But how can motives ever be completely known? Prof. MacDonald sets a difficult test: “The best evidence that individuals have really ceased to have a Jewish identity is if they choose a political option that they perceive as clearly not in the interest of Jews as a group. In the absence of a clearly perceived conflict with Jewish interests, it remains possible that different political choices among ethnic Jews are only differences in tactics for how best to achieve Jewish interests.”
This standard may seem unduly harsh – until it is applied to white gentiles. Third-World immigration, affirmative action, anti-discrimination laws, and forced integration are clearly not in the interests of whites, yet many whites embrace them, thus demonstrating how completely they have abandoned their racial identity.
Finally, Prof. MacDonald raises the disturbing possibility that some Jews, because of centuries of conflict with gentiles, actively hate gentile society and consciously wish to destroy it: “a fundamental motivation of Jewish intellectuals involved in social criticism has simply been hatred of the gentile-dominated power structure perceived as anti-Semitic.” He describes the 19th century German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine as “using his skill, reputation and popularity to undermine the intellectual confidence of the established order.”
In defense of this highly provocative view, Prof. MacDonald quotes Benjamin Disraeli on the effects of centuries of Jewish-gentile relations on Jews: “They may have become so odious and so hostile to mankind as to merit for their present conduct, no matter how occasioned, the obloquy and ill-treatment of the communities in which they dwell and with which they are scarcely permitted to mingle.”
Apart from any questions of motives, however, is the question of numbers. Jews are a tiny minority in the United States and within that minority there is disagreement even on matters that clearly affect Jews. How can Jews possibly be responsible for dramatic changes in the intellectual landscape? In Prof. MacDonald’s view, the explanation lies in the intelligence, energy, dedication, and cohesiveness of Jews. He attributes a great deal to the average IQ of Jews – at 115, a full standard deviation above the white gentile average – and to “their hard work and dedication, their desire to make a mark on the world, and their desire to rise in the world, engage in personal promotion, and achieve public acclaim…” He also believes Jews have worked together unfailingly on any question they consider necessary for survival: “Intellectual activity is like any other human endeavor: Cohesive groups outcompete individual strategies.” He notes that there has never been a time when large numbers of white Americans favored non-white immigration; it was a cohesive, determined minority that beat down the disorganized resistance of the majority.
Prof. MacDonald believes that because of the effectiveness of some Jews, it was not even necessary that most Jews actively support anti-majoritarian movements, but that Jewish activity was still decisive. As he puts it, “Jewish-dominated intellectual movements were a critical factor (necessary condition) for the triumph of the intellectual left in late twentieth-century Western societies.” This, of course, can never be tested, but there can be no doubt that American Jews have had a disproportionate effect on the American intellect. Prof. MacDonald quotes Walter Kerr, writing in 1968, to the effect that “what has happened since World War II is that the American sensibility has become part Jewish, perhaps as much Jewish as it is anything else… The literate American mind has come in some measure to think Jewishly.”
Aside from the question of whether Prof. MacDonald is right is the further question of what difference it makes if he is right. If correct, his thesis certainly sheds light on the rapidity with which whites lost their will. Just a few decades ago whites were a confident race, proud of their achievements, convinced of their fitness to dominate the globe. Today they are a declining, apologetic people, ashamed of their history and not sure even of their claim to lands they have occupied for centuries. It is very rare for fundamental concepts to be stood on their heads in the course of just a generation or two, as has happened with thinking about race. Such speed suggests there has been something more than natural change.