MacDonald: Okay.

Ford: Hey that sounds much better! Thank you sir.

MacDonald: Okay, good.

Ford: Oh yeah, this is great! Wow! So much to talk about!

Okay. What is your perspective on the default hypothesis and why your perspective on Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy is superior?

MacDonald: Well the default hypothesis is just absolutely the most basic thing. I mean, it’s like jews are smart. I haven’t looked at it lately, but I guess it’s the idea that simply the jews are smarter, or something. And that explains everything. On the other hand, I mean, what I’m trying to do is more than that. Acknowledge that jews are smart, they are on average. But the default hypothesis is the simplest possible explanation that might account for it.

I’m trying to do something more ambitious. Nothing wrong with that. It’s just a matter of finding if it’s true, or not. I mean, I have to show it’s true, but if I do show, then I’ve shown something more than the default hypothesis. And that is, you know, in science you want the truth. You don’t want, simplicity is wonderful, but the default hypothesis is certainly is good. It’s something I guess. But it’s not going to be where you want to be ultimately. You want to find out were jewish motivations important? Were the sense of jewish interests important? Those are the kinds of things you want to do.

Ford: Now one thing that’s interesting about the Cofnas critique is that Cofnas is obviously a race realist, and so is Steven Pinker. And I think there were two other jews and a non jew on the peer review are signing off on a paper of race realism. Did you see any significance to that?

[05:02]

MacDonald: Well it’s interesting. I had heard that I guess. That he is a race realist, which is wonderful. And I think Pinker is also. I mean, I don’t know about Pinker. The only thing I’ve seen by Pinker that suggests that is he does believe that jews are smarter. And he does believe that there’s some kind of selective pressures within the jewish community to produce that. That’s certainly part way there. I don’t know if he believes in black White IQ differences, I really don’t, but it’s interesting. It’s part way. It’s shows he’s not completely, you know, got his head in the sand! And then yeah he’s a pretty smart guy. I’m not denying that either.

Ford: If these if these professors are signing off on an academic paper, you know, based on race realism, saying that jews are smarter, they are implicitly signing off that other people are less intelligent.

MacDonald: They are. And I think, you know, they would not want to talk about blacks being smarter than, … the Whites being smarter than blacks, or something like that. Although I’m not sure. But I’ve never seen anything by Pinker suggesting he believes that.

And I haven’t read really anything of Cofnas at all apparently. Apparently he did something about Samuel Morton, the 19th century anthropologist. I got some email about that. And it did suggest that he was more of a race realist, or something. But I, you know, I really don’t know anything about the man, except seeing this article he did about me.

Ford: So was this the first time in your memory that you heard the name Nathan Cofnas?

MacDonald: Yeah! That was the only time, you know, and it sort of shocked me! It took me by surprise. It, what happened Saturday was it Saturday night?

Ford: Yeah.

MacDonald: Something like that and I didn’t get going on it. I sort of glanced at it on Sunday and then I started working on a reply on Monday. Pretty furiously, and I ended up with 18 thousand words for heaven’s sake, it in a rather short period of time. So it’s rather intense. I don’t like things hanging out there! You know, when someone posts saying, you know, there’s an automatic feeling:

“Wow! This guy knows what he’s doing! You know, and he’s really nailed MacDonald and everything!”

I just don’t like the idea that it’s sitting out there. So, I mean, I could have taken more time, maybe done a little better job, but and I may revise it in the future. But I wanted to get it out there! I don’t like things sitting out there.

Ford: One thing I loved about your rebuttal and about your writing in general, is the emotional honesty! Like you don’t mind [08:02] putting yourself on the line and using your own life and the most painful parts of your life as examples of your theories.

MacDonald: [chuckling] well, you know, I’m used to it! I’ve been defending myself for 20 years! I mean, not like this quite. But if you go to my website I have a section on replies to my critics. And people have been all over me 20 years. At my university as I said, in the introduction, or footnote. I mean, I was subjected to intense hostility on faculty email lists, and people arguing against different things. They never really went after “Culture of Critique”, but they made points about different things.

And I was for a while in the late 90s after the books came out I was on this history email discussion, saying, you know, about jewish history. Somebody got me on there. And boy, that was intense! , because they were really going after me! But,  I answered them as best I could, and I didn’t feel I was being nailed, you know. So I’m used to it! I’ve got a whole folder what I got. It’s called “Defense” where I’ve written all these defenses of my work. And it’s repetitive! So I’ve seen it all, basically.

And I’ve been around the block on a lot of these things. And one thing that surprised me about Cofnas is he’d seem to think that having a counterexample, if you find a jew who criticized psychoanalysis, or criticizes Israel, or something, I mean, as if that can refute what I’m saying! I just didn’t understand how you could think that! Because I mean, I have seen it before and it’s remarkable that came up so often in his critique.

[10:00]

MacDonald: Well, I wouldn’t want to venture a guess on that. I mean, there are a lot of jews, as I say in there, that are do good work. And I think that’s not the issue. The issue, are these particular movements that have been very influential. And I do get into the little bit on the philosophy of science in the middle of it somewhere. I talk about being “falsifiable”, because at one point he said that I’ve never acknowledged any evidence that could refute the theory. And I’ve seen other people say that.

But it’s so obvious! The way to refute my theory is simply say that I’m wrong about my historical accounts! It’s like any historian. And, you know, what my books are basically, the basic approach is evolutionary psychology, but within that, quite often, history becomes important. In the culture of critique it’s intellectual history. Basically psychoanalysis, Frankfurt School, and so on.

So if you want to show I’m wrong. All you have to do is say well, you know, psychoanalysis is not a jewish movement! Well Cofnas never even tries to do that! He doesn’t even go there! He makes little, you know, forays here and there. And again, when it comes out, and I’ve always done those with my critics. I go through every last point that they make! I don’t leave anything out! And so that’s why they ended up being very long. I mean, I quoted him, and had to write on it, and sometimes, a lot of times I brought in stuff from the books. So it got very lengthy. But, I don’t like to think that:

“Well he didn’t answer this he didn’t answer that, you know, he debated this and so on so.”

If I’d written a five-page thing and pointed out a few things, that would be one thing. But I think then I’d be open to that kind of charge. But he made all these claims about “cherry-picking”, and what was the other thing, “misrepresentation”. Well, I went through every one where that was claimed. And I mean, I’d like to see him do the same, because in my reply I said that he’s misinterpreting, misrepresenting what I’m saying, in a number of places. And in one case I did say it was cherry-picking. So I mean, if he wants to repeat what I said, he’s got a job on his hands. But if he wants to do as thorough a job as I did. And we’ll see if he does that. I don’t know if he. I haven’t heard from him since it since I posted my thing.

Ford: Did Cofnas in any way make an intellectual contribution to this discussion?

MacDonald: Well I didn’t feel it did in the end. He didn’t really engage any of the real thesis of the thing. I mean, one of the most heartening things on Saturday, or Sunday, I got an email from a professor I know. A very well-regarded guy, respected in evolutionary psychology. He said he just didn’t engage any of you main points. He didn’t! So even if he was right about all these things he said, it didn’t really threaten any of the major points. I mean, take psychoanalysis. Did he ever show, did he even try to show that these guys didn’t identify as Jews? No! Did he try to show that they didn’t have a sense of jewish interest? No! And that’s the fundamental thing! Did he try to show that they really didn’t have any influence? Well, that’s absurd in the case of psychoanalysis! Very absurd!

So in a way I was heartened by that, because, very heartened by that! And when I looked through this thing, I had to agree. I mean, I hadn’t even read it all yet. But it just doesn’t do anything. Take the chapter on the Left. Well, it doesn’t show that jewish identification, … he never even raises one example! I’ve got dozens of examples in there! He never gives one example where he says:

“Well these guys didn’t really identify as Jews because, you know, X Y & Z.”

Well he doesn’t do that! So again, I was feeling that he hadn’t really addressed the point. The points that he did make, were interesting, but they didn’t attack the central thesis, you know. So a lot of it did involve, well, you know, as a misrepresentation you didn’t, you ignored this, or something like that. Okay, I went through that and I think I rebutted it. We will see what happens now.

Ford: So how would one falsify your theory of judaism being a group evolutionary strategy?

MacDonald: Well it’s like I said a minute ago. You would show that, … the basic idea of a group evolutionary strategy is simply a group that is an effective group in terms of natural selection and evolution. And what that would require, is you have to show that they are able to regulate the behavior of the members of the group. And in my first book “People That Shall Dwell Alone” is about that. It goes into traditional jewish societies. It doesn’t even get to 20th century, it’s almost all the ancient world and so on, and into the 19th and early 20th century, maybe. But if you look at those communities they were very tightly structured! Okay. So the behavior of jews towards each other were highly regulated!

For example if once you had a business monopoly, a second Jews couldn’t go in there and try to challenge that monopoly. In other words, if it was a fellow jew, they couldn’t do that. So if, for example, a jew failed to pay his taxes, do other things required by the community, well they would punish him. And, you know, in the 19th century in Russia, they had jails in synagogues. And if somebody married a non-jew, well the whole family would be tarnished.

Those are the kinds of things, the kind of sanctions on individual jewish behavior within the community. That is what makes it a group evolutionary strategy, because you’re able to regulate the members of the in-group and prevent cheaters! The problem, you know, the theoretical problem has always been. And that’s how I started out. I do mention that in the rebuttal, in the first couple pages, about how I got to where I am.

Again, a lot of it’s, maybe, in footnotes. But what I say is, that I got the idea of a group evolutionary strategy, I started out I was interested in monogamy. Why is monogamy such a big thing in Western European history? And it’s not the case in so many other cultures. If you look at the Arab world, Africa, China, you don’t see monogamy. And so I ended up seeing that. I noticed that there are a lot of social controls, that people were regulating marriage. The church was regulating marriages.

And then, I wrote a book in 1988 on developmental psychology. But the last chapter I focused on the Spartans. The ancient Greek Spartans. And you see there’s a very engineered society. It was started by a guy named Lycurgus who had an idea. I mean, he had a program a blueprint for how this should work. And so Spartan kids were brought up to be soldiers. Their whole life was to be a soldier! They were taken away from their families.

They were, so this was all an engineered thing, in the same way jewish communities you have these religious studies. You teach them these things. And everything in child development is very much programmed. And so I went from the Spartans, and I didn’t really then, really focused on the idea this is a contribution to thinking about humans in evolutionary terms. It really hadn’t been done before. And that is to emphasize the group level., because again it was a heresy back in the 1980s. It was just, you know, everything was individual selection. Groups don’t matter. All groups can be analyzed as a bunch of individuals.

I said no! Human groups are different from animals. We can regulate ourselves in a way from external pressures, these  social controls and ideology. And if you look at the Spartans they would have an ideology that would rationalize the whole thing.

Of course, Judaism have had an ideology of how they rationalize what they did within their communities. But by what they did that within those communities made them effective groups from an evolutionary standpoint, evolutionary selection between groups.

Ford: As jews are now marrying out, well above 50%, does that mean that jews are no longer employing a group evolutionary strategy? Or is it no longer effective? Or is this part of the group evolutionary strategy, marrying non-jews?

MacDonald: Yeah well, I think that’s the thing. I mean, the phenomenon of intermarriage is certainly very common in the West now. You could be talking about America and other European based countries. And that’s, because these controls broke down really! I mean, hey, you know, I actually should write about that! Yeah, the point is, in traditional society you couldn’t marry anybody you wanted! That was, you know, if you did, your whole family would be screwed! You know, there was just no way to do that!

Those controls broke down in the 19th century. And the jews was, you know, this was called “emancipation”. They left they the jewish ghettos, they went to the universities, they, you know, did all these things. And when they got out in the real world, they started intermarrying. And they sort of lost those intense community ties.

But if you look in Israel you don’t see intermarriage, because they’re pretty much there with other jews. And it’s interesting that in the early 20th century that was the whole point of Zionism. A very major point of Zionism, as it developed in the early 20th century, was to prevent assimilation and to prevent intermarriage! They could see this happening already in Germany. And they they were thinking that this is the end of Judaism. And you still see that. A lot of jewish activists like, say Alan Dershowitz, they are very concerned that in the long run there won’t be any jews, or there won’t be any sort of ethnic jews. It’s going to change that dramatically.

Ford: Is there a certain rate of intermarriage that would invalidate your theory of Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy? I mean, if it goes north of 60 percent, if it goes north of 70 percent?

MacDonald: Yeah I think it’s interesting, the fact is that what I’ve done, you know. The first book was on traditional societies and most of the second book was really. The third book [“The Culture of Critique”] is on really, almost all of it is really on secular Jews, who are not that attached to the jewish community. But they do identify as Jews. And they have a sense of belonging to a jewish community. But it’s not like it was. And in a way what you have to hesitate to say is that Diaspora Judaism in America is a group evolutionary strategy.

I almost hesitate to call it that. I would call it that in traditional societies for sure! That’s the whole point of the first book. And you might even say that in Israel, because they, you know, it’s an ethno-state. But, and in America, certainly there are vestiges of that. But the point of “The Culture of Critique” is that it’s almost like I get out of that framework. And the most important thing is how do these jews, how are they influencing culture?

And the fact is, even though they may be intermarried, and maybe they’re not like, Theodor Adorno was only half jewish, I think. And yeah he was very strongly identified as a jew. And so he participated his intellectual movements that I covered. So, was he part of a group evolutionary strategy? Well, I suppose he is. What I’d have to say is that the ones who are participating in the group evolutionary strategy are the strongly identified jews who are actively trying to promote jewish interests as they see them. Of course, there are going to be disputes among them as to what jewish interests are.

So I would say that Freud was part of a group evolutionary strategy in the sense that, you know, and intellectuals today. If you look at, say the American, the ADL, say. Someone like Stephen Greenblatt, Abe Foxman. Those guys are strongly identified jews, they are doing what they see as advancing jewish interests. At some point  and another point I think I do make somewhere in the reply, is that if you look at the leadership of the Jewish community, it’s still ethnically jewish. I mean, you look at something like Greenblatt. He’s got two jewish parents, four jewish grandparents all the way back. Abe Foxman. I don’t know of any real leadership position here that’s held by people who are intermarried and so on.

But, in any case, I mean, it’s certainly the case that there’s a lot of intermarriage. But even that, a lot of the children of these people do strong identify as Jews, and a lot don’t. And so a lot of them are going to fall by the wayside. They’re not going to be jewish anymore. So, you know, your mom’s jewish and your dad isn’t, then so then you marry a non jew, pretty soon, it’s not going to be there anymore. And your probably not even gonna be welcome in the jewish community.

But at some point it’s gonna dissipate and end really did you got a jewish great-great-great grandparent, so what?

[25:02]

Ford: So let’s just say for discussions sake, just to push you on this point. If jewish out marriage rates in the United States climb above 70%, it would be then fair to say that, most jews in the United States and not following a group evolutionary strategy?

MacDonald: Yeah i’d probably say most of them are not, but you’d have to interview them and see what they’re up to. You know, I mean, part of it would just be, you know, how strongly do you identify as a Jews? You know, do you, are you active in jewish organizations? Do you like, …, because after all there are two elements of the whole thing. One is genetics, and one is culture. Now for centuries the culture and the genetics were sort of tied together completely! , but that’s not the case so much anymore. But you could have a person who’s a quarter jewish, or something like that, and he strongly identifies as a Jews. But I think most of those people will not, and they will their children will not marry a Jews. And so they’re sort of dropping out of the whole thing.

Ford: So, I mean, your theory of Judaism is a group evolutionary strategy does not have to apply it to every single jewish community, like, …

MacDonald: Oh no! Not at all.

Ford: Much better than other jewish communities. For plenty of jewish communities it’s not going to be a useful tool of analysis. Like you said a jewish community with an 80% intermarriage rate, it’s not really a useful tool for that sort of community. Is that fair?

MacDonald: Yeah I mean, 80 percent, yeah, even 60% you’ve got an awful lot of people who don’t identify much anymore. And they’re gonna fall out. And that’s a concern that jewish activists. I know that. I mean, when I wrote the book and it’s interesting, because in 1998 I wrote two books. And they both dealt with that issue that in the last chapter of each of those books.

And at that time there was a lot of writing within the jewish community, in the jewish press. Condemning intermarriage and trying to shore it up. And trying to prevent it., because all the studies started coming out, you know, 30, 40, or 50 percent, you know, at that time 50 percent was, I think, was what people were saying. And then people could hardly believe it. But there’s a real backlash against that attempt to shore it up. Well I guess it failed! It’s gotten worse.

Ford: Okay. So there’s a guy in the chatroom who lives in Europe, I don’t believe he’s jewish, but his boss is jewish. And his boss just looks very askance at Zionism.

MacDonald: Yeah.

Ford: So in the modern world like after the “Holocaust” we’ve now had a jewish state for approximately 60 plus, 70 years. In this modern world if you have a jewish community where they are opposed to the existence of an ethno-jewish state, you know, currently known as Israel, and then, and that’s widespread, let’s say it’s like 60% of the community, just to use that figure from intermarriage. Does that then challenge the usefulness of the tool of Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy, when you have a majority of a jewish community are opposed to the jewish state.

MacDonald: Well in the reply I talked about there is a jewish Orthodox, jewish sect that does not accept Israel. Yet they strong identify as jews. It does exist! And there are certainly critics of Israel. One of the points I make in the reply, is that critics of Israel are getting more and more common among jews. I mean, one of the websites I read every day is Mondowiess. A great website! And they’re very critical of Zionism as it exists in Israel now. And these guys are strongly identified as Jews.

Phillip Wiess is the Editor and he’s talks about that. And I think he wants to feel part of the jewish community. But at the same time, he’s a sort of liberal lefty kind of guy. Who can’t stand with what he’s seeing over there. And so he’s very critical. And he probably thinks in the long run, this is not a good strategy for jews. To have a state that’s doing, you know, the ethnic cleansing, they’re taking over the West Bank, they’re seizing more and more land, and annexing, and so on.

And those are the things that are giving Israel a sort of pariah status in the world now! Well if you’re jewish, you gotta say, well either you’re gonna say, well that’s fine, you know. But a lot of jews I think are sort of clenching their teeth and they’re saying, you know:

“Are we doing the right thing here?”

[30:00]

But again, another point I make though, I think in Israel, within Israel, the fanatics are in charge! And I made that point in response to the review by the “Israel Lobby” the book by Mearsheimer and Walt., because their point, they wanted, they are very critical of Israel and how it’s influenced our foreign policy. And they’re very critical about what Israel’s done to the Palestinians. So what they say is for Israel’s own good they should shape up! And they should stop all this stuff! And, you know, become a sort of regular state. But I don’t see that happening.

And what I see is that people like Natalie Bennett is talking about, you know, succeeding Netanyahu. Well, he’s a leader of the secular movement. I think that it’s just going to get more intense as time goes on. I mean, the people having the children over in Israel tend to be the more orthodox. This is the case in this country.

Where in Israel they are coming to a majority there if not already. I don’t think a sort of, you know, the people who started Israel, the so-called labor Zionist, they were very much liberal on the Left and all that and even though, they were aggressive and so on. It’s gotten more intense over the years, obviously, beginning with the Begin government back in 1970. So yeah, I think Israel is getting more extreme. I think it’s going to keep going that way.

Ford: A jewish reader of yours, writes in the chat room:

“If individualism are key to Western beauty and greatness, how can this be retained with ethnic cohesion?”

MacDonald: Well yeah, it is a very good question. What I would hope is that we could have a period where we would sort of give up our individualism, re-establish ourselves, get back on our feet, and then reestablish individualism afterwards. We’re gonna need some cohesion here for a while. We’re going to need some sense of the mission that we have to right things in Europe, and America, Australia, New Zealand, and other places.

So I think that’s gonna require more of a collective mentality. And, you know, I’m a northern European. I’m quite individualist, but at the same time I understand the need to sort of submerge myself in a movement! I realized I’m not going to necessarily approve of everything everybody does. I have to look at a lot of different alternatives. But the point is that I’m going to join a more collective society, submerge my individualism a little bit, in order for the greater good.

Ford: Right. So if jews are prominently represented on both the hereditarian race realist side, you’ve had a lot of jews speaking at American Renaissance, as well as being prominently represented on the opposite, the egalitarian side. What explanatory power does your theory of Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy have, if you have prominent jews, and in numbers, on both sides of the debate such as the hereditarian versus the egalitarian perspective on racial IQ differences?

Oh! What happened? I lost Kevin MacDonald! Doggone it! Let me throw in an invite back so. Sorry!

MacDonald: Sorry I looked at the thing and it said iI was off and now I realized it wasn’t. Anyway, the answer to your question is, and this came up, you know, in my reply. The question isn’t a matter of counting heads. The question is who’s been influential? And so in chapter two I talk about that, and the point is that the anti-hereditarian have in a very real sense won that day. And the reason they won it is, because of jewish activism.

[34:55]

And the prime example is Stephen Jay Gould. I mean, and I give a lot of attention to him in that chapter. He’s been enormously influential. Harvard professor, you know, he also wrote a lot in the popular press. He had a column at Natural History. He became like a superstar, an academic superstar! I saw him talk once, and he was a brilliant speaker! You know, he gave a slide show, he had three screens going, he was very flamboyant and talked with absolute confidence! I’ll never forget it, I’ll never forget!

He said right towards the end, and he’s talking about the human brain, or something. He said:

“What could be more obvious and that the human brain, our ideas and everything, our brain itself is not under natural selection!”

And I just, you know, I’m sitting there in the audience, and I’m saying:

“Are you kidding me?”

But he said it was such a aplomb! You know, in a roomful of academics and they’re all cheering wildly! I mean, it was like this guy was very, very, effective! So again, it’s the same way with it with Israel! I mean, there are a lot of jews now who are criticizing Israel, but who’s important? AIPAC is important! The Sheldon Adelson is important! Haim Sabin is important! You know, there that’s where the money comes from. And if you should cross AIPAC, you know, if you cross AIPAC you’re gonna be in trouble if your politician. So even if you find a substantial percentage of jews are critical of Israel, or something like that, it may not mean a darn thing! You see what I mean?

You can have people like Nancy Siegel and Richard Herstein, the co-author of “The Bell Curve”. Great scientists! But what happened to “The Bell Curve”? Nothing! Yeah, I mean, aft 20 years, you know, that’s been around since 1994! And it was a huge blow up at the time, but has “The Bell Curve” influenced public policy at all? Has “The Bell Curve” influenced? Charles Murray would be the first to admit this! Herstein had a dialogue on this, a long time ago, around 1994.

So the point is, not how many jews are in which way, whatever movement, the question is who won and why! And so that’s what you have to look at in all these cases, really.

Ford: A question from the chat:

“What do you think about Jared Taylor including Ashkenazim as White?”

MacDonald: Well I’m not sure. You know, in a way Ashkenazim are White. I mean, there’s a certain substantial European admixture there. Maybe 40 percent, overall. But, you know, if it goes up one 1% a year a generation, over forty generations you’re talking about that. And so there is a substantial admixture. An awful lot of Ashkenazi jews certainly look European. I think of someone like Jon Stewart. I mean, he doesn’t look jewish at all to me. So there are these genetic reasons why you might say that, but what I’ve always said is two things, two points I’d like to make.

One point is, I think that Jared Taylor may see this is a tactical issue, more than anything else. He realizes that jews are powerful and I think he wants to have a movement trying to recruit White America basically and get ourselves back on our feet. And one way to do that, maybe, is to get jews on our side. And I don’t disagree with that. I think more power to him! If he wins, hey, I’d say:

“Jared you won! Congratulations! You had the best strategy!”

But the other thing is that besides genetics there’s also identity. And the fact is that most jews, you know, the jewish education is geared to seeing jews as a victimized group historically, as a persecuted group. Christianity as a persecuting force, and again I was thinking of Ford, because Ford came up in the reply and, you know, where he talked about the persecuting Catholic Church and seeing the Catholic churches as their enemy. Well, you’re seeing an essential Western institution as an enemy.

And, of course, the reason for that is during the Middle Ages some of the Pope’s, not all popes, but some of the Popes were very anti-jewish. You had this in the Spanish Inquisition which had strong religious overtones. You had these Crusaders in the Middle Ages killing jews on the way the Holy Land. So into the present really.

[40:00]

So there is that, there. But what that means is a lot of jews do not identify with Western culture. Even if they are, you know, maybe if they are 60 percent European. Some of them probably are, some of them probably much less. But they psychologically they don’t identify with it. So it’s not just genetics, it’s identity. How you think of yourself.

And the fact is, these jews who were involved in these jewish intellectual movements I talked about, were strongly identified as jews. And so that’s the critical thing is jewish identity for them. And that’s where I had to show it in each of those books.

Ford: Now, in your chapter on the Frankfurt School, you said that these jewish intellectuals strongly identified as jews. But I believed the only evidence you brought to support that was that they cared about the “Holocaust”. Now you don’t have to strongly identify as a jew to care about the “Holocaust”. So, on what basis do you say that the Frankfurt School intellectuals strongly identified as jews?

MacDonald: Why I have to look over my old chapter again [chuckling]. It is more than that! Believe me. I mean, there was some examples of that.

Ford: Okay.

MacDonald: I mean, Horkheimer especially. Look at his writings, especially as he got older, very strongly. And you look at the book like “Dialect of the xxx”. I spend a lot of time on that in the reply. I mean, it is such, so obviously an apologetic. You know, it’s an attempt to say basically that, an attempt to account for anti-semitism, but in the most convoluted, weird way!

Where the actual behavior of jews in this historical time doesn’t matter. It’s not like they ever went into something that happened in the 16th century, or the Inquisition, or something, and tried to see what was going on the other side. Instead it was a psychoanalytic. It was just crazy! And that can only happen if you are strongly motivated to vindicate jewish history. And to exculpate any kind of blame for it.

Ford: Yeah. It seems though that the Frankfurt School did push the same kind of multicultural agenda both on jews and non-jews. It’s not like they were pushing cohesion, unity, and exclusion for jews, and then the opposite for non-jews. They were, by and large, pushing the same recipe on both jews and non-jews. Would you agree with that?

MacDonald: Well! Were they pushing it on non-jews? I had sections, let me look at my reply, because they did come up in this whole discussion. Let me see if I can find it. Well at a basic level you had Frankfurt School funded by the American jewish Committee. It’s hard to believe that they had no jewish identification. It’s hard to believe they didn’t care about Jewish continuity. That’s certainly what the American jewish Committee was all about. I have a long section, I’d like to be able to see it, in order to really answer this here, in my reply.

Ford: What chapter is that in “The Culture of Critique?”

MacDonald: Chapter five, yeah.

Ford: Chapter five, okay. Let’s scroll down to, because you do your rebuttal basically chapter by chapter, so that makes it a lot to, …

MacDonald: Well almost, he went out-of-order. He’d put three after five. Okay, let’s look at the Frankfurt School.

Ford: Here, just while you while you’re scanning that, to see what you want to highlight, I just want to bring to attention Nathan’s response to your rebuttal. So Nathan shared with me a draft of his response. He still needs to do more work on it, and he gave me permission to quote from it, but not to share it. So that’s, you know, those of the ground rules that I’m dealing with. And this is Nathan. He’s saying:

“That members of the Frankfurt School had a strong reaction to the “Holocaust”, which is hardly surprising, does not mean that they strongly identified as jews, or supported jewish ethnocentrism.”

MacDonald: Is this a reply to what I wrote now?

Ford: Yeah, yeah he hasn’t published this as yet, so if you feel that I’m engaging in dirty pool, I won’t, …

[45:02]

MacDonald: No. Again, I would like to see what, … I’m scrolling through my own reply here now. Okay I said I do not assume they approve of this behavior simply, because they were jewish. The first part, a strong identification of the jewish principal figures and the group’s most influential work. “The Authoritarian Personality”. Max Horkheimer says “the goal of philosophy is to vindicate jewish history.”