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WHERE’S THE HEROIC DEFENDER OF THE WHITE RACE?

Will SwaimWed. April 09
 

A CSULB prof just wants to know1


ILLUSTRATION by LUKE MCGARRY

A few weeks ago, a fight broke out on the campus of Cal State Long Beach. Unlike most schoolyard brawls, nobody ran to watch.

It began with a March 19 manifesto from Jewish Studies Program professors. Its target: a colleague in the university’s psychology department. “Over the last decade and a half,” it read, “Dr. Kevin MacDonald has written a large amount of material on white ethnocentrism, racial differences, Jewish traits and the Jewish threat to European civilization, and the dangers of non-white immigration to America.”

It was the opening skirmish in what seemed sure to become a talk-radio-fueled shoutfest over MacDonald, a man who (one of his book reviewers said) brings to the subject of Jews “a somewhat conventional racist approach, albeit far more sophisticated than average.”

MacDonald’s work reads like white-supremacist tracts dressed up in the bling of science. Despite the footnotes, citations, bibliographies and selective quotes, you get quickly what he calls a “major theme” of his writing: “I have developed the argument that Jewish activity collectively, throughout history, is best understood as an elaborate and highly successful group competitive strategy directed against neighboring peoples and host societies,” MacDonald wrote in 2006 on VDARE, a white-nationalist website. “The objective has been control of economic resources and political power. One example: overwhelming Jewish support for non-traditional immigration, which has the effect of weakening America’s historic white majority.”

Translation: Jews hate white America, and want to destroy it with . . . Mexicans.

MacDonald thinks of himself as a scientist in “the intellectual tradition out of which the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution came.” But he’s sure his research into Jews and immigration could help America’s Party of God: “Hell, if Republican candidates had been ready, willing, and able to campaign on these issues, they might not have been so thoroughly ‘thumped’ in the recent elections.”

There was a time when whites weren’t so unready, unwilling and unable to defend their race. In “Psychology and White Enthnocentrism” in The Occidental Quarterly, a publication of the Charles Martel Society2, he writes:

While growing up I would often read accounts of European heroes who had battled for their people and for great causes. William Wallace, Robert Bruce and the Scots against the English, Sir Francis Drake leading the battle against the Spanish Armada, Charles Martel and the Franks defending Europe against the Muslims, King Leonidas and the Spartans at Thermopylae, and many others. Those days seem over now. Our political leaders are actually managing the displacement of their own people, and very few white people have the courage to do anything other than vote them back into office. Or they vote for the other party, which simply changes the faces of the managers.

You might think that sort of creepy nostalgia for knights, damsels, swordplay and racial separation—a nostalgia so 19th century it’s like a nostalgia for someone else’s nostalgia—would have stirred something more in Long Beach State officials, faculty, staff and students, a high-profile death match, maybe, fought from the corner of PCH and Seventh to the New York studios of Fox News (1211 Avenue of the Americas).

It did not. In his most public act on the matter, school president F. King Alexander reportedly quietly pressured the Jewish Studies profs to correct their claim that he has encouraged criticism of MacDonald; in fact, he has said only that all sides have a right to their opinions. (Alexander failed to return my calls for an interview.) And though MacDonald writes of his detractors as if they are legion, only silence followed rumors that other faculty members (maybe the History Department, some said [NOTE: On April 4, the LB State History Department released its own response to MacDonald] would join the Jewish Studies profs. Nor was there any public utterance of support from racists—in hoods or suits. And nary a peep from students.

There are all kinds of explanations for this. One is that campus diversity programs have created not just a tolerance for the opinions of others, but a kind of meekness around them. “We’re really pushed to accept everyone’s views,” a student told me. This makes for an interesting hypothesis: While MacDonald sees himself as a victim of “Draconian” speech codes and political correctness, he may be their chief beneficiary.

There’s another explanation: We live in a society that is, increasingly, so post-racial that MacDonald’s writings are almost incomprehensible to students except as museum artifacts, as removed from everyday experience as whips, hoods and rusted iron shackles. It’s conceivable, in other words, that no one sees him as a man who is likely to have any effect on contemporary society. He is scratching bad words into the walls of a toilet stall, or tagging an overpass; he’s annoying the way a frat boy can be—look at me, I’m outta control!—but dangerous just to his increasingly drunk date. The only people likely to be really anxious are those whose academic research, autobiographies or even passing familiarity with history include an intimate and maybe painful recall of, you know, Hitler.

And this might make Alexander, the school president, a genius. Remember that moment when a Japanese admiral steaming away from Hawaii in 1941 is supposed to have said that he feared the attack on Pearl Harbor might have awakened a sleeping giant? Alexander whispers softly about MacDonald or not at all. He’s a man who is, by all accounts, a gifted public speaker. But he has so far killed this controversy with his silence.

Certainly, few of his students seem enraged or even curious. You can get something of their feelings for MacDonald by reading their evaluations—33 of them—on the website ratemyprofessors.com3.

Among those entries, just three students speak directly to MacDonald’s eagerness to answer the Jewish Question. “The man is one of the leading white supremecists [sic] in the U.S.,” reads the most recent. “He is a **** and anti-semitist [sic]. I am not saying this to libel the prof, but I feel it should be out there for future students to see. [A]ccording to at least one list he is ranked 3rd behind Adolf Hitler and David Duke in terms of his popularity and influence. [L]ook into it b4 taking him!” Another student says MacDonald is a “good guy” who “rubs some the wrong way because of his hint of bias.” But the class is easy, he or she says, predicting that you’ll get “an ‘A’ if you try for it” and noting that MacDonald “grades on a curve.”

And that’s the nature of most of these student comments. They’re about classroom tactics, personality quirks and, frequently, boredom. The student who declares MacDonald “nuts!” isn’t talking about the doctor’s interest in the evil genius of Jews, but about his steep grading curve: “I have learned that it is a BAD thing when the teacher only requires 80% for an A. It means it’s the hardest dang class you’ll ever take. Seriously, the material wasn’t too hard but he’s a really tough grader, and the final essay is really overwhelming.”

Some students call MacDonald “very good,” “fair,” “extremely articulate,” “well-read,” “intelligent,” “helpful.” His course is “one of the best classes I have ever taken,” says one. But those students are in the minority. MacDonald’s “hotness” rating is zero4. And reading the comments, you conclude that most students today—as ever—want entertainment and an easy A. “I think this guy has ADD or something,” says another. “I get motion sickness trying to pay attention to him. Class is really[,] really boring, he’s not very funny and makes me want to go home and take a nap after class because it is so draining.” Countless entries characterize him as a “[h]orrible teacher,” a “boring” lecturer who “gives way too much work.” MacDonald “[d]oesn’t seem like he wants to answer questions when he is asked,” and “[k]inda mumbles a bit, and rambles on and on.” His classroom vibe: “feels that he has better things to do than teach the class.”

These are psychology classes, of course, and so it’s a little surprising that the comments evince so little interest in the constellation of forces that shaped MacDonald, that only a few of the students connect with him in anything more than a technical way. Those few agreed that their professor is (in the words of one) “not the most sociable person.” And they felt uneasy about that: “He seems like he is [sic] given up on life or something,” says one student. Another admitted that, perhaps because of all of this—the savagery of his critics, the social awkwardness, the limited appeal of anti-semitism, his low hotness ranking—“I feel bad for him.”

1 Much of this article first appeared in several posts on thedistrictweekly.com, where you can still find links to MacDonald’s writings, the Jewish Studies Program memo and other interesting stuff.

2 Charles Martel, the French military leader who defeated advancing Muslim armies at Tours in 732, also known as “The Hammer.”

3 A note about methodology. We analyzed all 33 ratings from September 2004 to the present. We did not sweat over the possibility that some or all 33 posts were fraudulent, whether students were exacting revenge or seeking favor, or if more provocative attacks or defenses of MacDonald were deleted for legal reasons. (“Please keep comments clean,” reads a warning just above the RATE THIS PROFESSOR! button. “Libelous comments will be deleted.”) That’s it. No baking soda and vinegar inside a one-liter Mountain Dew bottle. No centrifuges. No selective reading of the Talmud. No conditional probability, Bayesian methods, no considerations of proportions, means, densities for means or regression analysis.

4 Attempting to connect with undergrad sensibilities, ratemyprofessors.com employs a “hotness” rating scale, which is not a kind of cumulative grade that averages individual scores in such categories as “easiness, helpfulness, clarity or rater interest” but “appearance (just for fun).” In terms of hotness, No. 1 at press time was Robert Citino, an Eastern Michigan University history professor, with a rating of 21. Looking at Citino’s picture and having seen MacDonald up close—and, seriously, no offense to either—it’s hard to call them “hot,” even just for fun, but probably more accurate to assume that hotness is a kind of charisma.

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    The race riots at Jordan and other schools in the last few years simply underscores MacDonald's premise: when push comes to shove, race matters.
    It always has, and always will, no matter how many liberals who live away from the neighborhoods in turmoil would like to dream otherwise.
    The author of this piece makes the same amateur mistakes most journalists make when reviewing scientific ideas that are over their heads, but not their "morality."
    That is, it doesn't matter if a fact is good or bad to think about. What matters is if it's true.
    If MacDonald's criteria is proven as false, nothing else matters. If some or all of it's true, he's only relevant insofar as his conclusions are correct.
    We don't need journalist cheerleader's trying to shame people into their political slant while standing on the intellectual sidelines, much less, as this author is trying to do, shame people for not feeling shame.
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    Separate from your points, let me begin by noting that "criteria" is plural.
    The "scientific" ideas put forward by MacDonald have already been shown to be completely bogus, and the race riots at Jordan do not prove his premise. One only need look at the extent to which race underscores rioting and violence in other countries. The fact is that nationalism and nativism is the only thing that matters. Race is the artificial construct used to justify nationalism and nativism. There's nothing scientific about it.
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    Kelson, as long as we're correcting papers, disproving an argument requires more than simply saying, "no it's not."
    I'm sorry you were overwhelmed, but when that happens, you should simply not speak.
    Just my advice.
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    Gosh, and I thought that the onus was on those who should be *proving* their hypotheses. Peacful race relations in a zillion other countries already disprove the argument that race matters. And it turns out that race cannot matter, because it is a totally artificial concept. Only bigoted nationalistic zeal matters. But you can keep on being sorry that I'm overwhelmed. It's only because I actually have a job, writing scientific papers.
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    Of course race matters, but there's ample evidence we can choose to transcend and include it as a matter of fact among many other facts (gender, hair color, ideology, whatever). Civilization is about choices; because of civilizing influences, we don't shit where we eat, no matter how compelling that might seem to some; because of civilizing influences, we choose democracy rather than tribal rule. Similarly we can choose--as a civilization--to transcend race and ethnicity. My English ancestors did it when they decided, somehow, that maybe the Welsh and Scottish were OK--transcending a barrier which seemed then insuperable. French Catholics and Protestants did it, too--likewise deciding that maybe getting along was better than killing for what seemed like obvious reasons. There's no European monolith; the impression MacDonald gives that there might be ignores about 3000 years of violence among Europeans.

    Sorry that John K. thinks I'm liberal or that I don't understand the science in MacDonald's work; I'm not and I do. John does nothing to support these assumptions, and I find it weirdly ironic--funny, really--he'd make them while arguing that I don't understand the scientific method. I can't find a place in the essay where I argue that a fact is true but bad to think about; I challenge John K. to find the place I do.

    The article, in the end, isn't about MacDonald's arguments, however--that's been dealt with by his peers who, almost to a person, dismiss it as non-science. My story was about something else: the bizarre non-response on a college campus--when college campuses (liberals and conservatives say) are supposed to erupt over this stuff. That this one didn't is, for me, a fascinating story.
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    Kelson Believes:
    "Peacful race relations in a zillion other countries already disprove the argument that race matters."


    I think the above remark underlines, more than anything, that not only race, but mental stability... matters. Since I believe, owing to the above remark and others, that you've got a "screw loose," I'm not inclined to respond to you further. I might, but it's not likely.
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    "Of course race matters, but there’s ample evidence we can choose to transcend and include it as a matter of fact among many other facts (gender, hair color, ideology, whatever). Civilization is about choices; because of civilizing influences, we don’t shit where we eat, no matter how compelling that might seem to some; because of civilizing influences, we choose democracy rather than tribal rule. Similarly we can choose–as a civilization–to transcend race and ethnicity. My English ancestors did it when they decided, somehow, that maybe the Welsh and Scottish were OK–transcending a barrier which seemed then insuperable. French Catholics and Protestants did it, too–likewise deciding that maybe getting along was better than killing for what seemed like obvious reasons. There’s no European monolith; the impression MacDonald gives that there might be ignores about 3000 years of violence among Europeans."

    I agree with most of this, believe it or not. However, I believe as long as people lie to "save face" for themselves, or for others, we will waste a lot of time and lives sorting out this ideal regarding how human beings relate to each other.
    Some people believe there is no such thing as race, that the NBA is full of a lot of lucky black people, that the 100 meter is, and always has been won by nothing but lucky black people, and that sickle cell anemia is suffered by nothing but... unlucky black people. But other than to identify luck, race doesn't matter, and where you're originally from means nothing genetically.
    By the way, you seem to be fixated on the idea that violence means failure, and that if western europeans resort to violence, then they are qualitively on social parity with a group of head hunters in the Congo.
    I don't mark scores that way.
    The measure of an advanced society is what they ultimately create, and the western europeans have done very well for themselves by that measure.
    Other races have not.
    I understood what your article was about, addressed it, and you carry on as if I hadn't.
    You're "fascinated" that students don't automatically rise up in brainless outrage when someone says that race may make a much larger difference in how coutries are grown than many liberals (and some conservatives) might feel comfortable thinking about.
    I think that says that the students may actually be learning how to think, rather that repeating what others think, or at least view such theories less passionately, and thoughtfully.
    Next thing you know, they might start questioning newspaper journalists!
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    Dr. Kevin MacDonald is an embarrassment to CSULB. His existence as a tenured professor makes our school look like our bar for hate speech is rather low. In this climate of school violence and rape culture, his contributions of racism perpetuate and add to the already dangerous campus life for all minorities. All research is biased, there is no excuse for "looking for" inequalities in humans nor in his overt demonization and Othering.
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    John K: I carry on "as if" you didn't understand my story because you didn't understand it. Take a look at your first post: you claim, without any evidence, that I don't like the scientific conclusions of MacDonald's writings because I don't understand science. Your most recent post concedes that, in fact, my story is about the non-response of students. Those are two very different theses. I wrote only one of them.

    ON that latter point (the non-response): I'm with you, and I wish I'd made that clearer: I say that students don't regard MacDonald seriously. That seems very thoughtful indeed.

    You ever read Ken Wilber, the philosopher? You might enjoy him.
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    One other thing, John: I don't understand this line in your comment:

    "By the way, you seem to be fixated on the idea that violence means failure, and that if western europeans resort to violence, then they are qualitively on social parity with a group of head hunters in the Congo."

    I don't see that in anything I wrote. I certainly don't think that. I meant--and still think I said this clearly--that European civilization is influential and powerful precisely because it managed to transcend and include differences (of race, ethnicity, and--starting in the Renaissance--even gender, and then religion) so that Europeans could get on with the business of making a difference in the material world. That shift in consciousness--from peasants into Frenchman, one scholar called it in the case of France--is huge, and may account for the material progress of Europe. In that regard, I see violence as stupid, sure: the more violent a community, the less time it has for the creation of wealth. And wealth is better than poverty.
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    John K. is not only an idiot, he's an inaccurate idiot. "Black people" domination of the 100-meter dash is a relatively recent phenomenon in the sport: as recently as the 1960s, two white men--a German and a South African--were the world record-holders in the event. And who is dominating the 100-meter dash in the Paraplegic Games in such a manner that the IOC won't allow him to compete in the regular Olympic games? A white man. As for his NBA crack--John K. has obviously never seen UCLA's Kevin Love in action.
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    "I don’t see that in anything I wrote. I certainly don’t think that. I meant–and still think I said this clearly–that European civilization is influential and powerful precisely because it managed to transcend and include differences (of race, ethnicity, and–starting in the Renaissance–even gender, and then religion)"

    Since racially based slavery is in full effect today, I can't disagree with your premise.
    My assertion that you don't understand the science of what you're dismissing might be because you don't account for racial IQ, and what that means when trying to establish a democracy. You also go on about Hitler very subjectively, while I don't.
    There was nothing particularly special about Hitler. He was what I'd call a classic warrior, and simply did what other warriors from long ago, some famous, did as a matter of course.
    What really is immature in your concern is the fact that you are flummoxed that students aren't attacking the professor with your brand of dogma.
    To me, it's not a matter of if it's right or wrong to discuss alleged Jewish clan behavior, or how it might have affected a response from Germans before WWII. The only proper response to his assertions is, "is he right?"
    Not "it's terrible to consider such things," because... that's irrational, and stupid.
    I think it's a good sign that students aren't responding as you would have liked. To me, it may indicate that they aren't hypervigilant about towing the liberal line, and an original, unemotional, unbiased thought might have some room to sneak in their young heads.
    That's right. Not screaming at anyone who might posit the notion that the jews were anything but hapless victims in the world in all important aspects of their history is a sign of emotional mental health.
    If you don't think the Jews can be clannish, that they can't impose their agenda in any meaningful way in other countries, fine.
    Make your case, the professor can make his, and people can decide.
    Simply being amazed that students don't particularly share your emotional view on a matter isn't helping you to think any more clearly. It's keeping you right were you are, basting in your limited methods of discovery.
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    "Since racially based slavery is in full effect today, I can’t disagree with your premise."

    I mistyped. Meant to say I can't agree.
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    When White People are clannish and impose agendas in meaningful ways, we don't usually attribute this to race.

    I'll start doing so immediately. Thank you for clearing this up for me.
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