Review of Jewish interest Kevin B. MacDonald: The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements
Large book, very important in understanding immigration and other issues, August 24, 2010 & 2012, 2016, 2018, 2021, 2023Fascinating book. It omits quite a bit of material, but I give it five stars for its groundbreaking nature.
PS. Jan 2023: MacDonald has proven, years later, to be a 'broken reed'. Click this link for a hard review of his book on individualism, published about twenty-five years later than C of C.
PS. Feb 2023 note: I found an odd reference in a website called glassdoor.com which says that occidentalobserver.net is based in Long Eaton in the UK, with '51-100 employees'. I have no idea if this is true. It could be inserted by someone from the BBC, for instance.
A word to Britons: this book is almost entirely USA-based. There are per head far more Jews in the USA than in England, Ireland, France, Russia and other countries. What he says may seem strange, or over-emphasised, in Europe. But it is of great importance in understanding such things as the ludicrously undemocratic immigration policy of Britain and other countries. If you're unaware of the issues, which is quite likely in view of the censorship of all media, it's as good a book as any for exploration.
MacDonald (not 'McDonald') concentrates on two types of movements: political ones (usually publicised and well-known though the Jewish element was secretish), and intellectual—fought out in universities and by departmental social science journals. The first type is usually described as 'left' by Americans. For some reason, the US never had a proper socialist movement, probably because Jews had already invaded the USA, and such movements were taken over by Jews, who didn't want general alleviation of poverty—they wanted it for themselves only. 'Socialism' in the Jewish sense included support for the coup in Russia after the First World War and the consequent mass-murder, financed and organised by Jews. This is the root of the difference between 'Reds' and socialists, which to this day is intentionally confused.
In the same way, US 1960s radicals were mainly Jewish—there was mass murder in Vietnam, organised by Kissinger, but this seems to have been regarded as unimportant—it was only the pro-Jewish radicalism that appealed to them. In Europe, there were big demonstrations in 1968, but censorship by Jewish media is so great very few people are even aware of US genocide. Fakes like 'Jack Straw' and Daniel Cohn-Bendit illustrate the type—they do nothing for or about Vietnam, and clearly care nothing about war crimes.
To see how Jews and American militarist fellow-travellers co-operate in censorship, read
Russell Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal (1967)
MacDonald does not face the facts of this sort of material, which weaken his case for whites being friendly and peace-loving—unless it can be shown white militarists are simple dupes of Jews.
'Loren' in April 24, 2020, Occidental Observer:
I am just an average American joe and I knew the universities had been taken over by Communists over 30 years ago. The only thing I didn't know was who the Communists were and that they were tied to our greatest ally. Professor MacDonald's book explained everything to me.
I can't take the idea of 'individualism' very seriously. It looks to me like another Jewish trick; we might call it the 'Culture of Compliment', which slips by because people like it, are flattered by it, and don't in general examine it.
Since 1945, whites have been flattered by Jews for much of the time: Of course Americans are individualistic! They may all eat the same stuff, use the same language, have identical simpletons' ideas, watch the same junk TV, but they sure are individualistic! They fought in 'the good war' even if they killed and raped on a large scale. But it was a 'good war'! Their republic was founded by wonderful honest people - not Freemasons, not Jew money handlers, not on fake democratic principles! WASPs ruled; or at least were supposed to (white elites were in fact Norman French; aand largely run by Jews). The education was real good, in real good institutions dedicated to truth! When they die, they really go to heaven and live for ever; nothing to do with paying groups of liars, funded out of general productivity! Whites were responsible for most inventions, though we won't mention devices to kill and enslave. Whites are the most generous people. Really? Whites have developed sophisticated political systems, all by themselves. Really?
I fear, Kevin, you have neglected this aspect of Jewish propaganda power, and this has weakened your writings for the last 25 years. The fact that you are one of the few leaders attempting your style of analysis, just underlines the fact that most whites do what they're told, don't display individualism, and in fact are scared to think for themselves about anything. My belief is that whites are the best available, but it's essential to face facts and not be deluded by Jewish fairy tales, either apparently con or apparently pro.
MacDonald isn't good on 'feminism', which in the US also was largely Jewish and targeted against whites, families, and children. They were for example pro-abortion, pro-alien immigration, pro-race-mixing, pro-small (or no) families, pro-women working, pro-divorce, pro-divorce settlements excluding men, pro-homosexuality, pro-giving housing to aliens. MacDonald has no excuse for leaving these issues unanalysed.
MacDonald is most sound on intellectual movements, so far as these are recognised in teachings, unsurprisingly as he is himself an academic, accustomed to the atmosphere of lectures, syllabuses, professors, exams, textbooks and all the rest of it, including secret funding sources. The Culture of Critique means simply enough the Jewish attack on all aspects of 'gentile' life. The academic topics referred to in detail are psychoanalysis (mainly of course Freud), anthropology (mainly someone called Boas, not well-known in Britain—who spent his life trying to show that races don't exist, apart of course from Jews. Boas was regarded as a linguist—Simeon Potter called him a 'field worker', without any hint of his race work), the Frankfurt School (what's loosely called 'Marxism', although there's little of Marx in it). MacDonald's long chapter on the Frankfurt School largely deals with The Authoritarian Personality by Adorno and others. This chapter (and the one following) deal with 'Pathologization of Gentile Group Allegiances'—if you wonder why there seems a positive push against the family, why white abortions are pushed while black immigration is encouraged, why TV programmes show family breakdowns, why freaky sex is promoted—these chapters will help you find the reason.
MacDonald clearly identifies Jews—for example, Derrida, Hofstadter, Freud—which helps clear away a certain amount of fog. He clarifies why their writing style is often absurdly opaque—because of course they can't say what they really mean, or alternatively they are being boosted and hyped. But there are Jews who are under-mentioned; a good example is 'Horace Kallen', (1882-1974), described in Wikipedia's joke factory as 'a Jewish scholar and writer' but also as 'a Polish-born American philosopher who supported pluralism and Zionism' apparently from 1915. To this day, MacDonald's website has no list of presumably influential Jews such as Kallen.
There are some disappointments, generally I think caused by the failure to detect Jewish undercurrents, which of course are usually carefully hidden. The 1952 start of the DSM which firmed up Jewish views on psychology, isn't discussed at all in the Critique. The series of official manuals on drugs isn't discussed. Jews in the 'American' armed forces aren't discussed. Very importantly, something brought to my attention only in 2021, is the Jewish 'Kahal' system—a criminal omission.
MacDonald's first journal article was dated 1983; eleven years later his book on Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy was published. MacDonald's novelty is combining theories of evolution of human behaviour—'five factors'—with facts about Jews. To illustrate, the new preface (written after 9/11) has an account of Europe genetically developing on a less tribal basis than herders and other narrow self-defined groups. His analysis relies heavily on rather vague things like 'individualism', but at any rate it's in principle testable or at least discussable in detail. In particular, he regards modern US and Europe as not well adapted to withstand attacks by small united groups.
The most important single point he makes in my opinion is the the relentless support, promotion and propagandisation by Jewish groups for immigration into the USA, a constant since 1924, and ending with the 1965 Immigration Act in the USA. (Very similar events occurred in Britain). At first only Jewish immigrants were regarded as important by this movement: there was of course no pressure to import Ukrainians starved by Jews, or Indians in famine, impoverished Filipinos, Chinese peasants attacked by the Japanese, and so on. The more modern wholesale importation seems to have been suggested fairly slowly and of course secretly. Thus the British so-called 'Labour' party's Jack Straw (real name Jacob Strawinski?) secretly decided in 2000 to flood Britain with immigrants. 'Labour' has been funded by Jews and its level of corruption has increased correspondingly to the present state where only about one white in ten votes for it.
There are of course counter-attack mechanisms, such as the 1920s-coined 'anti-Semitism' which of course MacDonald was subjected to, to his annoyance, since he was dealing with an abstract question of population genetics and competition.
Organisations masking Jewish policies include the ADL and NAACP in the USA, and myriads of similar groups worldwide, fed by paper money after 1945: AIPAC, the EU, the UN, public opinion surveyors, fake political parties, charities, advertisers, 'Common Purpose' and Freemason style secret collusion groups, fake sciences, yearbooks, 'factbooks', history control groups, 'religious' groups... However, MacDonald is US-focussed and academically-inclined.
The present volume has a preface which updates the book—this new preface mostly consists of journal reviews and disputes, summaries of books published on the topic since 1998, and some media stories including of course 9/11. The Muslim world, the Black Book of Communism, fanatics like Norman Podhoretz, an account of Charles Lindbergh—'greeted with a torrent of abuse and hatred unparalleled for a mainstream public figure in American history', long and detailed account of ownership of the movie industry and other media, and so on, including attempts to censor Internet. Someone called Joseph Bendersky's 2000 book The "Jewish Threat" provides an account of a new hostile elite, according to MacDonald; an elite with a ridiculous sense of unique superiority. Quite a lot of the introduction looks at the 'north Eurasian and circumpolar culture area' and its probable evolutionary effects.
On Lindbergh, Miles Mathis published on Feb 23rd 2016 his account of Lindbergh's supposed life and achievements, which make it fairly certain that Lindbergh was controlled opposition, designed to black the horrid Nazzies in the eyes of ordinary America without any chance of legal challenge. In fact, this probably was part of the entire 'New Deal' fake ('Josh G', July 2017) distracting away from serious investigation of the 'Great Depression', which tradition MacDonald has in effect followed.
The preface also has interesting material on Jews in the American media (long lists of names and corporations), censorship and Internet, and autobiographical material tracing his realisation that Jews are intentionally and seriously harming white interests, something that Barbara Lerner Specter in 2010 underlined spectacularly. MacDonald dislikes Jews in the media never announcing their affiliation to Judaism.
MacDonald applies in- and out-group strategies to the modern world. MacDonald is concerned about whites in the USA and Europe, and elsewhere, now, and has to face the problem of why whites seem so gullible. (Including MacDonald himself: following the Jewish mass media, he has no idea of prolonged and disgusting white brutality, and, because he doesn't know about it, does not try to disentangle the part played by those just obeying orders, and Jews behind atrocities and killings. This gives him an outdated feel. For example, in 2019, he clearly believes in the 'Cold War', not as a Jewish money-maker, and in NATO, not in its undercover assassination role, but as a stalwart defender).
His comments on whites, evolved in areas with harsh winters, involve 'altruistic punishment', which are based in part on fairly simple experiments of the 'prisoner's dilemma' type, where situations are set up and people's reactions assessed.
He writes 'This suggests the fascinating possibility that the key for a group intending to turn Europeans against themselves is to trigger their strong tendency to altruistic punishment by convincing them of the evil of their own people. Because Europeans are individualists at heart, they they readily rise up in moral anger against their own people once they are seen as free riders and therefore morally blameworthy ...' These sentences (page xxviii in my edition) are probably the key to MacDonald's message. Self-criticism is exploited by Jews, and has resulted in the present situation. This is well worth reading.
Note that MacDonald does not explore the question of bribery or violence against 'out group members' although these are significant in Jewish activity. In Britain at present, Ken Livingstone and MPs, and UAF thugs, illustrate those types. MacDonald may seem naive to practical people whose activities have been harmed by Jews: they are more aware of Jewish misuse of legal and financial power, police activities, and systematicised lies. And he may seem even more naive to people whose experiences, for example of war crimes, prove that many whites are not remotely altruistic.
Interpreting the bare facts of Jewish deception leads to the issue of self-deception: is it possible for persons to shrewdly weigh up their self-interest, but simultaneously deceive themselves? This seems unlikely to me; but intricate logical puzzles of the Russell paradox types on Jewish self-deception are hard to avoid.
A precursor to Kevin MacDonald is The Ordeal of Civility, by John Murray Cuddihy, subtitled Freud, Marx, Lévi-Strauss and the Jewish Struggle with Modernity, published in paperback in 1974. As with MacDonald, it's an explanation of Jewish behaviour, omitting Talmudic material. Cuddihy makes the valuable mnemonic point that 'Id' sounds very much like 'Yid'. To see what Freud meant by 'Id', just think of Yiddish behaviour.
Criticisms: there are many parts of the academic world which are unexamined. (1) History—very obviously there are censorship issues regarding Jewish influences, notably in the Second World War. (2) Economics—I don't think any economics textbooks deal with the issue of paper money or its present Fed/Bank of England monopoly. Arguably, this is the most important single theoretical issue of all. At present Jewish groups actually get paid to organise printing of money. For example Soros in his currency deals is part of a small clique that can virtually print money at will. Unsurprising therefore that he and others like him manage to make money from the system! Similarly MacDonald does not explore such questions as large-scale fraud, profits from wars, and whether depressions and crises are artificially generated. Even Samuelson of the textbook isn't mentioned. (3) Law—MacDonald mentions the US Supreme Court but omits pressure and funding groups—NAACP, Southern Poverty Law Center etc. (4) Science. MacDonald mentions Einstein—the whole issue of fraudulent and corrupt science is, understandably, outside his range, though he does discuss mutual promotion in science and literature—in which members of the closed group publicise other members. Incidentally he doesn't list Khazars in his index, nor does he show any doubts re 'Holocaust' and 9/11. (5) Sociology—MacDonald comments briefly on the Jews Marx, Durkheim and Weber, and on sociology departments in the USA being mostly Jewish, but otherwise says very little about sociology. The once-famous Talcott Parsons as far as I can find isn't mentioned at all.There are or were at one time plenty of small, energetic, fanatical groups—Plymouth Brethren, Samurai, the Scotch, Italian bankers, the Romanovs, Spaniards, Jesuits, Haitians, Protestants, Prussians etc etc. MacDonald does not I think tackle the question of: why Jews? The best guess, or at least my guess, is domination of legally-enforced paper money. If this ceased to be controlled by an undemocratic cult, they presumably would be just another fanatical group.
If you want to understand the modern world, in particular the USA, this book is an important part of the jigsaw. Incidentally, part of the counter-attack is the suggestion his book is hard to read. (The same thing was said of Arthur Butz's book The Hoax of the Twentieth Century). It isn't—the prose is perfectly OK. But it's slightly complicated because there are three specialist vocabularies—evolutionary, technical Jewish, and political/social science. If you can work out the meanings of 'They are groups with higher levels of co-operation with strangers than with extended family members', 'African Americans are disproportionately characterized by low-investment, high-fertility parenting', 'halachic', 'advocate very high levels of immigration from all parts of the world, so that the U.S. will become ... the world's first "Universal Nation."'—then you'll be OK.
My copy, and I presume this applies in the USA too, is a somewhat pricey print-on-demand paperback, and it has to be said the book would be better with more differentiation between typefaces—the index does not have smaller print for subtopics, for instance. My copy has 1st Books on the cover, a website which seems not to exist. Such are the typical by-products of censorship!
People who know nothing about Jewish activities ought to read this book, or similar ones, since otherwise they will be unable to believe the truth about one of the most damaging influences in our time. Once they understand the ways the influence is imposed, they will be better equipped to understand the modern world. For example, I just—years after writing this review—saw someone called Ernest Becker, died 1973, 'awarded' a 'Pulitzer Prize', a 'Freudian anthropologist', described as a 'Jewish-American intellectual'. His interests include baby excreta, and fear of death. Ah yes; of course.
I commend satirists who take Jewish expressions and invert them; this is a highly effective way to expose what non-Jews regard as 'double standards'. There is (or was) a group 'OpenBordersforIsrael' in facebook, for example, started in August 2013, though this is under attack.
A note on the title: I take it the title of The Culture of Critique is itself part of MacDonald's intellectual journey: Jewish activities have been vicious and aggressive, but MacDonald's title suggests something cultured, and something querulous. Probably the depth of Jewish destructiveness was not remotely understood by MacDonald when he wrote this book. But if he'd been more aware, I doubt such a book would have been published.
November, 2012. Here's a comment on www.theoccidentalobserver.net from Mary Thomas (may not be his/her actual name). It illustrates the effect MacDonald can have. She talks of the USA, but it could be any once-white country: France, Britain, Sweden, Canada, Germany, Australia, ... She follows some of MacDonald's omissions, notably war and war expenditure:
White Americans fought their German brothers during the world wars, and then GAVE the Jews a country of their own, and to thank us they give us the genocide of the white race. The evil I'm talking about here, the betrayal of the good will of decent whites here in America who NEVER MEANT ANY HARM WHATSOEVER TO THE JEWS - the evil is beyond my imagination. As we head into the cannibal's pot, you can BET that we're going to take the Jews down with us. Trust me, when whites figure out what has happened, there is going to be hell to pay. The irony is that we loved and admired the Jews.
I can't imagine that ANY of our major problems could have gained any traction whatsoever if not for Jewish influence. Abortion, feminism, porn, affirmative action, massive immigration—you can rattle off the things that are tearing us down and behind each and every one of those issues you will find malevolent Jewish interests. But it takes a bit of intelligence and research to be able to put it together in your mind. I had NEVER had anything but admiration for Jews my entire life. At one time I had totally accepted that the Jews WERE a superior group and that they DESERVED to be the new mandarin class. I was a liberal for most of my adult life. Then came the bailouts of '08, [i.e. 2008 paper money for Jewish fraudulent housing mortgage lending] and I started digging and reading, and I was shaken to the core when I realized that the entire thieving elite was above the law. I sincerely wish that I did not know the things I know now, because the information causes me great emotional pain. But it is what it is, and the truth cannot be denied.
Added at the end of 2016, after Trump's US Presidential election victory: It must be expected and hoped that criticism will be turned against Jewish 'critics' of the types of Adorno, Horkheimer, and Benjamin. And that public understanding will modernize, deepen and expand.
A good example is explanations of human racial differences, which of course have been censored by Jews whenever possible. It may be that long arctic nights influenced whites: once shelter and food are planned in advance, there must be some survival value in caution and waiting for warmer times: perhaps this is a reason why some men spend time on apparently pointless activities—woodcarving, playing croquet, studying horseraces, growing easily available plants, solitary piano playing—were hobbies of men I've met; and perhaps fashion, design, sewing are niches appealing to women. It's easy to see how research, laboratories, workshops, collections, libraries might develop from hobbies. And how a dependant employee mentality might develop. On the other hand, in countries near the equator—with dangers close at hand, and not even much need for shelter—long-term occupations such as animal taming, agriculture, writing, and invention of tools would not instinctively have much appeal. Nor would schooling.
The Occidental Observer, MacDonald's online website, had a comment on blacks and sports, a hard-to-describe mental outlook, an immediacy 'grounded in the here and now', unconcerned with the future or anywhere else in the present, people for whom today really is 'the first day of the rest of your life'. Can such people develop technologies and lifestyles appropriate to themselves, while fending off aggressive parasites? It seems unlikely.
I hope that the whole subject will expand, to include the distribution of abilities and emotions in entire populations—probably the balance between strong, nimble, patient, risk-taking, farsighted, trainable, aggressive etc types must itself be evolved. Specialised parasites find weak points in general populations, so this type of work is of great importance. US researchers might try to find explanations for differences between Aztecs, Incas, plains Indians, woods Indians, Haitians et al where this has been discouraged. Mixed races need to be studied. Genetic changes caused by new technologies are important, too; think of the effects of the invention of writing and reading, for example, and the effects of modern medicine.
All countries with present or past exposure to Jews ought to compare detailed notes, which must certainly show common patterns—for example, the absurd Jewish 'same sex marriage' meme infected many countries at similar dates, and must have had a common source. The Freemason/ Common Purpose/ shabbos goy/ 'Useful Idiot'/ rented thug Jew-conspiratorial power structures need study.
The Culture of Critique is rather narrow, mainly looking at a few books and university departments, and a few issues, notably immigration, in one country, the USA, in the 20th century. It isn't even very critical of so-called Jews: rage and exasperation are considered unscholarly emotions. And it has unrevised baggage: Americans, Brits and Germans bombing, shelling, drowning, shooting and starving each other doesn't sound much like white altruism. But the book is an important seed.
But in my opinion, MacDonald is a bit dishonest in his self-defense: he does not discuss, or allow discussion, on the 'Holocaust', 9/11, and psyops for example (or nuclear and medical issues) because, he says, it's a morass and there's 'no evidence'. But he makes no clear statement that he's concerned almost entirely with Jew-forced mass population movements. This conflicts with the appearance of academic generality of his online and paper output. 'The Occidental Observer' sounds like a dispassionate survey of the entire 'western' world, which may be in the uniform style of US university junk, but is not good enough for serious counters. Its weaknesses are considerable, and are becoming more undeniable. There are dull, otiose, and ill-informed pieces, probably sheltering cowards; and book reviews which say nothing of sources, but read like standardised Jewish eulogy sales pieces; and timewasting 'trolls', such as 'David Ashton', (supposedly a sociologist) and 'Pierre de Craon' (Roman Catholic of disgustingly Jesuitical, i.e. Jewish, type) who are permitted to repeat their lies, apparently indefinitely; and evasions of Jews and war crimes. Maybe it should be rechristened The Small Mind Observer.
Note added 7 Nov 2018: After watching James Edwards (bald, talked more about himself than MacDonald, referred to KM as 'Doctor' rather than 'Professor') with MacDonald more-or-less in rabbit in the headlights mode, I did some searching, and found a book review of Sept 2012 by MacDonald, of Fairness and Freedom: A History of Two Open Societies, New Zealand and the United States by David Fischer (OUP). The truly odd thing, probably taken from the book itself, as Oxford University Press is of course Jew-unaware, is MacDonald's failure to mention Jews: Puritanism for example might be a Jewish technique to make people live with poverty, after Cromwell's victory. Quakers arguably are another Jew-invented pseudo-religion. Cavaliers are described behaviorally, but not as reduced aristocrats. The 'kinder, gentler British Empire of the mid-19th century and later' is oblivious of South Africa and Jewish control of mines.
'The Occidental Quarterly' is published by the 'Charles Martel Society'; that Society's website avoids the Jewish issue. An online talk of Kevin Macdonald and Paul Fromm showed Fromm claiming, apparently seriously, that journalists now (2019) would have been thrown out of 'Journalism School' a few decades ago—he had no idea that journalistic lies went back as far as 1945, and 1913, and the US Civil War, and 1776. I'm afraid MacDonald is either feeble, or just another agent. Disappointing.
Note added 22 June 2021: I've just noticed (in Occidental Observer, June 2021) that Robert Hughes, a once-trumpeted art critic (attacked by Miles Mathis!) had a book The Culture of Complaint: the Fraying of America published by Oxford University Press in 1993. When it came out amid a flurry of attention in the autumn of 1993, Hughes and his book became the topic of conversation everywhere—from op-ed pieces to cocktail parties to late-night talk shows. The writing is superb, the topics timely and interesting, and Hughes's ascerbic wit and trenchant insights on American culture and politics are consistently engaging, sometimes brilliant, and often hilarious. Well, maybe. But without mentioning Jews.