The Protocols’ credibility arose from antisemitism history while its global-rule appeal came from imperialism

Evidence

The Nazi use of the forgery as a textbook for global conquest is certainly not part of the history of antisemitism, but only this history can explain why the improbable tale contained enough plausibility to be useful as anti-Jewish propaganda to begin with. What, on the other hand, it can not explain is why the totalitarian claim to global rule, to be exercised by members and methods of a secret society, should become an attractive political goal at all. This latter, politically (though not propagandistically) much more relevant function has its origin in imperialism in general, in its highly explosive continental version, the so-called pan-movements in particular. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 23

Categorization

• XREF: The two-track explanation — antisemitism for propaganda plausibility, imperialism/pan-movements for global-rule appeal — is exactly the scaffolding the later Islamophobia readings will need to separate racial/religious hostility from imperial power dynamics.
• DEFINE: Introduces the conceptual split between antisemitism’s propaganda function and its political/global-rule function, a distinction that carries forward into analyses of how ‘Jewish conspiracy’ rhetorics work.