Executive Summary:-
From
Jews Controlling Subversive
Movements or
http://www.csulb.edu/~kmacd/review-AR.html Kevin MacDonald's
The Culture of Critique 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
areMarxism, 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
Multiculturalism
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 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, "[w]e
[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
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, which 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 sign 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
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
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
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.
Jews are destroying us using
Third World
Immigration as their main weapon, a weapon of
Ethnic Fouling. They use their control of
governments to enforce it. It is also why
Jews Control The Media. More on the point at
Israel Orders America Obeys or
America Is A
Puppet Of Israel
Reviewed by
Stanley Hornbeck
[ a pseudonym ]
In The Culture of Critique, 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.
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.
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 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.
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."
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?