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Kevin MacDonald is a key figure in shaping contemporary antisemitism for the Alt-Right. He repackages classic antisemitic beliefs for the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by cloaking them in a language ofevolutionary psychology. His most important innovation is to reject The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as factual but retain them as a metaphor for Jewish anti-white activism. By arguing that it is Judaism itself as "a group evolutionary strategy" that leads Jews to tear down white society (European-derived Christian majority states in the Western world), he is able to present an image of the Jews akin to that ofThe Protocols, but one that obviates the need for any actual conspiracy. Once Jewish culture and genetics become the driving force of this effort to destroy white society, one only needs to show that individual Jews are acting on its behalf, not that they are conspiring together to do so.
The setting was one of great drama: the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand in London. There, David Irving put Professor Deborah Lipstadt on trial in the winter of 2000, suing her for libel over her depiction of him as a Holocaust denier in her 1993 book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. On Monday, January 31, Irving called Kevin MacDonald, an American Professor of Psychology from California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), to the witness box to testify.1
MacDonald was an odd choice for a witness in a lawsuit over Holocaust denial. A psychologist whose research focused on behavioral child development, Irving neither asked him to testify about behavioral psychology nor about the history of the Holocaust, but rather on how Judaism "as a group evolutionary strategy" set about to suppress dissidents like himself. MacDonald answered Irving's questions for about 30 minutes, and Lipstadt's barrister chose not to cross examine him. The judge completely ignored MacDonald's testimony in his ruling in favor of Lipstadt on all counts.2
While all but forgotten within the context of the trial, MacDonald's testimony catapulted him into public view as an anti-Jewish white nationalist and far-right extremist. This was his "naming the Jew" moment, a term that predates the Alt-Right but is used by them to indicate when one takes personal and professional risks...