Program Rewind: Difficult Books

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Stanford’s Steven Zipperstein put Mein Kampf in its place during the May 6th program Difficult Books, describing it as a phenomenally boring book despite its outsized impact on world history. Surprisingly, he explained that Hitler’s autobiography–the central text of the Museum’s exhibition Our Struggle: Responding to Mein Kampf–is dramatically less popular worldwide than it’s elder cousin, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a Russian manifesto describing a plan for world Jewish domination.

His prediction: In an age dominated by talk radio and Internet sound bites, The Protocols, which is written in repetitive chunks, and coyly presented as if it were a transcript of secret Jewish meetings, would continue to speak to people looking in the wrong places for answers to global complexities and chaos.



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