Kevin MacDonald

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MacDonald at the American Freedom Party conference of 2013
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Interviewer: To me there are no good Jews, nor can they be good … I think ultimately deep down they are badly motivated, and that they can never be trusted. And from my point of view there are no good ones.
Kevin MacDonald: That's probably a good rule of thumb.
[1]

Kevin B. MacDonald (1944–) is a retired professor of psychology, and an evolutionary psychologist. He is the editor of Occidental Observer,[2][3] a "magazine" that covers "white identity, white interests, and the culture of the West"[2] and which the ADL calls "a primary voice for anti-Semitism from far-right intellectuals".[4] MacDonald is the editor of The Occidental Quarterly,Wikipedia a "journal devoted to the ethnic, racial, and cultural heritage that forms the foundation of Western Civilization"[5] and which has been widely recognized as white nationalist.[6] He is also a frequent contributor to VDARE.[7]

Earlier a Catholic, during his college days he was a peacenik, a flower child, and opposed the Vietnam War. He eventually felt that there were way too many Jews in the anti-war movement and that they tended to take over grassroots movements and make white members tokens. This is where his descent into antisemitism began.[8]

Since then, he became the director of the American Third Position Party (or "American Freedom Party"),[9] a White nationalist party.[10]

He's noted for using pseudo-scientific evolutionary psychology in his articles and books to advance racialist views of Jews. He claims that Judaism is a "group evolutionary strategy" that evolved as a result of the Jewish disapora.[11] These theories have been poorly received by the scientific community and anyone with a brain. In contrast, they are beloved among white supremacists.

He also believes in other HBD ideas, such as Edward Dutton's theory that ethnic Finnish people have evolved to be genetically highly monogamous, cooperative, and trusting and that this is because, over generations, the harsh, cold environment of Finland selected for such traits (wouldn't that also be the case for other cold-weather countries like Sweden and Norway?).

Professional career[edit]

MacDonald joined the Department of Psychology at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) in 1985. He became a full professor in 1995 and retired in 2014.[12]

His work prior to the 1990s focused on wolf behavior[13][14] and parent-child play.[15][16][17] The vast majority of his publications are on mainstream topics and are featured in mainstream journals.[18]

The CSULB psychology department voted to formally dissociate themselves from his work in 2008.[19] In the same year, the academic senate issued the following statement:[20][21]

While the academic senate defends Dr. Kevin MacDonald’s academic freedom and freedom of speech, as it does for all faculty, it firmly and unequivocally disassociates itself from the anti-Semitic and white ethnocentric views he has expressed.

The Culture of Critique[edit]

The best known of his books is his 1998 The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements.[22] In short: anything left of Mussolini? Blame the Jews.

Jewish behavior[edit]

He also wrote a trilogy of books explaining "Jewish behavior" as a group survival trait.[11][23][22] MacDonald claims that this causes Jews to work against the majority culture of the society they live in and, as such, suggests that Jews are parasitically trying to destroy Western Civilization.[24]

MacDonald also advances the usual claims of white supremacists and neo-Nazis: that Jews control American institutions and are trying to alter American culture for their own ends.

The trilogy has been mostly ignored by serious scholars[25] but has been criticised by the right-wing[note 1] writer Nathan Cofnas as relying on "misrepresented sources and cherry-picked facts".[26] Cofnas later observed, "MacDonald has attempted to neutralize my critique by writing long, tedious rejoinders that have succeeded in creating confusion, and led some onlookers to assume that he must have successfully defended his work because he wrote so many words."[27]

Jews control the media[edit]

See the main article on this topic: Cultural Marxism

In "Jewish Fear and Loathing of Donald Trump (5): Would Trump’s Defeat Be Blamed On Jews?", MacDonald wrote:[28]

And, as always, what’s really important in thinking about Jewish issues is to focus on media power and financial donations, as well as tracking what the major Jewish organizations are up to. All three of the major networks mentioned in the above charts are managed by Jews (CBS: Leslie Moonves; NBC: Bob Greenblatt; ABC: Ben Sherwood), and CBS (Sumner Redstone’s Viacom) and NBC (the Roberts family’s Comcast) are controlled by Jewish corporations. CNN is managed by Jeff Zucker.

Quite simply, Jews have far more power in the media than any other identifiable group. And yes, Jewish identity makes a difference in content (See Culture Of Critique, Preface to the Paperback Edition , xlvi–lvi).

He misidentified Robert GreenblattWikipedia as Jewish (presumably because of his surname) despite Greenblatt growing up Catholic,[29][30] which doesn't instill confidence. Another low-hanging fruit here: MacDonald omits Fox News, which (unfortunately) dominates cable news ratings,[31] from his list of "major networks". Rupert Murdoch is not Jewish, even as much as some really want to believe he is. MacDonald also omits the two largest TV station owners in the United States, Sinclair and Nexstar,Wikipedia which own many local news stations. Leadership in companies can change wildly over a short period of time, so the exact period we choose to consider matters.[note 2] Most of the people he listed (in 2016) simply did not hold those positions anymore as of 2020, and among them only the Roberts family retained their position as of Zucker's 2022 departure from CNN (Sumner Redstone died just four years after MacDonald wrote the above).

Assuming the remainder holds any water, Cofnas's considerations[26][27] could still apply. Take geography: most large companies (including big media companies[note 3]) are headquartered in large urban areas (one reason being ability to attract a very wide range of job applicants, especially college graduates, another of which is airport connectivity),[32] where Jewish-Americans have been concentrated around since at least the 1950s,[33][34] though probably going back to large waves of Jewish immigration from eastern Europe (see below). Several of the above-mentioned companies (Nexstar, CBS and Viacom/Paramount, NBC/NBCUniversal, ABC, and Fox News) are headquartered in New York City (highest-population city in the US[note 4]) in particular, which has a substantial Jewish population.[note 5][36][37] Also compare with the "over-representation" Cofnas refers to in relatively banal sectors like chess championships.[26][note 6]

The influence of New York City's relatively liberal-leaning media entirely predated the arrival of large waves of Jewish immigrants, even despite the relatively decentralized nature of media at that time: for example, the highly-circulated New-York Daily Tribune,Wikipedia which advocated abolishing slavery, labor unionization, and granting women the vote.[38] In Japan, which has almost no Jewish people (and certainly in turn, very few working in media),[39] major media companies are likewise centered around the country's most populous city, Tokyo; 70 percent of Japan's national TV programming comes from five Tokyo-based broadcasters.[40]:805 Other big media companies there are often based in other massive cities like Osaka.[note 7]

The confluence of MacDonald's excesses, Cofnas's chessmaster counter-example, the plain economic incentives of large companies to base themselves in cities[note 8] (especially a metropolisWikipedia or more historically, a metropole),Wikipedia and the social/historical/developmental factors that have made American cities what they are, begins to suggest something other than conspiracy. What MacDonald refers to as "Jewish identity [making] a difference in content", assuming he's even grabbed onto something here, could really be a broader urbanite culture (see urban–rural political divide;Wikipedia also bear in mind that the Jewish-American community was more conservative prior to the arrival of urban immigrant populations from eastern Europe in the late 1800s and early-mid 1900s, especially to New York City). One which, ironically enough, Donald Trump the NYC real estate developer (and Rudy Giuliani of course) was long a part of himself — more the right-wing of it as time went on (perhaps not a shock since he became hooked to Fox News for a time, and his dad was effectively a rich-guy segregationist, but that's another can of worms).

Jews use the Holocaust to promote liberal policy[edit]

See the main article on this topic: Holocaust profit controversy

In "Using the Moral Capital of the Holocaust to Promote Muslim Migration", MacDonald wrote:[41]

This is an excellent example of how the Holocaust is used to promote immigration and multiculturalism.

Not to be outdone, Newsweek published an op-ed by Eva Schloss, Anne Frank’s stepsister (Anne Frank’s stepsister: Trump ‘acting like another Hitler’). As is typical also of Jewish organizations, refugee policy is seen entirely from the perspective of what is good for Jews, with no mention of costs to European countries, including the well-known sexual depredations of Muslim men.

[…]

Again, the holocaust as moral cudgel to promote Jewish interests in immigration and refugee policy.

Notably, MacDonald doesn't offer arguments against those he quotes in this article. Instead, he just says "look, a Jew is referencing the Holocaust to advance their politics" and moves on, as if that were rebuttal enough.

Miscellaneous[edit]

Donald Trump, Jr. retweeted a tweet by Kevin MacDonald that alleged a conspiracy by Hillary Clinton to help Swiss bank UBS in return for money donated to her charity.[42][43]

During unabashed antisemite David Irving's 1996 defamation suit against Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt, Irving called a number of witnesses. Only one such witness didn't have to be subpoenaed and came freely: Kevin MacDonald.[44]

MacDonald also doubts that African American quarterback Colin Kaepernick "would be seen as viable given that QBs are supposed to be leaders & still lots of Whites on offense" and finds it hard "to see Kaepernick being the leader of a team with White linemen, etc."[45] We will let the reader decide why MacDonald thinks that a black cannot lead whites.

See also[edit]

External links[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. Considering Cofnas's fraternizing with figures like Richard Hanania, perhaps very right-wing, shall we say, and thus somewhat up MacDonald's alley. Helpfully, Cofnas doesn't appear to hinge his refutations of MacDonald on hereditarianism, though. Some of his sources and less-central arguments may need to be taken with salt.
  2. Especially since MacDonald has selected the "Big Three",Wikipedia an informal category, coined to refer to the relative influence these networks had prior to the 1990s. Yet he selects them to evaluate general news media coverage of Donald Trump in 2015—2016. Does this all tell us anything about their coverage or demographics in past decades, or for that matter, the all-time usefulness of the "Big Three" category itself?
  3. To an extent, especially media companies, because their ability to succeed will partly depend on the ability to deliver constant novelty. Basing themselves in a highly-populated area with a lot always going on is going to help.
  4. Ever since 1790![35]
  5. Once as high as 25 percent of the city's population. Today, estimates vary, but by an ethno-religious rather than strictly religious measure, about 18 percent.
  6. For the claim about chess championships, Cofnas actually cites a source likely to be very friendly to MacDonald fans: Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence, which even directly cites one of MacDonald's sexual selection ideas regarding Jews, calling it "plausible". See the Wikipedia article on List of Jewish chess players.
  7. For example, The Asahi Shimbun.Wikipedia
  8. Even assuming they weren't aware of these incentives, companies founded or operated within these cities could have had an unwitting relative advantage over competitors, including for some of the reasons given above.

References[edit]

  1. Cofnas, Nathan (2023-06-01). "Still No Evidence for a Jewish Group Evolutionary Strategy" (in en). Evolutionary Psychological Science 9 (2): 236–259. doiWikipedia:10.1007/s40806-022-00352-x. ISSN 2198-9885. 
  2. 2.0 2.1 Mission Statement Occidental Observer.
  3. Twitter bio
  4. The Occidental Observer: Online Anti-Semitism's New Intellectual Voice (January 22, 2009) Anti-Defamation League.
  5. The Occidental Quarterly Reservation Form The Occidental Quarterly (archived from October 27, 2005).
  6. White Noise by Max Blumenthal (08.31.04) The American Prospect (archived from September 18, 2006).
  7. Kevin MacDonald on VDARE.
  8. Kevin MacDonald: Kevin MacDonald is the neo-Nazi movement's favorite academic. A psychology professor at California State University, Long Beach, MacDonald published a trilogy that supposedly "proves" that Jews are genetically driven to destroy Western societies. Southern Poverty Law Center.

    A former flower child and anti-Vietnam War activist, MacDonald was born in Oshkosh, Wis., to a middle-class family with a police officer dad. He enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in the early 1960s, majoring in philosophy. An ardent peacenik in college, MacDonald abandoned Catholicism and joined the anti-war movement. … But MacDonald's anti-war experiences haunted him, and he later told New Times LA journalist Tony Ortega that he had come to realize that that was when his fixation on Jews developed. Noticing that many of his fellow activists in the 1960s were Jewish, MacDonald developed his first inkling that Jews are compelled to challenge traditional American and Western ideals. He came to the conclusion that Jews take over political and cultural movements and front them with unsuspecting, token gentiles — just the way MacDonald felt that he was treated while protesting the Vietnam War.

  9. Kevin B. MacDonald, Director (September 27, 2011) American Freedom Party (archived from April 22, 2015).
  10. Dropping Academic Veneer, Cal State Prof Starts His Own Hate Group by Heidi Beirich (January 05, 2010) Southern Poverty Law Center.
  11. 11.0 11.1 A People that Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy by Kevin B. MacDonald (1994) Praeger. ISBN 0275948692.
  12. Controversial psychology professor to retire in the fall (April 14, 2014) Daily Forty-Niner.
  13. "Induction of normal behavior in wolves with restricted rearing" by Kevin B. MacDonald & B. E. Ginsburg (1981) Behavioral and Neural Biology, 33:133–62.
  14. "Development and stability of personality characteristics in prepubertal wolves: Implications for pack organization and behavior" by Kevin B. MacDonald (1987) In: Man and Wolf, edited by Harry Frank, W. Junk. ISBN 9061936144. pp. 99–106 (1983)
  15. "Bridging the gap: Parent-child play interactions and peer interactive competence" by Kevin B. MacDonald & R. D. Parke (1987) Child Development 55:1265–1277.
  16. "Parent-child physical play: The effects of sex and age of children and parents", Sex Roles, 15, 367–78 (1986)
  17. "Parent-child physical play with rejected, neglected and popular boys" by Kevin B. MacDonald (1987) Developmental Psychology 23:705–711.
  18. Professional Résumé: Kevin B. MacDonald California State University Long Beach (archived from April 11, 2015).
  19. Psychology department to issue statement on professor's controversial literature by Andrew Smith (2/7/08) Daily 49er (archived from March 15, 2008).
  20. Academic senate disassociates itself from Professor MacDonald (October 6, 2008) Daily 49er.
  21. Statement On Dr. Kevin MacDonald’s Work (5/5/08) CSULB Academic Senate.
  22. 22.0 22.1 The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements by Kevin B. MacDonald (1998) Praeger. ISBN 0275961133.
  23. Separation and Its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism by Kevin B. MacDonald (1998) Praeger. ISBN 0275948706.
  24. California State University, Long Beach Psychology Professor Kevin MacDonald Publishes Anti-Semitic Books by Heidi Beirich (April 22, 2007) Southern Poverty Law Center.
  25. Kevin MacDonald and the Elevation of Anti-Semitic Pseudoscience: Why are respectable journals publishing discussions of what has long been dismissed as bigoted psychological research? by Michael Schulson (06.27.2018) Undark Magazine.
  26. 26.0 26.1 26.2 Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy: A Critical Analysis of Kevin MacDonald’s Theory by Nathan Cofnas (2018) Human Nature 29:134-156. doi:10.1007/s12110-018-9310-x.
  27. 27.0 27.1 Is Kevin MacDonald’s Theory of Judaism “Plausible”? A Response to Dutton (2018) by Nathan Cofnas (2019) Evolutionary Psychological Science 5:143-150. doi:10.1017/S0021932005027069.
  28. Jewish Fear and Loathing of Donald Trump (5): Would Trump’s Defeat Be Blamed On Jews? by Kevin MacDonald (August 15, 2016) Occidental Observer.
  29. Steinberg, Jacques (2005-04-11). "Dramatizing a Scandal That Rocked the Church" (in en-US). The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. 
  30. "NBC's Greenblatt rebuilds network long in disarray". WWSB. "Greenblatt boils down his background this way: a gay, Catholic kid with a Jewish last name who grew up in rural Rockford, Ill." 
  31. Dominick Mastrangelo (December 14, 2023). "Fox News top-rated cable channel for eighth straight year". The Hill.
  32. Adler, Patrick; Florida, Richard (2020-05-03). "Geography as strategy: the changing geography of corporate headquarters in post-industrial capitalism" (in en). Regional Studies 54 (5): 610–620. doiWikipedia:10.1080/00343404.2019.1634803. ISSN 0034-3404. "The results of our analysis confirm our initial thinking America’s [Fortune 500] corporate headquarters are located in areas that are relatively rich in human capital. ... Corporate headquarters locate in large metros to be close to larger and more diverse pools of talent and the service and amenities that attract that talent. Large cities and metro areas account for a disproportionate share of F-500 corporate headquarters. We find F-500 headquarters to be most closely associated with population size. Roughly 90% of F-500 headquarters are located in metros the top quartile of population and with international air access, suggesting urbanization threshold effects. ... Firms will go to large lengths to avoid tax exposure as per the literature on fiscal geographies (Wainwright, 2011). However, large firms need not base their location decisions on tax levels because they have the power to effect and shape tax rates where they are. Large firms play a well-documented game of extracting tax and financial incentives out of jurisdictions after they have selected their locations based on other factors, of which Amazon’s HQ2 is just the most recent case in point. In this way, they reduce their effective rate of taxation wherever they choose to locate, with many large firms paying minimal or even no effective tax." 
  33. (October 1, 2013). "A Portrait of Jewish Americans". Pew Research Center. Quote: "Half of Jews (49%) reside in urban areas and a similar number (47%) reside in the suburbs; just 4% of Jews reside in rural areas."
  34. (February 6, 1958). "96 Percent of U.S. Jews Live in Urban Areas, Census Bureau Reports". Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
  35. See the Wikipedia article on List of most populous cities in the United States by decade.
  36. See the Wikipedia article on Jews in New York City.
  37. Josh Nathan-Kazis (June 12, 2012). "N.Y. Jewish Population Grows to 1.5M: Study". The Forward.
  38. "American Newspapers, 1800-1860: City Newspapers". History, Philosophy, and Newspaper Library, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
  39. See the Wikipedia article on History of the Jews in Japan.
  40. Noam, Eli M. (2016) (in en). Who Owns the World's Media?: Media Concentration and Ownership Around the World. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-998723-8. 
  41. Using the Moral Capital of the Holocaust to Promote Muslim Migration by Kevin MacDonald (January 29, 2016) Occidental Observer.
  42. Donald Trump Jr. Retweets the ‘Neo-Nazi Movement’s Favorite Academic’ by Ari Feldman (September 01, 2016) Forward.
  43. Donald Trump Jr. retweets psychologist who believes Jews manipulate society by Ron Kampeas (September 1, 2016 10:12 am) Jewish Telegraph Agency.
  44. During the 12 weeks of Irving v. Penguin and Lipstadt, Irving called a number of witnesses. Only one did not have to be subpoenaed but came of his own volition. Kevin McDonald. Donald Trump Jr. Is now retweeting his comments. Giving him added attention. Kevin McDonald is an unabashed antisemite. by Deborah Lipstadt (31 August 2016) Facebook (archived from 1 Jun 2017 14:43:15 UTC).
  45. Doubt Kaepernick would be seen as viable given that QBs are supposed to be leaders & still lots of Whites on offense by Kevin MacDonald (12:16 PM - 29 Aug 2016) Twitter (archived from 4 Nov 2016 20:52:43 UTC).