Kevin MacDonald

Kevin MacDonald is Professor of Psychology at California State University–Long Beach. He is best known for his use of evolutionary psychology to inform his study of Judaism as being a "group evolutionary strategy". MacDonald's most controversial - anti-semitic - claim is that a collection of traits that he attributes to Jews, including "ethnocentrism, intelligence, psychological intensity, and aggressiveness", have eugenically evolved to enhance the ability of Jews to out-compete non-Jews for resources while undermining the power and self-confidence of the white majorities in Europe and America.

He testified for David Irving in his unsuccessful libel trial against Deborah Lipstadt. Lipstadt is an American historian and the author of the book, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (Plume, 1994), in which she called Irving a Holocaust denier, a claim the judge in the case, Mr Justice Gray, 'found to be substantially true'.

Views and activities

Irving case

MacDonald testified for Irving in the 2000 High Court libel trial that Irving brought against historian Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books. Irving lost the case.

According to a report in The Guardian:

He [Irving] had sued Penguin books and the author Deborah Lipstadt over her book which said Irving had persistently and deliberately misinterpreted and twisted historical evidence to minimise Hitler's culpability for the Holocaust. Penguin incurred costs of £2m to defend the claim. In May 2000 Irving was ordered to pay an interim amount of £150,000, but has failed to pay a penny.

On his website MacDonald wrote about his decision to testify for Irving:

The decision to testify for David Irving was an agonizing one for me and I want to make clear exactly why I did so. Irving approached me to testify in the trial because I had included the suppression of his book on Goebbels as an example of Jewish tactics for combating anti-Semitism in Separation and Its Discontents. Actually the suppression of Irving goes far beyond what I included in my book. Irving has been prevented from publishing his original archival research, from traveling to several countries, and even from giving lectures. The second defendant in the case, Deborah Lipstadt, has contributed to this effort at censorship. My statement to the court and my entire testimony in court involved this issue, not the Holocaust or the culpability of Hitler.

In his testimony, MacDonald said:

The main point of my testimony is that the attacks made on David Irving by Deborah Lipstadt and Jewish organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League should be viewed in the long-term context of Jewish-gentile interactions. As indicated by the summaries of my books, my training as an evolutionist as well as the evidence compiled by historians leads me to conceptualize Judaism as self-interested groups whose interests often conflict with segments of the gentile community. Anti-Jewish attitudes and behavior have been a pervasive feature of the Jewish experience since the beginnings of the Diaspora well over 2000 years ago. While anti-Semitic attitudes and behavior have undoubtedly often been colored by myths and fantasies about Jews, there is a great deal of anti-Jewish writing that reflects the reality of between-group competition exactly as expected by an evolutionist. Particularly important have been the themes of separatism-the fact that Jewish groups have typically existed as recognizably distinct groups and have been unwilling to assimilate either culturally or via marriage to the wider society, the theme of economic, political, and cultural domination, and the theme of disloyalty.

Mr Justice Gray noted MacDonald's testimony in his summing up of the case:

He [MacDonald] gave evidence on what he termed “Jewish-gentile interactions” from the perspective of evolutionary biology.

In his verdict in the libel trial, Mr Justice Gray stated:

I have found that, in numerous respects, Irving has misstated historical evidence; adopted positions which run counter to the weight of the evidence; given credence to unreliable evidence and disregarded or dismissed credible evidence.

Mr Justice Gray further stated:

The charges which I have found to be substantially true include the charges that Irving has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence; that for the same reasons he has portrayed Hitler in an unwarrantedly favourable light, principally in relation to his attitude towards and responsibility for the treatment of the Jews; that he is an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-semitic and racist and that he associates with right wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism.

Biographical information

The following is a biography from his website:

After receiving a Masters degree in evolutionary biology, he received a Ph. D. in Biobehavioral Sciences, both at the University of Connecticut. Since assuming his position at California State University–Long Beach, his research has focused on developing evolutionary perspectives on culture, developmental psychology and personality theory, the origins and maintenance of monogamous marriage in Western Europe, and ethnic relations (group evolutionary strategies). He is the author of more than 100 scholarly papers and reviews, and he is the author of Social and Personality Development: An Evolutionary Synthesis (1988), A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy (1994), Separation and Its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism (1998), and The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements (1998). He has also edited three books, Sociobiological Perspectives on Human Development (1988), Parent-Child Play: Descriptions and Implications (1994), and Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Development (2004). Cultural Insurrections, a collection of essays, appeared in 2008.

Affiliations

Member of the following organizations (as at December 2009):

• Society for Research in Child Development
• Human Behavior and Evolution Society
• International Society for Human Ethology
• Politics and the Life Sciences

Resources

• Kevin MacDonald, My Decision to Testify for Irving, Kevin MacDonald website, accessed 4 Dec 2009
• Statement of Professor Kevin MacDonald in the Libel Action between DJC Irving v Penguin Books Ltd and Deborah Lipstadt, International Campaign for Real History website, accessed 4 Dec 2009
• High Court judgment in libel trial available here.
• Anti-Defamation League Kevin MacDonald
• Southern Poverty Law Center Kevin MacDonald
• Rhonda Brownstein Testing 'Academic Freedom' Can Racist Professors Be Disciplined? Southern Poverty Law Center, Intelligence Report, Spring 2007, Issue Number: 125.

Contact

Address: Department of Psychology, CSU-Long Beach, Long Beach, CA 90840-0901, USA

Phone: (562) 985-8183

Email: kmacd(AT)csulb.edu

Website: http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/