You have a long career in psychology, as a Professor at
California State University, and have authored many different books and
academic articles on that subject, focusing mostly on evolutionary
psychology, psychology on ethnocentrism and group evolutionary
strategies. Could you give us a brief definition of these concepts?
Evolutionary psychology views the human brain as being shaped by
evolution, that is, that over evolutionary time the human mind and
underlying neural structures were shaped by natural selection. For
example, humans fall in love because there are brain structures that
enable this, and it’s adaptive because it motivates men and women to
procreate and invest in their children. Genes for this gradually
accumulated, and people with more of those genes survived and prospered.
Please tell us when did you first become active within the
“right” ideological specter and which of your conclusions and
observations led you to become a renowned author within the circles of
the Right? Did your studies of Psychology played a major part in this
development?
I started being active while writing my book
The Culture of Critique in the mid-1990s.
The Culture of Critique
is about how Jewish intellectuals and political activists have shaped
Western culture in the twentieth century. I realized that they were
shaping culture in ways that promoted their interests but were
detrimental to the interests of Europeans. Throughout my writing, I have
used my psychological background. For example, one reason that Jewish
intellectuals were so influential was because they were able to obtain
positions in elite universities. A part of human psychology is to look
up to such people and they have more influence as a result. I also write
a lot about ethnic networking among Jews—how they promote each other’s
work and promote common goals that satisfy Jewish interests.
You have written extensively about the influence of the
Jewish-interests groups within the Western societies and about the role
of the Jewish intellectuals within the different subversive movements
that came to be known as “Cultural Marxism”, your most famous book on
the subject being »Culture of Critique«. Could you please explain to us
how do these groups operate, in which areas has their influence been the
most effective and for what reasons do you choose to describe them as
»Culture of Critique«?
Culture of Critique describes several of the most
influential intellectual and political movements of the twentieth
century—Boasian anthropology, Freudian psychoanalysis, the Frankfurt
School, the general involvement of Jews with the left, and Jewish
activism on behalf of immigration. All of these movements had a central
core of people who were strongly identified as Jews and thought of their
work as advancing Jewish interests in some way. For example, Freud
thought of himself as a warrior in opposition to European culture which
he hated because of historical anti-Semitism. His work undermined
traditional Western sexual mores and family relationships. His movement
attracted many other Jews and together they influenced public opinion
because they were able to obtain influential positions in academic and
professional organizations such as the American Psychiatric Association,
and they were able to spread their messages in the mainstream
media—Hollywood, television, and newspapers.
It seems that the breakdown of the Western values and the
destruction of the once homogenous European societies that we witness
today is a consequence of the ideas and movements that can be traced to
the Frankfurt School, whose intellectuals were mostly Jewish, and which
was the birthplace of the so called »Cultural Marxism«. Could you give
us a brief overview of the ideas and concepts which were the product of
the Frankfurt School, and have proven as the most detrimental to our
culture and to our European nations? Also would you say that the
Frankfurt School represents the beginning of these subversive movements
and ideals, or do its roots go further back in time?
The Frankfurt School began in the 1920s as an orthodox Marxist group
and continued in that direction until after Hitler came to power after
1933. Marxism did not predict that the working class would vote for a
fascist, but many did, and after Hitler came to power, he had high
public approval. They reconceptualized the problem as White
ethnocentrism because racial identity was central to National Socialism.
They reasoned that an anti-Jewish movement could not develop in a
country that was not racially homogeneous. As a result, their work
claimed that White people who identified as White and attempted to
advance the interests of their race had a psychiatric disorder and this
was then picked up and promoted very effectively by Jewish activist
organizations like the Anti-Defamation League. They did not make an
analogous analysis in which identifying as a Jew and advancing Jewish
interests were pathological.
Jewish subversion began earlier. Boasian anthropology and
psychoanalysis began early in the twentieth century and Jewish activism
on the left aimed at toppling gentile power structures dates from the
nineteenth century.
The question many people are curious about is, why would
certain Jewish-interested groups want the destruction and the breakdown
of the Western societies, what is their main motivation and what do they
want to achieve through their subversive actions, and influence in
culture and in politics?
As noted above, Jews do not feel safe in a homogeneous White society
after what happened in Germany in the 1930s. As a result, they have
promoted immigration and demographic change so that Whites will be a
minority in Western societies and Whites will be less able to organize
against Jews. Another major motivation is hatred because of what they
see as irrational ant-Semitism throughout history, so that, for example,
they oppose Christianity because of the historical role of Christianity
in opposition to Jews. They never see their own behavior as
contributing to hatred of Jews.
Some people would argue, that the Jews have always been
involved in different political movements both on the Left and on the
Right, and that while there are quite a few Jews on the Left, it is
mostly a coincidence and has nothing to do with them being Jewish, since
we can also find Jews among the Conservative Right. What would be your
answer to these observations, and what would be your main argument in
claiming, that the leftist movements are not just movements which happen
to also have a lot of Jewish activists, but that this movements and
ideals themselves were created by the Jewish groups to further their own
goals and agenda?
I know of no example of a Jew who has advocated for White interests.
In general, Jews on the right have been neoconservatives who are mainly
motivated by garnering support for Israel within the Republican Party
and among conservatives. Neoconservatism, with its roots on the
Trotskyist left, has fundamentally acted to combat older forms of
conservatism (labeled paleoconservatism) in America and to move the
American conservative movement to the left on key issues like
immigration (see “
Neoconservatism as Jewish Movement“).
For example, I cite an American intellectual, Samuel Francis: “There
are countless stories of how neoconservatives have succeeded in entering
conservative institutions, forcing out or demoting traditional
conservatives, and changing the positions and philosophy of such
institutions in neoconservative directions.”
My argument that Jews on the left retained strong Jewish identities
and a sense of Jewish interests is contained in Chapter 3 of
The Culture of Critique and is too long to quote here. However, it begins with the following:
There is little doubt that the vast majority of the Jews
who advocated leftist causes beginning in the late nineteenth century
were strongly self-identified as Jews and saw no conflict between
Judaism and radicalism (Marcus 1983, 280ff; Levin 1977, 65, 1988, I,
4–5; Mishkinsky 1968, 290, 291; Rothman & Lichter 1982, 92–93; Sorin
1985, passim). Indeed, the largest Jewish radical movements in both
Russia and Poland were the Jewish Bunds which had an exclusively Jewish
membership and a very clear program of pursuing specifically Jewish
interests. The proletarianism of the Polish Bund was really part of an
attempt to preserve their national identity as Jews (Marcus 1983, 282).
Fraternity with the non-Jewish working class was intended to facilitate
their specifically Jewish aims, and a similar statement can be made for
the Russian Jewish Bund (Liebman 1979, 111ff). Since the Bunds comprised
by far the majority of the Jewish radical movement in these areas, the
vast majority of Jews participating in radical movements in this period
were strongly identified as Jews.
In Chapter 3 I also provide evidence that Jews on the left were
motivated to oppose nationalist movements, as in Poland after World War
II where many Jews collaborated with the communist government. Jews in
pre-revolutionary Russia saw the Czarist government as oppressive and
eagerly joined the Soviet government after the Revolution. Jews in
America in the 1920s–1940s realized that Jews were an elite in the USSR
and strongly advocated for pro-USSR causes in the U.S. There are many
more examples of this.
While »Culture of Critique« is probably your most famous book
on this subject, it is just a third book of a trilogy, the other two
books being » A People That Shall Dwell Alone« and »Separation and its
Discontents«. In these books you also write about Judaism and about the
phenomenon of Antisemitism. Could you tell us how would you say Judaism
differs from Islam and Christianity? And regarding the topic of
Antisemitism, do you believe Jewish groups are using it today to further
their own agenda?
As discussed in
A People That Shall Dwell Alone, Judaism
developed as a very explicit diaspora strategy—they saw themselves as
living as a minority group within larger societies. They never sought to
be a universal religion. Their writings underscore that they saw
themselves as in conflict with the wider society and as having different
interests from other groups in the society. For example, a common theme
of historical anti-Semitism was that Jews made alliances with kings and
other aristocrats and would engage in oppressive business practices
that would enrich their aristocratic patrons and themselves at the
expense of other sectors of the population.
Jewish groups are constantly exaggerating anti-Semitism as a way to
raise money but also to provide reasons for enacting controls on free
speech. In the United States it is now basically off-limits to criticize
Israel: any criticism of Israel is regarded as anti-Semitism. Another
example, according to a
recent article in the
mainstream media, Jews in the television industry have been producing
very Jewish-themed shows emphasizing the Holocaust and other threats to
Jewish interests because of a supposed huge increase in anti-Semitism.
“There’s been a huge uptick in anti-Semitic hate crimes in the U.S. over
the past five years, according to the FBI, in an era when only 45% of
U.S adults know that six million Jews died in the Holocaust, according
to a Pew Research Center survey published in January.«
How would you assess the work of President Trump since he entered the office?
I was very supportive of Trump during the 2016 election. His record
since is mixed. He is certainly doing the bidding of is pro-Israel
donors like Sheldon Adelson and the Republican Jewish Coalition despite
his campaign pledges for an America-First foreign policy. He has not
been as good as he promised on immigration. He is building the wall with
Mexico but has also approved huge numbers of worker visas that displace
American workers, and he has not decreased the huge numbers of legal
immigrants that will soon make Whites a minority in the U.S., nor has he
ended birthright citizenship according to which anyone born in the U.S.
is automatically a citizen, leading to illegal aliens establishing
families and obtaining welfare benefits, etc.
What are your predictions for the U.S. presidential elections
this year? And what are your predictions regarding the future of U.S.A.
and the rest of the Western world?
It’s too soon to tell what will happen this year much less the
long-term future of the West. Trump will have a good chance against Joe
Biden, who is senile and not a candidate that inspires enthusiasm.
However, the non-White vote keeps increasing and this will soon make it
impossible for any Republican to win. Right now Trump is being blamed
for a poor response to the coronavirus and that may be an effective
talking point for Biden, especially given what the virus panic has done
to the economy. The strength of the economy had been Trump’s major
asset.
I am not optimistic on the future of the West. We are importing
non-White majorities that will have no interest in maintaining our
culture, our institutions, or our traditional freedoms. Unless something
drastic changes, the West as we know it will be destroyed.
You are also the Chief Editor of the website »Occidental Observer«, can you tell us a bit about this project?
The Occidental Observer has articles that touch on White identity and interests. Given my writing, we have a lot of discussion of Jewish issues.
We are all aware of the censorship which has been increasing
in the last years, regarding ideas that are deemed »politically
incorrect«. Did you ever faced any kind of censorship, and did your
activities and writings ever affected your professional career as a
University Professor? Did you faced any criticism from you colleagues
etc.?
Yes, there was a movement to get my university to fire me—the relevant documents are on
my website.
A left-wing organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC),
conducted a campaign against me. A representative of the SPLC came to
my university from November 12–15 2006 to interview faculty and
administrators about me. During the 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 academic
years there was also a great deal of discussion and debate about my work
and associations on faculty email lists. Eventually several departments
issued statements dissociating themselves from my work and, in some
cases, condemning my work. I was an active participant in these debates,
In April, 2008, there was a large meeting conducted by the SPLC
representative to denounce me. A speaker from the Anti-Defamation League
also participated in this meeting.
Can you tell us for the end a bit about you latest book,
titled »Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition, and let us know
what are your plans for the future?
Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition
argues that ethnic influences are important for understanding the West.
The prehistoric invasion of the Indo-Europeans had a transformative
influence on Western Europe, inaugurating a prolonged period of what is
labeled “aristocratic individualism” resulting form variants of
Indo-European genetic and cultural influence. However, beginning in the
seventeenth century and gradually becoming dominant was a new culture
labeled “egalitarian individualism” which was influenced by preexisting
egalitarian tendencies of northwest Europeans. Egalitarian individualism
ushered in the modern world but may well carry the seeds of its own
destruction. I have a chapter on psychological mechanisms that have
resulted in so many Westerners accepting the current regime of
displacing White populations in favor of massive non-White immigration.
This brings in much discussion of evolutionary psychology. For example, I
present data that White people are more empathic towards others because
we are less ethnocentric than other peoples. This tendency toward
empathy has been manipulated by the media to make Westerners empathic to
suffering Africans and Asians and make them willing to make these
people into citizens. There are also some hopeful signs—e.g., because of
all the anti-White hatred we are seeing in the media, more White people
are identifying as White and seeing that they have interests as Whites
in not becoming a minority. But I conclude the book by suggesting that
there may be a civil war brewing in the United States.
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2020/05/21/kevin-macdonald-im-not-optimistic-about-the-future-of-the-west/
