Written by: Will Eisner
First line: Whenever one group of people is taught to hate another, a lie is created to inflame the hatred and justify a plot.
First line: Whenever one group of people is taught to hate another, a lie is created to inflame the hatred and justify a plot.
Why you should read this book: Eisner poured his soul and a
large portion of the last part of his life into this historical graphic story,
which details the deceitful origins of the hateful, anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
From its late nineteenth century inception as a fraud plagiarized from earlier
French revolutionary documents for the purpose of halting modernity in czarist
Russia while justifying pogroms and
other racist behaviors, these lies have been associated with the perpetuation
of evil throughout the years; the book seeks to debunk the pervasive attitudes
that have allowed a demonstrable hoax to take on a life of its own, despite
ample proof that it is nothing more than a lie enjoyed by people who love to
hate. Eisner originally felt certain that if he could only compile all the data
into one easy-to-read volume, he could kill The
Protocols once and for all, but eventually he ended the book with the
realization that anti-Semitism is a choice made by racists whose confirmation
bias prevents them from understanding the evidence, and it is justified, rather
than inspired, by the document.
Why you shouldn’t read this book: The Dunning-Kreuger
effect.
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