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The Culture of Critique reviewed by Stanley Hornbeck
In The Culture of Critique, Evolutionary Psychologist Professor Kevin
MacDonald advances a carefully researched but extremely controversial
thesis: that certain 20th century intellectual movements – largely
established and led by Jews – have changed European societies in
fundamental ways and destroyed the confidence of Western man. He
claims that these movements were designed, consciously or
unconsciously, to advance Jewish interests even though they were
presented to non-Jews as universalistic and even utopian. He concludes
that the increasing dominance of these ideas has had profound
political and social consequences that benefited Jews but caused great
harm to gentile societies. This analysis, which he makes with
considerable force, is an unusual indictment of a people generally
thought to be more sinned against than sinning.
The Culture of Critique is the final title in Prof. MacDonald's
massive, three-volume study of Jews and their role in history. The two
previous volumes are A People That Shall Dwell Alone and Separation
and its Discontents, published by Praeger in 1994 and 1998. The series
is written from a sociobiological perspective that views Judaism as a
unique survival strategy that helps Jews compete with other ethnic
groups. Prof. MacDonald, who is a psychologist at the University of
California at Long Beach, explains this perspective in the first
volume, which describes Jews as having a very powerful sense of
uniqueness that has kept them socially and genetically separate from
other peoples. The second volume traces the history of Jewish-gentile
relations, and finds the causes of anti-Semitism primarily in the
almost invariable commercial and intellectual dominance of gentile
societies by Jews and in their refusal to assimilate. The Culture of
Critique brings his analysis into the present century, with an account
of the Jewish role in the radical critique of traditional culture.
The intellectual movements Prof. MacDonald discusses in this volume
are Marxism, Freudian psychoanalysis, the Frankfurt school of
sociology, and Boasian anthropology. Perhaps most relevant from a
racial perspective, he also traces the role of Jews in promoting multi-
culturalism and Third World immigration. Throughout his analysis Prof.
MacDonald reiterates his view that Jews have promoted these movements
as Jews and in the interests of Jews, though they have often tried to
give the impression that they had no distinctive interests of their
own. Therefore Prof. MacDonald's most profound charge against Jews is
not ethnocentrism but dishonesty – that while claiming to be working
for the good of mankind they have often worked for their own good and
to the detriment of others. While attempting to promote the
brotherhood of man by dissolving the ethnic identification of
gentiles, Jews have maintained precisely the kind of intense group
solidarity they decry as immoral in others.
Celebrating Diversity
Prof. MacDonald claims that one of the most consistent ways in which
Jews have advanced their interests has been to promote pluralism and
diversity – but only for others. Ever since the 19th century, they
have led movements that tried to discredit the traditional foundations
of gentile society: patriotism, racial loyalty, the Christian basis
for morality, social homogeneity, and sexual restraint. At the same
time, within their own communities, and with regard to the state of
Israel, they have often supported the very institutions they attack in
gentile society.
Why is this in the interests of Jews? Because the parochial group
loyalty characteristic of Jews attracts far less attention in a
society that does not have a cohesive racial and cultural core. The
Jewish determination not to assimilate fully, which accounts for their
survival as a people for thousands for years – even without a country
– has invariably attracted unpleasant and even murderous scrutiny in
nations with well -defined national identities. In Prof. MacDonald's
view it is therefore in the interest of Jews to dilute and weaken the
identity of any people among whom they live. Jewish identity can
flower in safety only when gentile identity is weak.
Prof. MacDonald quotes a remarkable passage from Charles Silberman:
"American Jews are committed to cultural tolerance because of their
belief – one firmly rooted in history – that Jews are safe only in a
society acceptant of a wide range of attitudes and behaviors, as well
as a diversity of religious and ethnic groups. It is this belief, for
example, not approval of homosexuality, that leads an overwhelming
majority of American Jews to endorse 'gay rights' and to take a
liberal stance on most other so-called 'social' issues."
He is saying, in effect, that when Jews make the diversity-is-our-
strength argument it is in support of their real goal of diluting a
society's homogeneity so that Jews will feel safe. They are couching a
Jewish agenda in terms they think gentiles will accept. Likewise, as
the second part of the Silberman quotation suggests, Jews may support
deviant movements, not because they think it is good for the country
but because it is good for the Jews.
Prof. Silberman also provides an illuminating quote from a Jewish
economist who thought that republicans had more sensible economic
policies but who voted for the Democratic presidential candidate
anyway. His reason? "I'd rather live in a country governed by the
faces I saw at the Democratic convention than those I saw at the
Republican convention." This man apparently distrusts white gentiles
and voted for a racially mixed party even if its economic policies
were wrong. What is good for Jews appears to come before what is good
for the country.
Earl Raab, former president of heavily Jewish Brandeis University
makes the diversity argument in a slightly different way. Expressing
his satisfaction with the prediction that by the middle of the next
century whites will become a minority, he writes, "We have tipped
beyond the point where a Nazi-Aryan party will be able to prevail in
this country." He is apparently prepared to displace the people and
culture of the founding stock in order to prevent the theoretical rise
of an anti-Jewish regime. Prof. Raab appears to see whites mainly as
potential Nazis, and is willing to sacrifice their culture and
national continuity in order to defuse an imagined threat to Jews.
This passage takes for granted the continued future existence of Jews
as a distinct community even as gentile whites decline in numbers and
influence.
In the same passage, Prof. Raab continues by noting that, "We [Jews]
have been nourishing the American climate of opposition to bigotry for
about half a century. That climate has not yet been perfected, but the
heterogeneous nature of our population tends to make it
irreversible..." – just as it tends to make the ultimate displacement
of European culture also irreversible.
Prof. MacDonald traces the development of this diversity strategy to
several sources. It is widely recognized that the German-Jewish
immigrant Franz Boas (1858-1942) almost single-handedly established
the current contours of anthropology, ridding it of all biological
explanations for differences in human culture or behavior. Prof.
MacDonald reports that he and his followers – with the notable
exceptions of Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict – were all Jews with
strong Jewish identities: "Jewish identification and the pursuit of
perceived Jewish interests, particularly in advocating an ideology of
cultural pluralism as a model for Western societies, has been the
'invisible subject' of American anthropology."
By 1915, Boas and his students controlled the American Anthropological
Association and by 1926 they headed every major American university
anthropology department. From this position of dominance they promoted
the idea that race and biology are trivial matters, and that
environment counts for everything. They completely recast anthropology
so as to provide intellectual support for open immigration,
integration, and miscegenation. They also laid the foundation for the
idea that because all races have the same potential, the failures of
non-whites must be blamed exclusively on white oppression. The
ultimate conclusion of Boasian anthropology was that since environment
accounts for all human differences, every inequality in achievement
can be eliminated by changing the environment. This has been the
justification for enormous and wasteful government intervention
programs.
The entire "civil rights" movement can be seen as a natural
consequence of the triumph of Boasian thinking. Since all races were
equivalent, separation was immoral. The color line also sharpened
white self-consciousness in ways that might make whites more aware of
Jewish parochialism. Thus it was, according to Prof. MacDonald, that
Jews almost single-handedly launched the desegregation movement.
Without the leadership of Jews, the NAACP might never have been
established, and until 1975 every one of its presidents was a Jew.
Prof. MacDonald reports that in 1917, when the black separatist Marcus
Garvey visited NAACP headquarters, he saw so many white faces that he
stormed out, complaining that it was a white organization.
Prof. MacDonald concludes that the efforts of Jews were crucial to the
"civil rights" transformation of America. He quotes a lawyer for the
American Jewish Congress who claims that "many of these [civil rights]
laws were actually written in the offices of Jewish agencies by Jewish
staff people, introduced by Jewish legislators and pressured into
being by Jewish voters."
While the Boas school was promoting integration and racial
equivalence, it was also critical of, in Prof. MacDonald's words,
"American culture as overly homogeneous, hypocritical, emotionally and
aesthetically repressive (especially with regard to sexuality).
Central to this program was creating ethnographies of idyllic [Third-
World] cultures that were free of the negatively perceived traits that
were attributed to Western culture."
The role of the anthropologist became one of criticizing everything
about Western society while glorifying everything primitive. Prof.
MacDonald notes that Boasian portrayals of non-Western peoples
deliberately ignored barbarism and cruelty or simply attributed it to
contamination from the West. He sees this as a deliberate attempt to
undermine the confidence of Western societies and to make them
permeable to Third World influences and people. Today, this view is
enshrined in the dogma that America must remain open to immigration
because immigrants bring spirit and energy that natives somehow lack.
Authoritarian Personalities
In order to open European-derived societies to the immigration that
would transform them, it was necessary to discredit racial solidarity
and commitment to tradition. Prof. MacDonald argues that this was the
basic purpose of a group of intellectuals known as the Frankfurt
School. What is properly known as the Institute of Social Research was
founded in Frankfurt, Germany, during the Weimar period by a Jewish
millionaire but was closed down by the Nazis shortly after they took
power. Most of its staff emigrated to the United States and the
institute reconstituted itself at UC Berkeley. The organization was
headed by Max Horkheimer, and its most influential members were T.W.
Adorno, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse, all of whom had strong
Jewish identities. Horkheimer made no secret of the partisan nature of
the institute's activities: "Research would be able here to transform
itself directly into propaganda," he wrote. (Italics in the original.)
Prof. MacDonald devotes many pages to an analysis of The Authoritarian
Personality, which was written by Adorno and appeared in 1950. It was
part of a series called Studies in Prejudice, produced by the
Frankfurt school, which included titles like Anti-Semitism and
Emotional Disorder. The Authoritarian Personality was particularly
influential because, according to Prof. MacDonald, the American Jewish
Committee heavily funded its promotion and because Jewish academics
took up its message so enthusiastically.
The book's purpose is to make every group affiliation sound as if it
were a sign of mental disorder. Everything from patriotism to religion
to family – and race – loyalty are signs of a dangerous and defective
"authoritarian personality." Because drawing distinctions between
different groups is illegitimate, all group loyalties – even close
family ties! – are "prejudice." As Christopher Lasch has written, the
book leads to the conclusion that prejudice "could be eradicated only
by subjecting the American people to what amounted to collective
psychotherapy – by treating them as inmates of an insane asylum."
But according to Prof. MacDonald it is precisely the kind of group
loyalty, respect for tradition, and consciousness of differences
central to Jewish identity that Horkheimer and Adorno described as
mental illness in gentiles. These writers adopted what eventually
became a favorite Soviet tactic against dissidents: Anyone whose
political views were different from theirs was insane. As Prof.
MacDonald explains, the Frankfurt school never criticized or even
described Jewish group identity – only that of gentiles: "behavior
that is critical to Judaism as a successful group evolutionary
strategy is conceptualized as pathological in gentiles."
For these Jewish intellectuals, anti-Semitism was also a sign of
mental illness: They concluded that Christian self-denial and
especially sexual repression caused hatred of Jews. The Frankfurt
school was enthusiastic about psycho-analysis, according to which
"Oedipal ambivalence toward the father and anal-sadistic relations in
early childhood are the anti-Semite's irrevocable inheritance."
In addition to ridiculing patriotism and racial identity, the
Frankfurt school glorified promiscuity and Bohemian poverty. Prof.
MacDonald sees the school as a seminal influence: "Certainly many of
the central attitudes of the largely successful 1960s countercultural
revolution find expression in The Authoritarian Personality, including
idealizing rebellion against parents, low-investment sexual
relationships, and scorn for upward social mobility, social status,
family pride, the Christian religion, and patriotism."
Of the interest here, however, is the movement's success in branding
ancient loyalties to nation and race as mental illnesses. Although he
came later, the French-Jewish "deconstructionist" Jacques Derrida was
in the same tradition when he wrote:
"The idea behind deconstruction is to deconstruct the workings of
strong nation-states with powerful immigration policies, to
deconstruct the rhetoric of nationalism, the politics of place, the
metaphysics of native land and native tongue... The idea is to disarm
the bombs... of identity that nation-states build to defend themselves
against the stranger, against Jews and Arabs and immigrants..."
As Prof. MacDonald puts it, "Viewed at its most abstract level, a
fundamental agenda is thus to influence the European-derived peoples
of the United States to view concern about their own demographic and
cultural eclipse as irrational and as an indication of
psychopathology." Needless to say, this project has been successful;
anyone opposed to the displacement of whites is routinely treated as a
mentally unhinged "hate-monger," and whenever whites defend their
group interests they are described as psychologically inadequate. The
irony has not escaped Prof. MacDonald: "The ideology that
ethnocentrism was a form of psychopathology was promulgated by a group
that over its long history had arguably been the most ethnocentric
group among all the cultures of the world."
Immigration
Prof. MacDonald argues that it is entirely natural for Jews to promote
open immigration. It brings about the "diversity" Jews find comforting
and it keeps America open to persecuted co-religionists throughout the
world. He says Jews are the only group that has always fought for mass
immigration; a few European ethnic organizations have made sporadic
efforts to make it easier for their own people to come, but only Jews
have consistently promoted open borders for all comers. Moreover,
whatever disagreements they may have had on other issues, Jews of
every political persuasion have favored high immigration.
This, too, goes back many years, and Prof. MacDonald traces in
considerable detail the sustained Jewish pro-immigration effort.
Israel Zangwill, author of the eponymous 1908 play The Melting Pot,
was of the view that "there is only one way to World Peace, and that
is the absolute abolition of passports, visas, frontiers, custom
houses..." He was nevertheless an ardent Zionist and disapproved of
Jewish intermarriage.
Although the statue of liberty, properly known as Liberty Enlightening
the World, was a gift to the United States from France as a tribute to
American political traditions, the sonnet by the Jewish Emma Lazarus
helped change it into a symbol of immigration. Affixed to the base of
the statue several decades after its construction, the poem welcomes
to America "huddled masses yearning to breath free/The wretched refuse
of your teeming shore."
Prof. MacDonald has discovered that implausible arguments about
diversity being a quintessentially American strength have been made by
Jews for a long time. He reports that in 1948 the American Jewish
Committee was urging Congress to believe that "Americanism is the
spirit behind the welcome that America has traditionally extended to
people of all races, all religions, all nationalities." Of course,
there had never been such a tradition. In 1952, the American Jewish
Congress argued in hearings on immigration that "our national
experience has confirmed beyond a doubt that our very strength lies in
the diversity of our peoples." This, too, was at a time when U.S.
immigration law was still explicitly designed to maintain a white
majority.
It is often said that when the old immigration policy was scrapped in
1965, scarcely anyone knew, and no one predicted, that the new law
would change the racial makeup of the country. Prof. MacDonald
disputes this, arguing that this had been the objective of Jewish
groups from the beginning.
Prof. MacDonald finds that Jews have been the foremost advocates of
immigration in England, France, and Canada, and that Jewish groups
were the most vocal opponents of independence for Quebec. Australian
Jews led the effort to dismantle the "white Australia" policy, one
reason for which was cited in an editorial in the Australian Jewish
Democrat: "The strengthening of multi-cultural or diverse Australia is
also our most effective insurance policy against anti-Semitism. The
day Australia has a Chinese Australian Governor General I would feel
more confident of my freedom to live as a Jewish Australian." Like
Earl Raab writing about the United States, this Australian Jew is
prepared to sacrifice the traditional culture, people, and identity of
Australia to specifically Jewish interests. It would not be surprising
if such an openly expressed objective did not have the opposite effect
from the intended, and increase anti-Jewish sentiment.
Jews and the Left
It is well known that Jews have been traditionally associated with the
left, and Prof. MacDonald investigates this connection in some detail.
Historically it was understandable that Jews should support movements
that advocated overthrowing the existing order. After emancipation,
Jews met resistance from gentile elites who did not want to lose
ground to competitors, and outsiders easily become revolutionaries.
However, in Prof. MacDonald's view, Jewish commitment to leftist
causes has often been motivated by the hope that communism,
especially, would be a tool for combating anti-Semitism, and by
expectation that universalist social solutions would be yet another
way to dissolve gentile loyalties that might exclude Jews. The appeal
of univeralist ideologies is tied to the implicit understanding that
Jewish particularism will be exempt: "At the extreme, acceptance of a
universalist ideology by gentiles would result in gentiles not
perceiving Jews as in a different social category at all, while
nonetheless Jews would be able to maintain a strong personal identity
as Jews."
Prof. MacDonald argues that Jews had specifically Jewish reasons for
supporting the Bolshevik revolution. Czarist Russia was notorious for
its anti-Semitic policies and, during its early years, the Soviet
Union seemed to be the promised land for Jews: it ended state anti-
Semitism, tried to eradicate Christianity, opened opportunities to
individual Jews, and preached a "classless" society in which
Jewishness would presumably attract no negative attention. Moreover,
since Marxism taught that all conflict was economic rather than
ethnic, many Jews believed it heralded the end of anti-Semitism.
Prof. MacDonald emphasizes that although Jewish Communists preached
both atheism and the solidarity of the world's working people, they
took pains to preserve a distinct, secular Jewish identity. He reports
that Lenin himself (who had one Jewish grandparent) approved the
continuation of an explicitly Jewish identity under Communism, and in
1946 the Communist Party of the United States voted a resolution also
supporting Jewish peoplehood in Communist countries. Thus, although
Communism was supposed to be without borders or religion, Jews were
confident that it would make a place for their own group identity. He
writes that despite the official view that all men were to be
brothers, "very few Jews lost their Jewish identity during the entire
soviet era."
Jewish Communists sometimes betrayed remarkable particularism. Prof.
MacDonald quotes Charles Pappoport, the French Communist leader: "The
Jewish people [are] the bearer of all the great ideas of unity and
human community in history... The disappearance of the Jewish people
would signify the death of humankind, the final transformation of man
into a wild beast." This seems to attribute to Jews an elite position
incompatible with "unity and human community."
Prof. MacDonald argues that many Jews began to fall away from
Communism only after Stalin showed himself to be anti-Semitic. And
just as Jews had been the leading revolutionaries in anti-Semitic pre-
Revolutionary Russia, Jews became the leading dissidents in an anti-
Semitic Soviet Union. A similar pattern can be found in the imposed
Communist governments of Eastern Europe, which were largely dominated
by Jews. The majority of the leaders of the Polish Communist Party,
for example, spoke better Yiddish than Polish, and they too maintained
a strong Jewish identity. After the fall of Communism many stopped
being Polish and emigrated to Israel.
Prof. MacDonald writes that in Bela Kun's short-lived 1919 Communist
government of Hungary, 95 percent of the leaders were Jews, and that
at the time of the 1956 uprising Communism was so closely associated
with Jews that the rioting had almost the flavor of a pogrom. He
argues that in the United States as well, the hard core among
Communists and members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was
mainly Jewish. Here, too, a revolutionary, atheist, and universalist
world-view was fully compatible with strong identification as Jews.
Prof. MacDonald quotes from a study of American leftists:
"Many Communists, for example, state that they could never have
married a spouse who was not a leftist. When Jews were asked if they
could have married Gentiles, many hesitated, surprised by the
question, and found it difficult to answer. Upon reflection, many
concluded that they had always taken marriage to someone Jewish for
granted." Their commitment as Jews was even more fundamental and
unexamined than their commitment to the left.
Prof. MacDonald reports that many American Jews also abandoned
Communism as it became increasingly anti-Semitic. For a large number,
the Soviet Union's severing of diplomatic ties with Israel during the
1967 war was the last straw. A former SDS activist no doubt spoke for
many when he explained, "If I must choose between the Jewish cause and
a 'progressive' anti-Israel SDS, I shall choose the Jewish cause. If
barricades are erected, I will fight as a Jew." According to Prof.
MacDonald, American neoconservatism can also be described as a surface
shift in external politics that leaves the more fundamental commitment
to Jewish identity unchanged. Thus, former leftists abandoned an
ideology that had turned against Israel and refashioned American
conservatism into a different movement, the one unshakable theme of
which was support for Israel. Neoconservatives also support high
levels of immigration and were active in excluding white racial
identification from the "respectable" right.
Objections
There are many possible objections to Prof. MacDonald's thesis. The
first is that it is largely built on the assumption that Jews are
dishonest. It is always risky to assume one understands the motives of
others better than they do themselves. Jews have traditionally thought
of themselves as a benevolent presence, even as a "light unto the
nations" or a "chosen people." This is echoed today in the Jewish self
image as champions of the excluded and the oppressed. Most of the time
what passes for "social justice" has the effect of undermining the
traditions and loyalties of gentile society, but are Jews deliberately
undermining these things rather than righting what they perceive to be
wrongs?
Prof. MacDonald concedes that many Jews are sincere in their support
for liberal causes, but then escalates his indictment by arguing that
"the best deceivers are those who deceive themselves." In other words,
many Jews who are actually working for Jewish interests have first
convinced themselves otherwise. A Jew who mainly wants America to
become less white may also have convinced himself that America
benefits from a multitude of cultures. Having convinced himself he can
more effectively convince others.
Many Jews, Prof. MacDonald argues, are not even conscious of the
extent to which their Jewishness is central to their identities or
their political views. He quotes Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel on his
surprise at how passionately he embraced the Israeli side during the
1967 war: "I had not known how Jewish I was." This is an arresting
statement from a man who was thought to be perhaps the greatest Jewish
spiritual leader of his time. And whether or not it affects their
politics, Jews certainly appear to have a very vivid sense of
peoplehood. Prof. MacDonald quotes theologian Eugene Borowitz as
saying,"most Jews claim to be equipped with an interpersonal friend-or-
foe sensing device that enables them to detect the presence of another
Jew, despite heavy camouflage." Always to think in terms of "friends
or foe" is no insignificant matter.
Prof. MacDonald is therefore skeptical of Jewish disavowals: "Surface
declarations of a lack of Jewish identity may be highly misleading."
He notes that Jewish publications write about the power and influence
of American Jews in language Jews would immediately denounce as "anti-
Semitic" if used by gentiles. He agrees with Joseph Sobran, who has
said "they want to be Jews among themselves but resent being seen as
Jews by Gentiles. They want to pursue their own distinct interests
while pretending that they have no such interests..."
Prof. MacDonald argues that the success of Jewish-led intellectual
movements has been possible only because their Jewish character was
hidden. If multi-culturalism or mass immigration or The Authoritarian
Personality had been promoted by Orthodox Jews in black coats the
Jewish element would have been clear. Prof. MacDonald writes that in
fact, "the Jewish political agenda was not an aspect of the theory and
the theories themselves had no overt Jewish content. Gentile
intellectuals approaching these theories were therefore unlikely to
view them as aspects of Jewish-gentile cultural competition or as an
aspect of a specifically Jewish political agenda." Prof. MacDonald
also claims that Jews have often tried to conceal the Jewish character
of an intellectual movement by recruiting token gentiles for visible
positions as spokesmen. He writes that this tactic was so common in
the American Communist Party that gentiles often saw through it and
resigned.
But how can motives ever be completely known? Prof. MacDonald sets a
difficult test: "The best evidence that individuals have really ceased
to have a Jewish identity is if they choose a political option that
they perceive as clearly not in the interest of Jews as a group. In
the absence of a clearly perceived conflict with Jewish interests, it
remains possible that different political choices among ethnic Jews
are only differences in tactics for how best to achieve Jewish
interests."
This standard may seem unduly harsh – until it is applied to white
gentiles. Third-World immigration, affirmative action, anti-
discrimination laws, and forced integration are clearly not in the
interests of whites, yet many whites embrace them, thus demonstrating
how completely they have abandoned their racial identity.
Finally, Prof. MacDonald raises the disturbing possibility that some
Jews, because of centuries of conflict with gentiles, actively hate
gentile society and consciously wish to destroy it: "a fundamental
motivation of Jewish intellectuals involved in social criticism has
simply been hatred of the gentile-dominated power structure perceived
as anti-Semitic." He describes the 19th century German-Jewish poet
Heinrich Heine as "using his skill, reputation and popularity to
undermine the intellectual confidence of the established order."
In defense of this highly provocative view, Prof. MacDonald quotes
Benjamin Disraeli on the effects of centuries of Jewish-gentile
relations on Jews: "They may have become so odious and so hostile to
mankind as to merit for their present conduct, no matter how
occasioned, the obloquy and ill-treatment of the communities in which
they dwell and with which they are scarcely permitted to mingle."
Apart from any questions of motives, however, is the question of
numbers. Jews are a tiny minority in the United States and within that
minority there is disagreement even on matters that clearly affect
Jews. How can Jews possibly be responsible for dramatic changes in the
intellectual landscape? In Prof. MacDonald's view, the explanation
lies in the intelligence, energy, dedication, and cohesiveness of
Jews. He attributes a great deal to the average IQ of Jews – at 115, a
full standard deviation above the white gentile average – and to
"their hard work and dedication, their desire to make a mark on the
world, and their desire to rise in the world, engage in personal
promotion, and achieve public acclaim..." He also believes Jews have
worked together unfailingly on any question they consider necessary
for survival: "Intellectual activity is like any other human endeavor:
Cohesive groups outcompete individual strategies." He notes that there
has never been a time when large numbers of white Americans favored
non-white immigration; it was a cohesive, determined minority that
beat down the disorganized resistance of the majority.
Prof. MacDonald believes that because of the effectiveness of some
Jews, it was not even necessary that most Jews actively support anti-
majoritarian movements, but that Jewish activity was still decisive.
As he puts it, "Jewish-dominated intellectual movements were a
critical factor (necessary condition) for the triumph of the
intellectual left in late twentieth-century Western societies." This,
of course, can never be tested, but there can be no doubt that
American Jews have had a disproportionate effect on the American
intellect. Prof. MacDonald quotes Walter Kerr, writing in 1968, to the
effect that "what has happened since World War II is that the American
sensibility has become part Jewish, perhaps as much Jewish as it is
anything else... The literate American mind has come in some measure
to think Jewishly."
Aside from the question of whether Prof. MacDonald is right is the
further question of what difference it makes if he is right. If
correct, his thesis certainly sheds light on the rapidity with which
whites lost their will. Just a few decades ago whites were a confident
race, proud of their achievements, convinced of their fitness to
dominate the globe. Today they are a declining, apologetic people,
ashamed of their history and not sure even of their claim to lands
they have occupied for centuries. It is very rare for fundamental
concepts to be stood on their heads in the course of just a generation
or two, as has happened with thinking about race. Such speed suggests
there has been something more than natural change.
Originally appeared in American Renaissance, June 1999, issue 54
entitled 'Cherchez le Juif.' Stanley Hornbeck is the pen name of a
Washington, DC area businessman. Kevin MacDonald, The Culture of
Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-
Century Intellectual and Political Movements, Praeger (1998) $65.00,
379 pp.
http://www.amazon.com/Culture-Critique-Evolutionary-Twentieth-Century-
Intellectual/dp/0759672229/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?
ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1199578 633&sr=8-1
PDF:
www.prometheism.net/library/CultureOfCritique.pdf
Articles by Kevin Macdonald:
http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/Blog.htm
http://www.natvan.com/who-rules-america
www.iamthewitness.com
www.judicial-inc.biz
www.davidduke.com
Floodgates
The Culture of Critique reviewed by Stanley Hornbeck
In The Culture of Critique, Evolutionary Psychologist Professor Kevin
MacDonald advances a carefully researched but extremely controversial
thesis: that certain 20th century intellectual movements – largely
established and led by Jews – have changed European societies in
fundamental ways and destroyed the confidence of Western man. He
claims that these movements were designed, consciously or
unconsciously, to advance Jewish interests even though they were
presented to non-Jews as universalistic and even utopian. He concludes
that the increasing dominance of these ideas has had profound
political and social consequences that benefited Jews but caused great
harm to gentile societies. This analysis, which he makes with
considerable force, is an unusual indictment of a people generally
thought to be more sinned against than sinning.
The Culture of Critique is the final title in Prof. MacDonald's
massive, three-volume study of Jews and their role in history. The two
previous volumes are A People That Shall Dwell Alone and Separation
and its Discontents, published by Praeger in 1994 and 1998. The series
is written from a sociobiological perspective that views Judaism as a
unique survival strategy that helps Jews compete with other ethnic
groups. Prof. MacDonald, who is a psychologist at the University of
California at Long Beach, explains this perspective in the first
volume, which describes Jews as having a very powerful sense of
uniqueness that has kept them socially and genetically separate from
other peoples. The second volume traces the history of Jewish-gentile
relations, and finds the causes of anti-Semitism primarily in the
almost invariable commercial and intellectual dominance of gentile
societies by Jews and in their refusal to assimilate. The Culture of
Critique brings his analysis into the present century, with an account
of the Jewish role in the radical critique of traditional culture.
The intellectual movements Prof. MacDonald discusses in this volume
are Marxism, Freudian psychoanalysis, the Frankfurt school of
sociology, and Boasian anthropology. Perhaps most relevant from a
racial perspective, he also traces the role of Jews in promoting multi-
culturalism and Third World immigration. Throughout his analysis Prof.
MacDonald reiterates his view that Jews have promoted these movements
as Jews and in the interests of Jews, though they have often tried to
give the impression that they had no distinctive interests of their
own. Therefore Prof. MacDonald's most profound charge against Jews is
not ethnocentrism but dishonesty – that while claiming to be working
for the good of mankind they have often worked for their own good and
to the detriment of others. While attempting to promote the
brotherhood of man by dissolving the ethnic identification of
gentiles, Jews have maintained precisely the kind of intense group
solidarity they decry as immoral in others.
Celebrating Diversity
Prof. MacDonald claims that one of the most consistent ways in which
Jews have advanced their interests has been to promote pluralism and
diversity – but only for others. Ever since the 19th century, they
have led movements that tried to discredit the traditional foundations
of gentile society: patriotism, racial loyalty, the Christian basis
for morality, social homogeneity, and sexual restraint. At the same
time, within their own communities, and with regard to the state of
Israel, they have often supported the very institutions they attack in
gentile society.
Why is this in the interests of Jews? Because the parochial group
loyalty characteristic of Jews attracts far less attention in a
society that does not have a cohesive racial and cultural core. The
Jewish determination not to assimilate fully, which accounts for their
survival as a people for thousands for years – even without a country
– has invariably attracted unpleasant and even murderous scrutiny in
nations with well -defined national identities. In Prof. MacDonald's
view it is therefore in the interest of Jews to dilute and weaken the
identity of any people among whom they live. Jewish identity can
flower in safety only when gentile identity is weak.
Prof. MacDonald quotes a remarkable passage from Charles Silberman:
"American Jews are committed to cultural tolerance because of their
belief – one firmly rooted in history – that Jews are safe only in a
society acceptant of a wide range of attitudes and behaviors, as well
as a diversity of religious and ethnic groups. It is this belief, for
example, not approval of homosexuality, that leads an overwhelming
majority of American Jews to endorse 'gay rights' and to take a
liberal stance on most other so-called 'social' issues."
He is saying, in effect, that when Jews make the diversity-is-our-
strength argument it is in support of their real goal of diluting a
society's homogeneity so that Jews will feel safe. They are couching a
Jewish agenda in terms they think gentiles will accept. Likewise, as
the second part of the Silberman quotation suggests, Jews may support
deviant movements, not because they think it is good for the country
but because it is good for the Jews.
Prof. Silberman also provides an illuminating quote from a Jewish
economist who thought that republicans had more sensible economic
policies but who voted for the Democratic presidential candidate
anyway. His reason? "I'd rather live in a country governed by the
faces I saw at the Democratic convention than those I saw at the
Republican convention." This man apparently distrusts white gentiles
and voted for a racially mixed party even if its economic policies
were wrong. What is good for Jews appears to come before what is good
for the country.
Earl Raab, former president of heavily Jewish Brandeis University
makes the diversity argument in a slightly different way. Expressing
his satisfaction with the prediction that by the middle of the next
century whites will become a minority, he writes, "We have tipped
beyond the point where a Nazi-Aryan party will be able to prevail in
this country." He is apparently prepared to displace the people and
culture of the founding stock in order to prevent the theoretical rise
of an anti-Jewish regime. Prof. Raab appears to see whites mainly as
potential Nazis, and is willing to sacrifice their culture and
national continuity in order to defuse an imagined threat to Jews.
This passage takes for granted the continued future existence of Jews
as a distinct community even as gentile whites decline in numbers and
influence.
In the same passage, Prof. Raab continues by noting that, "We [Jews]
have been nourishing the American climate of opposition to bigotry for
about half a century. That climate has not yet been perfected, but the
heterogeneous nature of our population tends to make it
irreversible..." – just as it tends to make the ultimate displacement
of European culture also irreversible.
Prof. MacDonald traces the development of this diversity strategy to
several sources. It is widely recognized that the German-Jewish
immigrant Franz Boas (1858-1942) almost single-handedly established
the current contours of anthropology, ridding it of all biological
explanations for differences in human culture or behavior. Prof.
MacDonald reports that he and his followers – with the notable
exceptions of Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict – were all Jews with
strong Jewish identities: "Jewish identification and the pursuit of
perceived Jewish interests, particularly in advocating an ideology of
cultural pluralism as a model for Western societies, has been the
'invisible subject' of American anthropology."
By 1915, Boas and his students controlled the American Anthropological
Association and by 1926 they headed every major American university
anthropology department. From this position of dominance they promoted
the idea that race and biology are trivial matters, and that
environment counts for everything. They completely recast anthropology
so as to provide intellectual support for open immigration,
integration, and miscegenation. They also laid the foundation for the
idea that because all races have the same potential, the failures of
non-whites must be blamed exclusively on white oppression. The
ultimate conclusion of Boasian anthropology was that since environment
accounts for all human differences, every inequality in achievement
can be eliminated by changing the environment. This has been the
justification for enormous and wasteful government intervention
programs.
The entire "civil rights" movement can be seen as a natural
consequence of the triumph of Boasian thinking. Since all races were
equivalent, separation was immoral. The color line also sharpened
white self-consciousness in ways that might make whites more aware of
Jewish parochialism. Thus it was, according to Prof. MacDonald, that
Jews almost single-handedly launched the desegregation movement.
Without the leadership of Jews, the NAACP might never have been
established, and until 1975 every one of its presidents was a Jew.
Prof. MacDonald reports that in 1917, when the black separatist Marcus
Garvey visited NAACP headquarters, he saw so many white faces that he
stormed out, complaining that it was a white organization.
Prof. MacDonald concludes that the efforts of Jews were crucial to the
"civil rights" transformation of America. He quotes a lawyer for the
American Jewish Congress who claims that "many of these [civil rights]
laws were actually written in the offices of Jewish agencies by Jewish
staff people, introduced by Jewish legislators and pressured into
being by Jewish voters."
While the Boas school was promoting integration and racial
equivalence, it was also critical of, in Prof. MacDonald's words,
"American culture as overly homogeneous, hypocritical, emotionally and
aesthetically repressive (especially with regard to sexuality).
Central to this program was creating ethnographies of idyllic [Third-
World] cultures that were free of the negatively perceived traits that
were attributed to Western culture."
The role of the anthropologist became one of criticizing everything
about Western society while glorifying everything primitive. Prof.
MacDonald notes that Boasian portrayals of non-Western peoples
deliberately ignored barbarism and cruelty or simply attributed it to
contamination from the West. He sees this as a deliberate attempt to
undermine the confidence of Western societies and to make them
permeable to Third World influences and people. Today, this view is
enshrined in the dogma that America must remain open to immigration
because immigrants bring spirit and energy that natives somehow lack.
Authoritarian Personalities
In order to open European-derived societies to the immigration that
would transform them, it was necessary to discredit racial solidarity
and commitment to tradition. Prof. MacDonald argues that this was the
basic purpose of a group of intellectuals known as the Frankfurt
School. What is properly known as the Institute of Social Research was
founded in Frankfurt, Germany, during the Weimar period by a Jewish
millionaire but was closed down by the Nazis shortly after they took
power. Most of its staff emigrated to the United States and the
institute reconstituted itself at UC Berkeley. The organization was
headed by Max Horkheimer, and its most influential members were T.W.
Adorno, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse, all of whom had strong
Jewish identities. Horkheimer made no secret of the partisan nature of
the institute's activities: "Research would be able here to transform
itself directly into propaganda," he wrote. (Italics in the original.)
Prof. MacDonald devotes many pages to an analysis of The Authoritarian
Personality, which was written by Adorno and appeared in 1950. It was
part of a series called Studies in Prejudice, produced by the
Frankfurt school, which included titles like Anti-Semitism and
Emotional Disorder. The Authoritarian Personality was particularly
influential because, according to Prof. MacDonald, the American Jewish
Committee heavily funded its promotion and because Jewish academics
took up its message so enthusiastically.
The book's purpose is to make every group affiliation sound as if it
were a sign of mental disorder. Everything from patriotism to religion
to family – and race – loyalty are signs of a dangerous and defective
"authoritarian personality." Because drawing distinctions between
different groups is illegitimate, all group loyalties – even close
family ties! – are "prejudice." As Christopher Lasch has written, the
book leads to the conclusion that prejudice "could be eradicated only
by subjecting the American people to what amounted to collective
psychotherapy – by treating them as inmates of an insane asylum."
But according to Prof. MacDonald it is precisely the kind of group
loyalty, respect for tradition, and consciousness of differences
central to Jewish identity that Horkheimer and Adorno described as
mental illness in gentiles. These writers adopted what eventually
became a favorite Soviet tactic against dissidents: Anyone whose
political views were different from theirs was insane. As Prof.
MacDonald explains, the Frankfurt school never criticized or even
described Jewish group identity – only that of gentiles: "behavior
that is critical to Judaism as a successful group evolutionary
strategy is conceptualized as pathological in gentiles."
For these Jewish intellectuals, anti-Semitism was also a sign of
mental illness: They concluded that Christian self-denial and
especially sexual repression caused hatred of Jews. The Frankfurt
school was enthusiastic about psycho-analysis, according to which
"Oedipal ambivalence toward the father and anal-sadistic relations in
early childhood are the anti-Semite's irrevocable inheritance."
In addition to ridiculing patriotism and racial identity, the
Frankfurt school glorified promiscuity and Bohemian poverty. Prof.
MacDonald sees the school as a seminal influence: "Certainly many of
the central attitudes of the largely successful 1960s countercultural
revolution find expression in The Authoritarian Personality, including
idealizing rebellion against parents, low-investment sexual
relationships, and scorn for upward social mobility, social status,
family pride, the Christian religion, and patriotism."
Of the interest here, however, is the movement's success in branding
ancient loyalties to nation and race as mental illnesses. Although he
came later, the French-Jewish "deconstructionist" Jacques Derrida was
in the same tradition when he wrote:
"The idea behind deconstruction is to deconstruct the workings of
strong nation-states with powerful immigration policies, to
deconstruct the rhetoric of nationalism, the politics of place, the
metaphysics of native land and native tongue... The idea is to disarm
the bombs... of identity that nation-states build to defend themselves
against the stranger, against Jews and Arabs and immigrants..."
As Prof. MacDonald puts it, "Viewed at its most abstract level, a
fundamental agenda is thus to influence the European-derived peoples
of the United States to view concern about their own demographic and
cultural eclipse as irrational and as an indication of
psychopathology." Needless to say, this project has been successful;
anyone opposed to the displacement of whites is routinely treated as a
mentally unhinged "hate-monger," and whenever whites defend their
group interests they are described as psychologically inadequate. The
irony has not escaped Prof. MacDonald: "The ideology that
ethnocentrism was a form of psychopathology was promulgated by a group
that over its long history had arguably been the most ethnocentric
group among all the cultures of the world."
Immigration
Prof. MacDonald argues that it is entirely natural for Jews to promote
open immigration. It brings about the "diversity" Jews find comforting
and it keeps America open to persecuted co-religionists throughout the
world. He says Jews are the only group that has always fought for mass
immigration; a few European ethnic organizations have made sporadic
efforts to make it easier for their own people to come, but only Jews
have consistently promoted open borders for all comers. Moreover,
whatever disagreements they may have had on other issues, Jews of
every political persuasion have favored high immigration.
This, too, goes back many years, and Prof. MacDonald traces in
considerable detail the sustained Jewish pro-immigration effort.
Israel Zangwill, author of the eponymous 1908 play The Melting Pot,
was of the view that "there is only one way to World Peace, and that
is the absolute abolition of passports, visas, frontiers, custom
houses..." He was nevertheless an ardent Zionist and disapproved of
Jewish intermarriage.
Although the statue of liberty, properly known as Liberty Enlightening
the World, was a gift to the United States from France as a tribute to
American political traditions, the sonnet by the Jewish Emma Lazarus
helped change it into a symbol of immigration. Affixed to the base of
the statue several decades after its construction, the poem welcomes
to America "huddled masses yearning to breath free/The wretched refuse
of your teeming shore."
Prof. MacDonald has discovered that implausible arguments about
diversity being a quintessentially American strength have been made by
Jews for a long time. He reports that in 1948 the American Jewish
Committee was urging Congress to believe that "Americanism is the
spirit behind the welcome that America has traditionally extended to
people of all races, all religions, all nationalities." Of course,
there had never been such a tradition. In 1952, the American Jewish
Congress argued in hearings on immigration that "our national
experience has confirmed beyond a doubt that our very strength lies in
the diversity of our peoples." This, too, was at a time when U.S.
immigration law was still explicitly designed to maintain a white
majority.
It is often said that when the old immigration policy was scrapped in
1965, scarcely anyone knew, and no one predicted, that the new law
would change the racial makeup of the country. Prof. MacDonald
disputes this, arguing that this had been the objective of Jewish
groups from the beginning.
Prof. MacDonald finds that Jews have been the foremost advocates of
immigration in England, France, and Canada, and that Jewish groups
were the most vocal opponents of independence for Quebec. Australian
Jews led the effort to dismantle the "white Australia" policy, one
reason for which was cited in an editorial in the Australian Jewish
Democrat: "The strengthening of multi-cultural or diverse Australia is
also our most effective insurance policy against anti-Semitism. The
day Australia has a Chinese Australian Governor General I would feel
more confident of my freedom to live as a Jewish Australian." Like
Earl Raab writing about the United States, this Australian Jew is
prepared to sacrifice the traditional culture, people, and identity of
Australia to specifically Jewish interests. It would not be surprising
if such an openly expressed objective did not have the opposite effect
from the intended, and increase anti-Jewish sentiment.
Jews and the Left
It is well known that Jews have been traditionally associated with the
left, and Prof. MacDonald investigates this connection in some detail.
Historically it was understandable that Jews should support movements
that advocated overthrowing the existing order. After emancipation,
Jews met resistance from gentile elites who did not want to lose
ground to competitors, and outsiders easily become revolutionaries.
However, in Prof. MacDonald's view, Jewish commitment to leftist
causes has often been motivated by the hope that communism,
especially, would be a tool for combating anti-Semitism, and by
expectation that universalist social solutions would be yet another
way to dissolve gentile loyalties that might exclude Jews. The appeal
of univeralist ideologies is tied to the implicit understanding that
Jewish particularism will be exempt: "At the extreme, acceptance of a
universalist ideology by gentiles would result in gentiles not
perceiving Jews as in a different social category at all, while
nonetheless Jews would be able to maintain a strong personal identity
as Jews."
Prof. MacDonald argues that Jews had specifically Jewish reasons for
supporting the Bolshevik revolution. Czarist Russia was notorious for
its anti-Semitic policies and, during its early years, the Soviet
Union seemed to be the promised land for Jews: it ended state anti-
Semitism, tried to eradicate Christianity, opened opportunities to
individual Jews, and preached a "classless" society in which
Jewishness would presumably attract no negative attention. Moreover,
since Marxism taught that all conflict was economic rather than
ethnic, many Jews believed it heralded the end of anti-Semitism.
Prof. MacDonald emphasizes that although Jewish Communists preached
both atheism and the solidarity of the world's working people, they
took pains to preserve a distinct, secular Jewish identity. He reports
that Lenin himself (who had one Jewish grandparent) approved the
continuation of an explicitly Jewish identity under Communism, and in
1946 the Communist Party of the United States voted a resolution also
supporting Jewish peoplehood in Communist countries. Thus, although
Communism was supposed to be without borders or religion, Jews were
confident that it would make a place for their own group identity. He
writes that despite the official view that all men were to be
brothers, "very few Jews lost their Jewish identity during the entire
soviet era."
Jewish Communists sometimes betrayed remarkable particularism. Prof.
MacDonald quotes Charles Pappoport, the French Communist leader: "The
Jewish people [are] the bearer of all the great ideas of unity and
human community in history... The disappearance of the Jewish people
would signify the death of humankind, the final transformation of man
into a wild beast." This seems to attribute to Jews an elite position
incompatible with "unity and human community."
Prof. MacDonald argues that many Jews began to fall away from
Communism only after Stalin showed himself to be anti-Semitic. And
just as Jews had been the leading revolutionaries in anti-Semitic pre-
Revolutionary Russia, Jews became the leading dissidents in an anti-
Semitic Soviet Union. A similar pattern can be found in the imposed
Communist governments of Eastern Europe, which were largely dominated
by Jews. The majority of the leaders of the Polish Communist Party,
for example, spoke better Yiddish than Polish, and they too maintained
a strong Jewish identity. After the fall of Communism many stopped
being Polish and emigrated to Israel.
Prof. MacDonald writes that in Bela Kun's short-lived 1919 Communist
government of Hungary, 95 percent of the leaders were Jews, and that
at the time of the 1956 uprising Communism was so closely associated
with Jews that the rioting had almost the flavor of a pogrom. He
argues that in the United States as well, the hard core among
Communists and members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was
mainly Jewish. Here, too, a revolutionary, atheist, and universalist
world-view was fully compatible with strong identification as Jews.
Prof. MacDonald quotes from a study of American leftists:
"Many Communists, for example, state that they could never have
married a spouse who was not a leftist. When Jews were asked if they
could have married Gentiles, many hesitated, surprised by the
question, and found it difficult to answer. Upon reflection, many
concluded that they had always taken marriage to someone Jewish for
granted." Their commitment as Jews was even more fundamental and
unexamined than their commitment to the left.
Prof. MacDonald reports that many American Jews also abandoned
Communism as it became increasingly anti-Semitic. For a large number,
the Soviet Union's severing of diplomatic ties with Israel during the
1967 war was the last straw. A former SDS activist no doubt spoke for
many when he explained, "If I must choose between the Jewish cause and
a 'progressive' anti-Israel SDS, I shall choose the Jewish cause. If
barricades are erected, I will fight as a Jew." According to Prof.
MacDonald, American neoconservatism can also be described as a surface
shift in external politics that leaves the more fundamental commitment
to Jewish identity unchanged. Thus, former leftists abandoned an
ideology that had turned against Israel and refashioned American
conservatism into a different movement, the one unshakable theme of
which was support for Israel. Neoconservatives also support high
levels of immigration and were active in excluding white racial
identification from the "respectable" right.
Objections
There are many possible objections to Prof. MacDonald's thesis. The
first is that it is largely built on the assumption that Jews are
dishonest. It is always risky to assume one understands the motives of
others better than they do themselves. Jews have traditionally thought
of themselves as a benevolent presence, even as a "light unto the
nations" or a "chosen people." This is echoed today in the Jewish self
image as champions of the excluded and the oppressed. Most of the time
what passes for "social justice" has the effect of undermining the
traditions and loyalties of gentile society, but are Jews deliberately
undermining these things rather than righting what they perceive to be
wrongs?
Prof. MacDonald concedes that many Jews are sincere in their support
for liberal causes, but then escalates his indictment by arguing that
"the best deceivers are those who deceive themselves." In other words,
many Jews who are actually working for Jewish interests have first
convinced themselves otherwise. A Jew who mainly wants America to
become less white may also have convinced himself that America
benefits from a multitude of cultures. Having convinced himself he can
more effectively convince others.
Many Jews, Prof. MacDonald argues, are not even conscious of the
extent to which their Jewishness is central to their identities or
their political views. He quotes Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel on his
surprise at how passionately he embraced the Israeli side during the
1967 war: "I had not known how Jewish I was." This is an arresting
statement from a man who was thought to be perhaps the greatest Jewish
spiritual leader of his time. And whether or not it affects their
politics, Jews certainly appear to have a very vivid sense of
peoplehood. Prof. MacDonald quotes theologian Eugene Borowitz as
saying,"most Jews claim to be equipped with an interpersonal friend-or-
foe sensing device that enables them to detect the presence of another
Jew, despite heavy camouflage." Always to think in terms of "friends
or foe" is no insignificant matter.
Prof. MacDonald is therefore skeptical of Jewish disavowals: "Surface
declarations of a lack of Jewish identity may be highly misleading."
He notes that Jewish publications write about the power and influence
of American Jews in language Jews would immediately denounce as "anti-
Semitic" if used by gentiles. He agrees with Joseph Sobran, who has
said "they want to be Jews among themselves but resent being seen as
Jews by Gentiles. They want to pursue their own distinct interests
while pretending that they have no such interests..."
Prof. MacDonald argues that the success of Jewish-led intellectual
movements has been possible only because their Jewish character was
hidden. If multi-culturalism or mass immigration or The Authoritarian
Personality had been promoted by Orthodox Jews in black coats the
Jewish element would have been clear. Prof. MacDonald writes that in
fact, "the Jewish political agenda was not an aspect of the theory and
the theories themselves had no overt Jewish content. Gentile
intellectuals approaching these theories were therefore unlikely to
view them as aspects of Jewish-gentile cultural competition or as an
aspect of a specifically Jewish political agenda." Prof. MacDonald
also claims that Jews have often tried to conceal the Jewish character
of an intellectual movement by recruiting token gentiles for visible
positions as spokesmen. He writes that this tactic was so common in
the American Communist Party that gentiles often saw through it and
resigned.
But how can motives ever be completely known? Prof. MacDonald sets a
difficult test: "The best evidence that individuals have really ceased
to have a Jewish identity is if they choose a political option that
they perceive as clearly not in the interest of Jews as a group. In
the absence of a clearly perceived conflict with Jewish interests, it
remains possible that different political choices among ethnic Jews
are only differences in tactics for how best to achieve Jewish
interests."
This standard may seem unduly harsh – until it is applied to white
gentiles. Third-World immigration, affirmative action, anti-
discrimination laws, and forced integration are clearly not in the
interests of whites, yet many whites embrace them, thus demonstrating
how completely they have abandoned their racial identity.
Finally, Prof. MacDonald raises the disturbing possibility that some
Jews, because of centuries of conflict with gentiles, actively hate
gentile society and consciously wish to destroy it: "a fundamental
motivation of Jewish intellectuals involved in social criticism has
simply been hatred of the gentile-dominated power structure perceived
as anti-Semitic." He describes the 19th century German-Jewish poet
Heinrich Heine as "using his skill, reputation and popularity to
undermine the intellectual confidence of the established order."
In defense of this highly provocative view, Prof. MacDonald quotes
Benjamin Disraeli on the effects of centuries of Jewish-gentile
relations on Jews: "They may have become so odious and so hostile to
mankind as to merit for their present conduct, no matter how
occasioned, the obloquy and ill-treatment of the communities in which
they dwell and with which they are scarcely permitted to mingle."
Apart from any questions of motives, however, is the question of
numbers. Jews are a tiny minority in the United States and within that
minority there is disagreement even on matters that clearly affect
Jews. How can Jews possibly be responsible for dramatic changes in the
intellectual landscape? In Prof. MacDonald's view, the explanation
lies in the intelligence, energy, dedication, and cohesiveness of
Jews. He attributes a great deal to the average IQ of Jews – at 115, a
full standard deviation above the white gentile average – and to
"their hard work and dedication, their desire to make a mark on the
world, and their desire to rise in the world, engage in personal
promotion, and achieve public acclaim..." He also believes Jews have
worked together unfailingly on any question they consider necessary
for survival: "Intellectual activity is like any other human endeavor:
Cohesive groups outcompete individual strategies." He notes that there
has never been a time when large numbers of white Americans favored
non-white immigration; it was a cohesive, determined minority that
beat down the disorganized resistance of the majority.
Prof. MacDonald believes that because of the effectiveness of some
Jews, it was not even necessary that most Jews actively support anti-
majoritarian movements, but that Jewish activity was still decisive.
As he puts it, "Jewish-dominated intellectual movements were a
critical factor (necessary condition) for the triumph of the
intellectual left in late twentieth-century Western societies." This,
of course, can never be tested, but there can be no doubt that
American Jews have had a disproportionate effect on the American
intellect. Prof. MacDonald quotes Walter Kerr, writing in 1968, to the
effect that "what has happened since World War II is that the American
sensibility has become part Jewish, perhaps as much Jewish as it is
anything else... The literate American mind has come in some measure
to think Jewishly."
Aside from the question of whether Prof. MacDonald is right is the
further question of what difference it makes if he is right. If
correct, his thesis certainly sheds light on the rapidity with which
whites lost their will. Just a few decades ago whites were a confident
race, proud of their achievements, convinced of their fitness to
dominate the globe. Today they are a declining, apologetic people,
ashamed of their history and not sure even of their claim to lands
they have occupied for centuries. It is very rare for fundamental
concepts to be stood on their heads in the course of just a generation
or two, as has happened with thinking about race. Such speed suggests
there has been something more than natural change.
Originally appeared in American Renaissance, June 1999, issue 54
entitled 'Cherchez le Juif.' Stanley Hornbeck is the pen name of a
Washington, DC area businessman. Kevin MacDonald, The Culture of
Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-
Century Intellectual and Political Movements, Praeger (1998) $65.00,
379 pp.
http://www.amazon.com/Culture-Critique-Evolutionary-Twentieth-Century-
Intellectual/dp/0759672229/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?
ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1199578 633&sr=8-1
PDF:
www.prometheism.net/library/CultureOfCritique.pdf
Articles by Kevin Macdonald:
http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/Blog.htm
http://www.natvan.com/who-rules-america
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