power of appointment.

View the Neoprotocols

My Name is Michael Sterling, and this is the first of the Neoprotocols. Emphasis added.