Anti-Semitic Intellectuals: They Aren't Who We Thought They Were

Anti-Semitism comes from the same cauldron of blind hate as racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, homophobia, and related social pathologies.

But it is important to point out that behind every group of brainless thugs we saw in Charlottesville, there is a “thinker” sitting in his office, cranking out hate that masquerades as learned scholarship.

And now I have the displeasure of introducing a renowned anti-Semite, Prof. Kevin MacDonald, retired Professor of Psychology at California State University–Long Beach (formally censured by his university and faculty colleagues in 2008).

He is currently the editor of the Occidental Observer, which he says covers “white identity, white interests, and the culture of the West.” The Anti-Defamation League says that the Occidental Observer has “become a primary voice for anti-Semitism from far-right intellectuals.”

If you want a flavor of this high-minded racism, stated so glibly that you might miss its hate-messaging, try this out from his Occidental Observer mission statement: “Societies in Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand that have been controlled by whites for hundreds of years are the only ones to accept their own demise as a moral imperative.” That’s where the thugs in Charlottesville come in handy—this “stand-your-white-ground” rally gives force to the white racial mission that McDonald spells out.

Here is a sample of his poisonous work:

A People that Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group (1994). That book is interesting to square with the two Jewish leaders at President Trump’s side yesterday during his elevation of white supremacy—Steve Mnuchin and Gary Cohn. They have taken assimilation so far they cannot separate themselves from Trump’s hate messaging. And note: Jews stand united with many other broad social groups that condemn the white supremacists at Charlottesville. The only people causing us to stand alone are McDonald’s thugs.

Here is another publication: Stalin’s Willing Executioners: Jews as a Hostile Elite in the USSR. That sounds like a way to update the blood libel that Jewish people drank Christian blood instead of wine (or used the blood of a Christian child to bake matzo) to celebrate Passover. That was a medieval libel; McDonald gives us the genocidal version from Stalin’s regime in the 1940s.

I conclude with McDonald’s book, Separation and Its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism. What makes this title arresting is how it rips off Sigmund Freud’s iconic 1929 book, Civilization and Its Discontents. Anti-Semitism advances the stereotype of Jews as a parasitic and predatory people whose success depends on stealing from others. Without a revealing a trace of irony, McDonald has tried to cash in on Freud’s classic book title (Freud was Jewish).

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What’s the point here? We cannot dismiss white supremacy as a group of uneducated yokels. They are more sophisticated and dangerous than we care to admit.