"At the time the Protocols was published and popularised in Russia, Jews were fleeing the Tsar in their hundreds of thousands to escape murderous pogroms and growing discrimination. They were hardly in a position to manipulate or control the country they were trying to leave. Purveyors of the Protocols have claimed that the first Zionist Congress in Basle in 1897 was the location for the fictitious meeting of which the Protocols is supposed to be the record; but this Zionist Congress was a gathering of desperate Jews looking for a solution, however improbable, to the persecution faced by Jews across Europe. They were the very opposite of the omnipotent puppeteers depicted in this bizarre hoax."