Gilad Atzmon, Kevin MacDonald, and Mark Weber
Speak on Jewish–Zionist Power at Spirited IHR Meeting

News from the Institute for Historical Review

Kevin MacDonald, Gilad Atzmon and Mark Weber have devoted much effort over the years to examining Jewish-Zionist power, and to raising public awareness about its role and impact. At a hotel meeting hall in Orange County, southern California, on October 1, 2016, these three seasoned specialists addressed a spirited and attentive audience of about 80 men and women, providing informed perspective, each from a different angle, on aspects of this formidable power in today’s America and the world.

(A DVD disc with all three talks, including introductions, titled “Jewish-Zionist Power: Awareness and Challenge,” is available from the IHR.)

Kevin MacDonald , a retired professor who taught for years at California State University– Long Beach, has written extensively on the Jewish role in history and contemporary life. In addition to many dozens of scholarly articles, he is also the author of three books on Jewish behavior through the ages.

After Weber introduced him, Dr. MacDonald delivered an insightful, carefully considered 45 minute address. He reviewed the 2016 presidential election contest, and especially Donald Trump’s brash anti-establishment campaign, which won him broad support from millions of alienated, disaffected “middle Americans.” MacDonald looked at the factors that behind his campaign, which propelled him into the White House. Trump’s successful populist campaign is an expression of an implicit racial consciousness of white Americans who, MacDonald emphasized, have valid and legitimate group interests.

Trump’s brazenly anti-establishment campaign “has destroyed the traditional Republican Party,” MacDonald said. The “establishment” Party of George W. Bush, John McCain, and so forth, is dead, MacDonald predicted, and “cannot be resuscitated.”

Throughout the campaign season both Trump and Clinton repeatedly proclaimed their emphatic support for Israel, and their loyalty to Jewish-Zionist power, MacDonald noted. He also traced the Jewish role in the lives of the two presidential candidates. Jews are not “monolithic,” MacDonald said. While most American Jews dislike and distrust Trump, Trump’s closest and most trusted associates and advisers have been Jewish. Throughout his career, MacDonald pointed out, Trump has “surrounded himself with Jews.”

American Jews, MacDonald said, have “piled up” a lot of “moral capital” through their immense role in America’s cultural and educational life, perhaps most notably through a determined media emphasis on The Holocaust. “Jews have successfully portrayed themselves as the ultimate victims,” he said.

MacDonald spoke about the country’s divided “conservatives.” America’s “paleo-conservatives” generally defend traditional social values and the country’s European-based ethno-religious heritage, and they favor less central government intrusion into people’s lives, and an “America First” foreign policy. The much more influential “neo-conservatives,” on the other hand, generally disdain America’s Europe-based ethno-religious heritage, and they support large-scale, intrusive central government programs, and push for a devotedly pro-Israel and pro-Zionist US foreign policy.

Gilad Atzmon, who was born in Israel and now lives in Britain, is an author and an acclaimed musician. He is also known for pointed and sometimes outspoken writings on Israel’s policies and the organized Jewish community. After an introduction by Mark Weber, Atzmon began his rather philosophical 45 minute presentation. He reviewed the Jewish role in Capitalism, Marxism, Communism, and other major intellectual-political trends in modern history. For example, he discussed the relationship between Karl Marx, Judaism and Marxism.

Atzmon spoke of a Jewish tendency, down through the ages, to presume to tell non-Jews how to think and act. Throughout history, he went on to explain, Jews have latched on to groups and campaigns that shape public opinion or drive social-political trends. As he notes, Jews involve themselves even in groups and campaigns that are critical of Israel, often rising to eventually play major and decisive roles in them. Atzmon also looked at the internal arguments and infighting among Jews in each of these trends and campaigns.

Mark Weber, historian, author and director of the Institute for Historical Review, reviewed the lives and careers of both MacDonald and Atzmon in his introductions of those two speakers. In his own 25 minutes address, which is packed with eye-opening facts, Weber provides an overview of Jewish-Zionist power and its enormous impact on American society, and the world. He reviewed the formidable role of the organized Jewish community in political and cultural life, America’s “special relationship” with Israel, the often hostile relationship between Jews and non-Jews, and prospects for the future.

---