Kevin MacDonald

MacDonald also argues that anti-Semitism, far from being an irrational hatred for Jews, is a logical reaction to Jewish success in societies controlled by other ethnic or racial groups. After the publication of a 2007 Intelligence Report exposé detailing MacDonald's anti-Semitism, his teaching duties were reduced and many of his colleagues publicly condemned his racist research.  

In His Own Words
"Jews won the culture war without a shot being fired and without the losing side seeming to realize that it was a, war with real winners and real losers — where the losers have not only given up their cultural preeminence, but have failed to stand up to the ultimate denouement: demographic displacement from lands they had controlled for centuries. The new elite retains its outsider feelings toward their new subjects — a hostile elite in the United States as it was in the Soviet Union."
— Personal blog, undated

"In the 20th century many millions of people have been killed in the attempt to establish Marxist societies based on the ideal of complete economic and social leveling, and many more millions of people have been killed as a result of the failure of Jewish assimilation into European societies… . [T]he result has been a widening gulf between the cultural successes of Jews and Gentiles and a disaster for society as a whole."
— The Culture of Critique, 2002

"The fact is that the US did have a sense of being a European, Christian society until very recently. Christianity was an uncontested part of public culture until large-scale Jewish immigration in the early 20th century. The immigration laws were biased in favor of Europeans until 1965 when the long Jewish campaign to change them finally succeeded."
— Personal blog, undated

"But the deeper point is that, whatever my motivations and biases, I would like to suppose that my work on Judaism at least meets the criteria of good social science, even if I have come to the point of seeing my subjects [Jews] in a less than flattering light. In the end, does it really matter if my motivation at this point is less than pristine?"
— "Replies to My Critics," personal website

Background
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. 

MacDonald headed to graduate school at the University of Connecticut, earning a master's in biology in 1977, at the age of 33. In 1981, he received his Ph.D. in biobehavioral sciences from the same university. While in Connecticut, MacDonald studied the behavior of wolves, particularly wolf-cub interaction. MacDonald's academic career was sailing nicely along and he joined the psychology faculty at California State University, Long Beach, (CSULB) where he won a Distinguished Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activities Award in 1995. 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.

In the 1980s, MacDonald started reading up on Jews, trying to determine the reasons behind what he saw as their lockstep liberalism and hatred of all things Western. His inaugural effort, the first book in his trilogy on the Jews, was the 1994 publication of A People that Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy, which was published by Praeger Press and came out just after MacDonald was awarded his full professorship. Today, most of MacDonald's publishing is about Jews and the evils of the liberal immigration policies that he says they support.

Through the late 1990s, MacDonald dedicated himself to his anti-Semitic intellectual odyssey. He produced two more volumes on the Jews, Separation and its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism (1998), and The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements (1998). Taken together, the trilogy provides a whole new justification for anti-Semitism that has little to do with Nazi race theories, which blamed Jews for introducing evil social vices and other perversions into Nordic society and portrayed them as degenerates preying on unsuspecting, wholesome Aryans. MacDonald's basic premise is that Jews engage in a "group evolutionary strategy" that serves to enhance their ability to out-compete non-Jews for resources. Although normally a tiny minority in their host countries, Jews, like viruses, destabilize their host societies to their own benefit, MacDonald argues. Because this Jewish "group behavior" is said to have produced much financial and intellectual success over the years, McDonald claims it also has produced understandable hatred for Jews by gentiles. That means that anti-Semitism, rather than being an irrational hatred for Jews, is actually a logical reaction to Jewish success. In other words, the Nazis, like many other anti-Semites, were only anti-Semitic because they were countering a genuine Jewish threat to their wellbeing. To restore "parity" between Jews and other ethnic groups MacDonald has even called for systematic discrimination against Jews in college admissions and employment and special taxes "to counter the Jewish advantage in the possession of wealth."

MacDonald started the new millennium off with a bang when he agreed to testify as an expert witness for the British Holocaust denier David Irving in a London libel trial. Irving had sued American professor Deborah Lipstadt and her publisher, Penguin Books, claiming that she had defamed him in her 1993 book, Denying the Holocaust. (Irving ultimately lost the internationally watched trial, with the judge ruling that he had "a distinctly pro-Nazi and anti-Jewish bias.") Irving sought out MacDonald's "expert" testimony on Jewish behavior and MacDonald was happy to comply, flying to London in January 2000. During testimony, Irving asked MacDonald if he "perceived the Jewish community as working in a certain way in order to suppress a certain book." MacDonald answered in the affirmative and added that there were "several tactics the Jewish organizations have used." MacDonald later wrote about his decision to testify in an article published in the Journal of Historical Review, a well-known Holocaust denial journal published by the Institute for Historical Review in California. In the article, MacDonald wrote that Jews undertake various strategies against their "enemies." One is to distort history by presenting "Jews and Judaism in a positive light and their enemies in a negative light, often with little regard for historical accuracy."

Media reports about MacDonald's testimony hit CSULB like an earthquake and led to some soul-searching among evolutionary psychologists who had worked closely with the maverick psychology professor. Steven Pinker, the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, wrote that MacDonald's work fails "basic tests of scientific credibility." Another scientist, John Tooby, who, along with his wife Leda Cosmides, gave the field of evolutionary psychology its name in 1992, directly challenged MacDonald's work. Tooby told Salon.com in 2000 that "MacDonald's ideas — not just on Jews — violate fundamental principles of the field." John Hartung, the associate editor of the Journal of Neurosurgical Anesthesiology and an associate professor of anesthesiology at the State University of New York, called MacDonald's The Culture of Critique "quite disturbing, seriously misinformed about evolutionary genetics, and suffering from a huge blind spot about the nature of Christianity."

Since the 2000 Irving trial, MacDonald has produced a lot of new work on Jews that is in high demand in white supremacist circles. MacDonald was welcomed with open arms by the Charles Martel Society, a white supremacist organization created in 2001 by Bill Regnery, a publishing magnate who also bankrolls a white supremacist think tank, the National Policy Institute. One of the society's main activities is publishing The Occidental Quarterly, a racist journal devoted to the idea that as whites become a minority "the civilization and free governments that whites have created" will be jeopardized. MacDonald spoke three times to the group, in 2001, 2002 and 2004. Since its launch in 2000, MacDonald has published several articles in the society's journal, which in 2004 put out a special monograph on MacDonald's work entitled "Understanding Jewish Influence: A Study in Ethnic Activism." MacDonald has also served on the quarterly's editorial advisory board and was listed as a member of its board of directors on the group's 2006 tax form. MacDonald is so beloved by Regnery outfits that in 2004 the Quarterly awarded him its first "Jack London Literary Prize." and handed him a check for $10,000 in recognition of his work on Jews. 

Anti-Semites also rave about MacDonald's works. The former Klan leader and infamous neo-Nazi David Duke extols MacDonald and cites his trilogy as central to his thinking about the dangers posed by Jews in his autobiography, My Awakening. Longtime neo-Nazi Victor Gerhard wrote in a 2003 E-mail exchange that MacDonald's The Culture of Critique "is completely true; that to rail against blacks and Hispanics without mentioning Jews is like complaining about the symptoms and not the disease." Several white supremacist leaders traveled to Washington to attend The Occidental Quarterly's 2004 celebration for MacDonald, including Duke; Don Black, founder of Stormfront, the oldest and most dominant American hate site and forum on the Web; Jamie Kelso, a senior moderator at Stormfront; and the one-time head of the neo-Nazi National Vanguard, Kevin Alfred Strom (since jailed for possession of child pornography). MacDonald is also featured in Stormfront member Brian Jost's anti-immigrant film "The Line in the Sand," where he blames Jews for destroying America by supporting immigration from developing countries. "They have wanted to essentially end European domination of this society," MacDonald told the filmmakers, "and I think they are well on their way to doing that."

MacDonald is doing his best to stifle further debate among his colleagues about his anti-Semitic theories and white supremacist activism. After the Intelligence Report contacted his fellow professors in 2006 for comment about MacDonald, psychology department faculty members met with the staff of the Office of Equity and Diversity about possible responses to MacDonald's research. In retaliation, MacDonald sent out a threatening notice to his colleagues, which claimed there was an "ongoing and serious attempt to impair my constitutional rights and academic freedom" that could result in "civil liability." But MacDonald's threats didn't stop his psychology department from finally taking action. In late 2006, the department passed three resolutions prompted by MacDonald's research. One strongly condemned the knowing misuse of psychological research "by groups that disseminate views of racial/ethnic superiority and/or racial/ethnic hatred"; the others defended academic freedom and supported diversity. In 2008, both the Jewish Studies Program and the History Department issued statements specifically distancing themselves from MacDonald's hateful work. The statements all affirm MacDonald's right to academic freedom and to his tenured position on the CSULB faculty.

The university administration has backed MacDonald's right to his tenured position unequivocally, with CSULB spokeswoman Toni Beron saying, "The university will support MacDonald's academic freedom and freedom of speech." But McDonald was removed from teaching certain undergraduate courses, including a required course for psych majors specializing in child development. But Gerry Riposa, dean of the College of Liberal Arts, insisted that was only because the classes had "really low enrollments." and that McDonald would be teaching other courses in their place.

All of which means that Kevin MacDonald, critic of the Jews, will likely soldier on. Even though he now concedes that he dislikes Jews, he insists that that is irrelevant and should not stop the world from taking his research on them seriously. "In the end, does it really matter if my motivation at this point is less than pristine?" he asks in all apparent sincerity. "Isn't the only question whether I am right?"

In October 2009, MacDonald joined as director the American Third Position (A3P), a racist political party whose policy is "to represent the unique political interests of White Americans." The party is made up mostly of racist skinheads from Southern California. It was renamed American Freedom Party (AFP) in 2013.

Joining A3P marked MacDonald's move from anti-Semitic theorizing to racist activism. In 2009, MacDonald also started up his very own online magazine, The Occidental Observer, to "present original content touching on the themes of white identity, white interests, and the culture of the West." There, MacDonald celebrates the crudely pro-Klan film "The Birth of A Nation," defends the anti-Semitism of automaker Henry Ford, and rails on about white victims of black criminality.

MacDonald's partner at AFP is William D. Johnson, a Los Angeles-based lawyer and white supremacist who has advocated deporting non-whites from the U.S. In 1985, using the pseudonym James O. Pace, Johnson penned an infamous book called Amendment to the Constitution. The book proposed a federal constitutional amendment to repeal the 14th and 15th Amendments — the 14th made freed slaves U.S. citizens and guaranteed equal protection under the law, and the 15th prohibited denial of the right to vote based on race — and substitute a blatantly racist alternative that Johnson dubbed the "Pace Amendment." The new constitutional amendment would read: "No person shall be a citizen of the United States unless he is a non-Hispanic white of the European race, in whom there is no ascertainable trace of Negro blood, nor more than one-eighth Mongolian, Asian, Asia Minor, Middle Eastern, Semitic, Near Eastern, American Indian, Malay or other non-European or non-white blood, provided that Hispanic whites, defined as anyone with an Hispanic ancestor, may be citizens if, in addition to meeting the aforesaid ascertainable trace and percentage tests, they are in appearance indistinguishable from Americans whose ancestral home is in the British Isles or Northwestern Europe. Only citizens shall have the right and privilege to reside permanently in the United States."

The news of MacDonald’s involvement in A3P prompted student activists to launch a campaign to have him removed from the CSULB faculty. “Our campus is one of the most diverse in the country, and that really flies in the face of having a Nazi as a professor,” argued one protestor. The activists urged the student body to boycott MacDonald’s Spring 2010 courses, and they arrived before the professor at the first sessions to attempt to persuade students to drop them. The protests succeeded in reducing MacDonald’s course rolls but not in dislodging the psychologist from his position.

In October 2010, MacDonald endorsed a self-published white nationalist novel by Kyle Bristow, a former hate group leader who first attained notoriety for promoting a video game centered on killing Mexicans. The novel, White Apocalypse, features the graphic assassination of a character based on a prominent Southern Poverty Law Center figure. To Macdonald, it was “an emotionally compelling account of Whites as historical victims of non-Whites – just the sort of thing we need to motivate a renaissance among our people.”

After right-wing Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik slaughtered 77 of his countrymen, mostly teenagers, at a left-wing youth camp in July 2011, MacDonald called the murderer a “serious political thinker with a great many insights and some good practical ideas on strategy.” He praised Breivik for seeing “Christianity (correctly) as a historically powerful force for the preservation of Europe rather than mainly about religious faith.”

MacDonald worried that, in the short term, public “revulsion” at the killing of children would set back the white nationalist cause. But he hoped that “in the long run European elites” dreaming of a “glorious multicultural future” would see that it could not be actualized “without a great deal of bloodletting (including themselves and, as in this case, their children) and realize they will have to change their ways.”

In 2012, the uproar over the death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old African-American student shot and killed by a neighborhood watchman in Sanford, Fla., infuriated MacDonald. Appearing on David Duke’s nationwide radio program, MacDonald called Martin a “thug,” a “hoodlum,” and a drug dealer who was shot while he was suspended from high school after being caught with stolen jewelry and a tool used for “breaking and entering.” Much of this was false: Florida law enforcement reported that Martin had no juvenile criminal record, and Miami-Dade police notified Martin’s high school that the jewelry reportedly found in the teenager’s backpack “did not match any that had been reported stolen.”

But to MacDonald, representations of Martin as anything other than a hardened criminal were the deceptions of a “Jewish controlled” media, part of a conspiracy to create a new “anti-White religion” with a false “narrative of Blacks as innocent victims of Whites.” Jews, he told Duke, are strategically “making these alliances” with blacks, Hispanics and Asians, despite seeing “all non-Jews as basically sub-human,” because “their long-term goal is to displace white power.”