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On John Derbyshire's
"Marx of the Anti-Semites"
 
The Vyshinsky
of the philo-Semites

By HENRY GALLAGHER FIELDS

It's always worse than you think.

— Ronald N. Neff

Have I a crystal ball? Am I the most prescient man alive? All encomia will be accepted. However, just as Ronn Neff might have assumed, it is even worse than I thought. Only a few days after I first wrote about The American Conservative's descent into PC, what appeared atop the cover of the March 10 issue but the promo, "Derbyshire on Anti-Semitism." How daring! And just what America is crying out for, too — another article on anti-Semitism.

In my original piece I predicted — in jest, actually — that Joshua Muravchik would eventually become editor of TAC, and here the magazine stoops even lower by bringing on sycophantic shabbos goy John Derbyshire to smear the courageous Kevin MacDonald in a "book review" of The Culture of Critique. [1] Derbyshire is a self-styled philo-Semite and a supporter of the Zionist Likudniks who is currently serving as one of Anglo-America's foremost cheerleaders for the war in the Middle East.

While milord is the perfect shabbos goy today, in the past (before 9/11), he strayed a teensy bit off the reservation. (Winnie Churchill tended to do the same thing.) For example, in April 2001, Derbyshire wrote on National Review Online that the "merest remark about the Jews that is not absolutely, irreproachably positive, is secretly plotting to massacre them...." He was, indeed, writing ironically, for he went on to explain: "One thing you learn, writing for the public, is that anything whatsoever that you say about the Jews will be seen as virulently anti-Semitic to somebody, somewhere." He continued: "I also find the theories of Kevin MacDonald (The Culture of Critique) about the partly malign influence of Jews on modern American culture very persuasive." [2]

Rest assured Derbyshire has gotten through that sticky wicket, now branding the hitherto persuasive MacDonald with the lethal charge of anti-Semitism in a scathingly hostile review. If Derbyshire, too, used to be an "anti-Semite," back in April 2001, say, he has more than made up for any past indiscretions.

Derbyshire's title, "The Marx of the Anti-Semites," signals the purposed lethality of his attack. He opens by referring to an unnamed talented writer — obviously, Joe Sobran — who was expelled from an unnamed magazine — obviously, National Review, where Derbyshire currently is a contributing editor — after contracting what the knowledgeable refer to as "the Jew thing." In respectable conservative circles, "the Jew thing" seems to be regarded sort of the way leprosy was during Biblical times — as a disease that deservedly afflicts the evil, who must be kept isolated from the clean and pious, or, in the current context, from respectable conservative journals and journalists.

"The Jew thing," writes Derbyshire, is a deadly hazard that "the career-wise writer should strive to avoid." For his part, he claims to have resolved to "do my best, so far as personal integrity allowed, not to get the Jew thing." Derbyshire assures us that he has not contracted the malady: he is a "philo-Semite and a well-wisher of Israel." If he were otherwise, he tacitly admits, he would be fired and blacklisted. Derbyshire's own account of "the Jew thing" strongly suggests that Darwinian natural selection determines how Jews and Jewish interests prevail in the media. Those who express the wrong views are weeded out; those who toe the Jewish line, sincerely or not, can flourish in the prevailing politico-cultural environment.

Derbyshire describes the penalty for contracting "the Jew thing" in a very matter-of-fact manner. He doesn't in the least imply that it might be wrong to suppress certain views or punish those who express them. One detects nary a whiff of concern about freedom of speech or freedom of inquiry from Derbyshire. Moreover, he dares not name what power it is that metes out the terrible punishment to those who contract "the Jew thing." That it consists of pressure exerted by Jews in fact underscores part of MacDonald's thesis — that the Jewish minority can exert significant power. As we shall see, Derbyshire places himself in the contradictory position of doubting that Jews have the power MacDonald ascribes to them while at the same time recognizing that those who speak ill of them are severely punished.

Thus do we see reconfirmed one of Joe Sobran's keenest observations: Jews are so powerful that they can compel people to say they are powerless.
 

Kevin MacDonald writes from the viewpoint of an evolutionary biologist, so Derbyshire mounts a charge against that entire science, writing it off because of what he takes to be its deterministic nature. He regards as "silly" MacDonald's contention that "the human mind was not designed to seek truth but rather to attain evolutionary goals." While Derbyshire has put his finger on a legitimate epistemological problem here, it is one that afflicts all the sciences that investigate human thought; it may be summed up as the mind-brain problem. However, if MacDonald held the opposite view — "that the human mind was designed to seek truth and was not the result of an evolutionary process" — he probably would not have gone far in the field of science, being limited to a teaching slot at Bobby Joe Jeter Bible College, where the date of Creation is established at Sunday, October 23, 4004 B.C.

Derbyshire's scientific revisionism may startle the reader, but much of his remaining disquisition is startling only in its feebleness. Although his tone is almost entirely negative, he doesn't argue that very much is seriously wrong with MacDonald's analysis. He doesn't try to claim that MacDonald relies on faulty evidence or even that he makes selective use of his evidence.

For example, MacDonald emphasizes that Jews played a major role in shifting American immigration policy to a more open position. Derbyshire doesn't disagree that Jews on the whole favored open immigration; rather, he simply portrays their stance as justifiable:

If the Jews learned anything from the twentieth century, it was surely the peril inherent in being the only identifiable minority in a society that is otherwise ethnically homogeneous. That thoughtful Jewish-Americans should seek to avoid this fate is understandable.

Derbyshire doesn't reject MacDonald's view that there was a characteristic Jewish position on immigration; he simply doubts that it was "the main determinant of postwar U.S. immigration." His doubt arises from his assumption that a small Jewish minority could not control the vast gentile majority — even though it is well established by now that small minorities do run most, if not all, societies. (Has Derbyshire refuted James Burnham, or even read him?) In any event, according to Derbyshire, if the small Jewish minority did dominate the gentile majority, then the gullible goys deserved to be dominated: "If that is true, the only thing to say is the one Shakespeare's Bianca would have said: 'The more fool they.'"

Derbyshire goes so far as to accede — almost — to MacDonald's view that Jews worked to overthrow white-gentile ethnic dominance in the United States. Derbyshire writes: "It was obviously objectionable to some American Jews, and it is not surprising that they played an enthusiastic part in undermining it." He does stipulate that "they were not the sole, nor even the prime, movers in the downfall." Presumably the main reason for the collapse of white-gentile dominance was the realization of white gentiles themselves that such ethnic dominance "violated Constitutional principles." It is interesting that the realization took almost two centuries. One possibility that Derbyshire fails to consider is that Jews in the media and academe may have played a significant role, over time, in inculcating a chronic and corrosive sense of guilt in the American majority. In any case, MacDonald himself does not claim that Jewish efforts are the only reason for the end of white-gentile dominance: Derbyshire is exerting himself to refute a claim that MacDonald does not actually make.

Derbyshire does not look closely at what has replaced the old white-gentile dominance. Is power proportionately shared by whites and non-whites? Or has much of the power lost by the white gentiles been snatched up by Jews? Certainly we know how Minister Farrakhan and the leaders of La Raza would answer that question. If white gentiles are so morally obsessed with human equality, as Derbyshire would have it, one would think they might join blacks and Hispanics in opposing the disproportionate Jewish influence in the United States.

Derbyshire goes so far in his bootlicking as to deny that there is anything wrong with the well-known Jewish double standard, which is acknowledged by other commentators from all parts of the ideological spectrum. "I am unimpressed," pontificates the toady Derbyshire, "by MacDonald's oft-repeated argument — it is a favorite with both Israelophobes and anti-Semites — that it is hypocritical for Jews to promote multiculturalism in the U.S. while wishing to maintain Jewish ethnic dominance in Israel." To try to justify his rejection of a principle that would seem self-evidently correct, Derbyshire speciously implies that the United States should be judged by one standard, the Constitution, and Israel by another, its own racial-supremacy standard — a standard that is rarely revealed to the American gentile public.

But that argument is pure hogwash; it has never been the Jewish position. As MacDonald points out in The Culture of Critique, Jewish critiques of gentile societies purport to be based on some universal standard. Jews do not judge Nazi Germany on the basis of the Führerprinzip or Master Race theory; they do not judge the Islamic Republic of Iran by how well that country abides by the Shariah; they do not judge Iraq by how well that society conforms to the principles of the Ba'ath Party. And how many Jews protest when Israel is incessantly proclaimed to be the "only democracy" in the Middle East — a blatant appeal to universal standards?
 

Despite the negative aim of his review, Derbyshire agrees not only with MacDonald's crucial facts but with his evaluation of intellectual history as well. Derbyshire writes: "These Jewish-inspired pseudoscientific phenomena that The Culture of Critique is concerned with — Boasian anthropology, psychoanalysis, the Frankfurt School, and so on — were they a net negative for America? Yes, I agree with MacDonald, they were."

Readers who are amazed that Derbyshire actually is forced to agree with so many of MacDonald's arguments should recall that truth is no defense against the lethal charge of anti-Semitism.

What outrages Derbyshire, or so we are supposed to believe, is the book's alleged lack of balance. MacDonald focuses on negative Jewish activities but does not bring out the positive ones. Derbyshire writes: "It wouldn't have hurt to point out the huge, indisputably net-positive, contributions of Jews to America, right at the beginning of his book and again at the end." But an overall assessment of the overall contribution of Jews to the world was not the subject of the book. Do books that criticize Catholics (Daniel Goldhagen), Russians (Richard Pipes), Southern Whites (umpteen million authors) also point out those groups' good points?

Let's try it on: "The Germans started a couple of world wars and massacred millions of Jews, but what with Goethe and Bach and the other longhairs, they have been an overall 'net-positive' to the world." Haven't really stumbled across such works. In short, Derbyshire expects Jews to be given the kid-glove treatment. But the question remains: why aren't Jews treated the same way as everyone else?

Derbyshire concludes that Culture's "entire argument is that the Jews, collectively, are up to no good," which makes it "in the dictionary definition of the term, an anti-Semitic book." Here the valiant Derbyshire has simply constructed and slain a straw man, since MacDonald explicitly states just the opposite. He writes in the preface to the paperback edition: "There is no implication here of a unified Jewish 'conspiracy' to undermine gentile culture, as portrayed in the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion.... Thus there is no implication that Judaism constitutes a unified movement or that all segments of the Jewish community participated in these movements." (1st Books Library) In essence, to come up with the charge of "anti-Semitism" Derbyshire must misrepresent the work, because, on balance, he cannot find serious fault with the actual information on Jews that MacDonald has provided.

Finally, in the good old Marc Antony style, Derbyshire must hint at evil, ulterior motives for Culture of Critique's "anti-Semitism," writing that "from my own indirect ... knowledge of the man, I would put it down to a personality combination of prickliness and unworldliness, but I am not sure I could persuade less charitable souls that my interpretation is the correct one, and that there is not malice lurking behind MacDonald's elaborate sociological jargon."

By Jove, Derbyshire, you're letting the side down! Go for sixes, there's a good fellow! Dash it all, you've unmasked a bloody Naaahzi! MacDonald's nutty "sociological jargon," we now understand, is only a phony cover for his real mentality, which is surely indistinguishable from that of Julius Streicher. Thanks to Lord Derbyshire, many "less charitable souls" are newly attuned to MacDonald's secret inner thoughts regarding Jews: "To a gas chamber — go!"
 

It is a truism that the selection of the reviewer determines how the book will be reviewed. Why, then, was the philo-Semitic sycophant Derbyshire chosen to review The Culture of Critique? Rumor — actually, more than rumor — has it that it is not The Pat or Taki who actually run TAC, but rather Scott McConnell. And McConnell's fundamental concern is to establish a respectable magazine that cannot be tarred as anti-Semitic. It looks to be a proactive approach, aimed at creating a record of anti-anti-Semitism in order to preemptively ward off future charges of anti-Semitism. Accordingly, it is necessary to actually seek out and brand MacDonald as an anti-Semite rather than to simply ignore him and his work. This sort of thing scores big points with ... well ... suffice it to say, with the folks whose opinions matter. And it's in line with McConnell's refusal — again, more than rumor — to allow Joe Sobran to write for TAC.

However, much work remains to be done at TAC. Internet sources reveal that an early version of Derbyshire's review contained the following gem, which McConnell kept out of the TAC version: "Who knows? Perhaps Catholic Celts have a 'group evolutionary strategy,' too. Are they still taught, in Sister Perpetua's Scripture class, that 'the Jews killed Our Lord'?"

McConnell probably regards that slur as a little too hard-core for TAC readers, at this time. Reader re-education must be accomplished in stages, so chances are we'll have to wait a while longer before such views seep into the magazine. Meanwhile, no one should criticize McConnell for any part of what is happening to TAC. He's just doing his best to survive natural selection. More-courageous, or more-heedless, white gentiles have already been weeded from the gene pool.

So how many more Derbyshire clones will Scotty beam aboard the Starship TAC? Enough, undoubtedly, so that he'll feel safe against the charge of having "the Jew thing." On the other hand, seeing as how Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, the French, the Swiss, the Ukrainians, the Germans, the Poles, and other gentiles ad infinitum have been branded as anti-Semites, it's going to take some doing.

March 3, 2003

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