>I suppose if you try hard enough you can find a foul-mouthed hate-monger (probably a provocateur). It's more honest to find the BEST presentation of an idea you disagree with. In this case, it's the writings of Kevin MacDonald. I was stunned when I first read someone so scholarly from the far right, but not surprised to see the left and the Zionists united against him, as it confirmed my hypothesis.

 

I wrote a bunch of forums posts about five or six years ago after I read Macdonald's tetralogy on Jews. I can send multiple links if you'd like.

 

To summarize my opinion about K-Mac, C&P'ing something I wrote elsewhere:

 

[start quote]

 

I've read his trilogy and The Culture of Critique, and I can tell you that the guy made some decent points, albeit controversial ones. I think if you caught most Jews with even a surface-level knowledge of the issues at hand on their most honest day, they'd concede, e.g., that Jewish endogamy structures in Eastern Europe, while perhaps not consciously "eugenic," certainly ended up having that effect, at least to the extent that intelligence is at least partly inheritable. He's dead on regarding the value in Jewish marriage arrangements to marry a wealthy woman to an intelligent man (the latter evidenced by dedication to Talmud study). I also think he makes some pretty good points regarding ingroup/outgroup conflict as a major identifying trait of Eastern European Jewry before WWII, although these points could be (and should be) as easily applied to, say, the Amish in the Midwestern United States or Gypsies. And, to his credit, Macdonald does apply these principles in his studies of the Overseas Chinese, who provide a great point of comparison to Ashkenazi Jews.

 

Now put yourself in Macdonald's shoes: You get a three-book contract from a well-respected educational publisher and they publish your books, including A People That Shall Dwell Alone (probably the most offensive of the trilogy, although I would maintain not intentionally or aggressively so); the books gain the attention of anti-Semites; the ADL, SWC, et al. react as they always do; the editors (who should have taken a much closer look at the work before ever even considering contracting Macdonald) panic and dump him; and the same anti-Semites are right there to welcome Macdonald in. The guy's only human, after all, and I think we're all well aware that reactions such as his are all too common.

 

I do think there was some latent anti-Semitism there to begin with, as well as some Pearson-esque Social Darwinism, which you see in PTSDA and elsewhere in the trilogy, but he doesn't really get going until he becomes Jewry's bête noir. The guy probably had decent intentions going on, i.e., he would apply previously existing principles of evolutionary psychology and anthropology to Ashkenazi Jews as a scholarly undertaking, and he didn't figure he was touching the third rail of scholarship, which is this: Don't say negative things about the Jews — even if they're true — unless you're Jewish, in which case you had still better be really fucking careful.

 

[end quote]

 

I also think K-Mac's scholarship is a little shoddy, but I think you get the point of what I'm saying.

 

I think where you and I really disagree is in the notion that someone will present anti-Semitism to me in a manner that is qualitatively different from anyone else. I don't think a value system like anti-Semitism has that ability, to be honest.

 

Unless you were presenting Macdonald to me as an example of anti-Zionism?

 

>No, actually, I'm not aware! On the contrary, I think fear of 'crossing the line' is more of a problem than actually doing so. The Palestine solidarity movement is paralyzed with fear of being anti-Semitic. Contrast this with the anti-apartheid movement - it wasn't worried about being anti-white. In fact, it contained a faction which wanted to ethnically cleanse white people from South Africa (fortunately, that faction was routed by Mandela's thugs).

 

I want to be sure I understand you correctly.

 

If what you're saying is that Palestinian militants need to embrace their anti-Semitism in the same manner that some ANC types embraced their hatred of all white people, regardless of their political orientation, because it frees their hand in struggling for national liberation, then I still disagree, but at least I can see your point.

 

Anti-Semitism for its own sake, however, on the part of people with no real gripe against Jews — even a subset of Jewry, as Zionists and Israelis surely are — strikes me as something else entirely. Something equal to racism, sexism, and homophobia in its inherent, to be frank, evil and its retrograde nature.

 

Join me in a thought experiment, eh?

 

Let's choose three anti-Zionist intellectuals to assess this situation. Let's choose only non-Jews and non-Arabs and stick to Westerners, in some kind of attempt to be scientific. First, we need to identify a non-anti-Semitic anti-Zionist.

 

How about Robert Fisk? Can we agree on him as anti-Zionist but not anti-Semitic?

 

OK, now let's choose an anti-Zionist who *is* clearly anti-Semitic. How about Joseph Sobran?

 

If you disagree with either of those, we can negotiate, but the key part of the thought experiment is this:

 

Let's choose someone who I say is anti-Semitic and you say is not. Let's say K-Mac.

 

Now: Is he closer to Fisk or closer to Sobran? Why? And in answering that question, consider whether the people we're discussing do two things:

 

(1) Do they judge Jews as a group rather than individual Jews as individual people?

 

(2) Do they apply one standard to Jews and one standard to everyone else, most importantly themselves?

 

>Here's the latest from Atzmon. He's beginning to adopt the 'anti-anti-fascist' position:

 

Yeah, I read that one.

 

Atzmon is a strange case, to be sure. I think he flirts with the dividing line between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. I can't say he crosses it, however. I think he's careless, though, in the way that Israel Shahak was, e.g. His intentions are probably fine, but who can be sure?