The Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu: Humanitarian Despotism and the Conditions of Modern Tyranny

The Dialogue in Hell between Montesquieu and Machiavelli is the source of the world’s most infamous literary forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion . John Waggoner’s translation of, and commentary on, Maurice Joly’s dialogue seeks not only to update the sordid legacy of the Protocols but to redeem Joly’s original work for serious study in its own right, rather than through the lens of anti-semitism. Waggoner’s work rescues Joly from the shadow of the Protocols. It vindicates a man who was neither an anti-semite nor a supporter of the kind of tyrannical politics the Protocols subsequently served and displays Joly, once much maligned and too long ignored, as one of the 19th century’s foremost theoriticians of despotism.