Recently retired from academic life, the 72 year-old former psychology professor has transitioned from being the most prominent purveyor of academic anti-Semitism in the United States to a white nationalist movement activist.
MacDonald penned a trilogy of heavily footnoted pseudo-academic tomes that claim to “prove” that Jews are genetically driven to destroy Western societies. He goes further, adding that anti-Semitism, far from being an irrational hatred for Jews, is a logical reaction to Jewish success in societies controlled by other ethnic or racial groups. For instance, in his 2002 work, The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements, MacDonald argues “”In the 20th century many millions of people have been killed in the attempt to establish Marxist societies based on the ideal of complete economic and social leveling, and many more millions of people have been killed as a result of the failure of Jewish assimilation into European societies…. [T]he result has been a widening gulf between the cultural successes of Jews and Gentiles and a disaster for society as a whole.”
In 2000, MacDonald took a major step towards white nationalists when he agreed to testify for notorious British Holocaust Denier, David Irving. At the trial, MacDonald alleged that the suppression of Irving’s work was “an example of Jewish tactics for combating anti-Semitism.” MacDonald was also quoted as saying he was an “agnostic” about the Holocaust, though he denied the accuracy of the quote.
Attention Surrounding MacDonald’s testimony led to several colleagues at California State University, Long Beach denouncing MacDonald’s bigotry and sanctioning him. He was also removed from teaching some courses.
Four years later, MacDonald published Understanding Jewish Influence: A Study in Ethnic Activism, which further cemented his status as a rising star in white nationalist circles. His work has been praised by many neo-Nazis, including David Duke.
Beyond his books, MacDonald has numerous other outlets for his anti-Semitism. He has served as editor of the racist and anti-Semitic journal, The Occidental Quarterly. He runs a website called The Occidental Observer. Established as a companion to The Occidental Quarterly, the mission statement of The Occidental Observer declares that “The situation is particularly worrisome because present demographic trends, especially massive non-white immigration into Western countries, threaten to make whites a minority in these societies within the foreseeable future. Most whites have a gut feeling that the present trends do not bode well for their future and for the prospects of their descendants. We predict that whites will develop a stronger sense of their own identity and interests as a natural outcome of becoming a minority. We are simply ahead of the curve—an unsettling harbinger of things to come.”
With his scholarly career in shambles, MacDonald officially made the jump from academic anti-Semitism to white nationalist organizing in October 2009, when he became the director of the group American Third Position (A3P). Now known as the American Freedom Party, the white nationalist political party claims “to represent the unique political interests of White Americans.” The group was originally the brainchild of a group of Orange County racist skinheads. Several other prominent white nationalists, including Paul Fromm also serve alongside MacDonald on the group’s board.
After Anders Breivik slaughtered seventy-seven people at a Norwegian youth camp in July 2011, MacDonald called the murderer a “serious political thinker with a great many insights and some good practical ideas on strategy.” He praised Breivik for seeing “Christianity (correctly) as a historically powerful force for the preservation of Europe rather than mainly about religious faith.”
