General

My retraction experience

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Related to Ed Dutton’s article on the retraction of his article, I had the same experience. This link goes to my comments the retraction and to the paper itself.

On January 1, 2022 my paper “The Default Hypothesis Fails to Explain Jewish Influence” was published in the peer-reviewed Israel-based academic journal Philosophia. As I noted at the time:

 

This is the first time I have attempted to publish an article on Jewish influence in the mainstream academic literature since The Culture of Critique was published in 1998 by Praeger, so it is something of a milestone. I have updated quite a bit of the material, particularly the scholarly writing on Jewish involvement in influencing U.S. immigration policy—Chapter 7 of The Culture of Critique. I have always felt that Chapter 7 was the most important chapter in the book. …

Besides updating some critical aspects of The Culture of Critique, the paper emphasizes the point that the enactment of the 1965 immigration law did not occur in a vacuum and cannot be understood apart from the wider context of the rise of a new Jewish elite with influence in a wide range of areas. As I note in the article, the rise of this new elite “implies that vital issues of public policy, including immigration, the civil rights of African-Americans, women’s rights, religion in the public square ([David] Hollinger’s “secularization of American society”[1]), the legitimacy of White racial identity and interests, cosmopolitanism [identifying a “citizen of the world”], foreign policy in the Middle East, and many others will be affected by the attitudes and interests of this new elite.” The post-World War II era saw the emergence of a new, substantially Jewish elite in America.[2]

Publication resulted almost immediately in hostile comments from Jewish academic activists, calls for retraction, and condemnation of the journal’s editor for allowing such horrifying breach of academic sensibilities to happen.[3] On January 4th, the publisher, Springer Nature, posted the following statement with the article.

04 January 2022 Editor’s Note: The Editor-in-Chief and publisher are aware of concerns raised with the content of this article and are investigating. Editorial action will be taken as appropriate once investigation of the concerns is complete and all parties have been given an opportunity to respond in full.

The editor or whoever was in charge then sent the paper out for three more reviews. The reviews arrived toward the end of February and I sent in my reply in early March.[4] My reply ran to around 9000 words and responded to each of the issues raised (one of the reviewers was simply blowing off steam, so there really wasn’t anything to respond to).[5] I prefaced my reply with the following summary statement: 

General Comments

Far too often the reviewers fail to make an argument or specific criticisms of my work but seem to think that simply providing an invidious summary of my views is sufficient to rebut them. Most surprising to me is that none of the reviewers mention even one objection to the long section on immigration—by far the most critical and longest section in the article (amounting to 13 pages and 6500 words); nor is there any discussion of the rise of the intimately related topic of the rise of a new, substantially Jewish elite in the post-World War II era in the U.S., particularly since the 1960s. This is important because my paper addresses the three “core issues” raised by Cofnas, but the Jewish role in immigration policy is, as I note, “The only claim that, if true, would seriously endanger an important aspect of what Cofnas labels ‘the anti-Jewish narrative.’” The other issues discussed are interesting and important in a general discussion of Jewish issues, but they pale in comparison to the material on immigration policy. And, as noted in the paper, some of the most discussed issues, such as intermarriage and the issue of Jewish hypocrisy—two of Cofnas’s three core issues (not to mention Karl Marx’s Jewish identity), are completely irrelevant to central work Cofnas describes as being part of “the anti-Jewish narrative,” most notably The Culture of Critique (hereafter, CofC), which is what Cofnas is supposedly criticizing. Moreover, none of the reviews critique my analysis of why higher average Jewish IQ by itself fails to explain Jewish influence (i.e., Cofnas’s “default hypothesis”).

But all was for naught. I was informed in mid-May that the paper would be retracted and (amazingly) asking me if I agreed with this decision, but notifying me that any objection that I had to the retraction would not be included along with the retraction statement. I of course objected and wrote yet another reply, this time to their retraction statement. This is their retraction statement, including specific statements of my scholarly malfeasance:

The Editor-in-Chief has retracted this article. After publication concerns were raised regarding the content in this article and the validity of its arguments. Post-publication peer review concluded that the article does not establish a consistent methodology or document its claims with well-established sources. The article also makes several comparative claims without providing appropriate comparison data. Kevin MacDonald does not agree to this retraction. The online version of this article contains the full text of the retracted article as supplementary information.

Springer Nature formally retracted the paper sometime in early July—the title and the retraction notice are all that remain on the article’s main page,[6] but the article can still be accessed on their site as “Supplementary Information,” with ”RETRACTED ARTICLE” emblazoned diagonally in large-font, bold-face capital letters on every page.[7]  However, anticipating this, I saved a local copy, so it is still available on my website as it originally appeared in Philosophia.[8]

My formal reply regarding the retraction to the publisher, Springer Nature, was as follows:

I disagree with the retraction of my article “The Default Hypothesis Fails to Explain Jewish Influence.” The editors of Philosophia should be ashamed of themselves for retracting this article for such obviously spurious reasons. I am quite aware of the reality that academia has become intensely politicized and that Jews in particular are very sensitive about any discussions of Jewish influence. But I really didn’t think that my article would be retracted without any detailed response to my ~9000-word rebuttal to the post-publication reviews—a response that meticulously responded to every claim made by the reviewers. One expects a reasoned give-and-take in an academic venue, but this retraction is simply an assertion of authoritarian control. And to make matters worse, this response to the retraction statement will not be posted by the publisher.

The astonishing thing is that the retraction statement includes the following as the only reasons for the retraction: 

Post-publication peer review concluded that the article does not establish a consistent methodology or document its claims with well-established sources. The article also makes several comparative claims without providing appropriate comparison data.

But none of the three post-publication reviews ever mentioned that I had failed to provide a consistent methodology, so it’s false that the post-publication reviews revealed this, and obviously I felt no need to discuss this point in my response. And only one reviewer complained about sources, noting that I had cited evolutionary psychologist Edward Dutton. The complaint about citing Dutton is simply ad hominem rather than an honest attempt to dispute what Dutton wrote on Jewish intermarriage—a topic that is, in any case, of only marginal relevance to the main points of my paper. As I noted in my reply, “my practice is that citations should be to information that I consider reasonable and reliable, not what the political affiliations of the authors are.” I cite many authors who have political beliefs that I do not subscribe to, and in fact, the vast majority of my sources come from Jewish authors.

Regarding the issue that the paper contains “several comparative claims without providing appropriate comparison data,” I responded to each proposed instance in my reply to the reviews. But the retraction statement fails to make an argument for why my rebuttal fails.

All of my responses to this issue made the point that I was not arguing—and it was not necessary for me to argue—that Jews are more ethnocentric than any particular group, only that Jews are indeed ethnocentric [how can anyone deny that Jews are ethnocenric given the current government of Israel?]. For example, in my reply to one of the post-publication reviews, I noted:

The reviewer quotes me: “… Jews under discussion were ethnocentric as indicated by ethnic networking” and comments “Does that mean that blacks are ethnocentric because of their ethnic networking?  Or Catholics?  Or fundamentalist Christians?  This is gibberish because he is making statements about Jews as a group and arguing that they are different from gentiles but he presents no comparison data regarding relative ethnocentrism.”

[My response:] Notice that I do not make a point that Jews are more ethnocentric than any particular group either in the paper under review or in The Culture of Critique—apart from the 2002 “Preface to the First Paperback Edition of The Culture of Critique” (pp. xviii–xxxi) contrasting Western European and Jewish cultural forms on a variety of traits.[9] The material in the 2002 preface is a preliminary version of the ideas in my book Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition[10] (2019) and is in no way essential to the argument in Culture of Critique as published in 1998, where the only relevant claim I make is that Jews are ethnocentric—a claim that I document exhaustively. However, for completeness, my view is that Jews are in general more ethnocentric than Western European groups (I make no other comparisons), particularly northwestern European groups—the thesis of my Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition (2019). My emphasis on the uniqueness of Western individualism is entirely congruent with Joseph Henrich’s The WEIRDest People in the World (2020) … .[11] When Henrich uses the superlative ‘WEIRDest’ (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) in the title, he is emphasizing the uniqueness of the Western peoples; individualism is the polar opposite of collectivism and its associated ethnocentrism endemic to Jewish groups.

Thus there is no rebuttal to my argument that between-group comparisons are irrelevant to the argument presented in The Culture of Critique where the only point was that Jews are in fact ethnocentric as indicated by Jewish ethnic networking, not that they are more ethnocentric than any other group. And in my later writing I did provide comparative data based on Western individualism—data that are irrelevant to the argument in The Culture of Critique; these data show that the individualism of the West is unique among world cultures but such data are not relevant for the argument in The Culture of Critique. None of this is considered in the retraction statement.

This retraction is a disgrace to the academic profession. At the very least, this statement should be included along with the retraction statement so that readers can judge for themselves the legitimacy of retracting it.

To his credit, my opponent all this, Nathan Cofnas, tweeted his disapproval of the rejection.[12]

As far as I know this is the 1st time a paper has been retracted from a philosophy journal for political reasons. I emailed Jonathan Haidt & HxA [Heterodox Academy] several months ago about the threat to KM’s paper but they never replied.

Two important points. The retraction is unprecedented: It’s “the 1st time a paper has been retracted from a philosophy journal for political reasons.” And more importantly, Cofnas’s email notifying Jonathan Haidt, one of the founders of Heterodox Academy, that the paper was retracted got no response. Heterodox Academy represents itself as follows:

Heterodox Academy is a nonpartisan collaborative of 5,000+ professors, educators, administrators, staff, and students who are committed to enhancing the quality of research and education by promoting open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement in institutions of higher learning.

And they note:

All our members have embraced the following statement:

I support open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement in research and education.[13]

But apparently some viewpoints are not allowed, and there can be no disagreement on certain issues. Their commitment to open inquiry is a farce.

Jonathan Haidt is well known to me because of his work criticizing the groupthink that is so prevalent in the academic world; I cite him several times in my book Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition in Chapter 8 where I discuss the academic world as one of the pillars of elite power in the West (e.g., “the academic world can accurately be characterized as a moral community of the left in the sense of Jonathan Haidt”[14]). He is Jewish, and one is tempted to conclude that Heterodox Academy is simply another example of controlled opposition in the service of safeguarding Jewish interests in restricting the boundaries of academic debate on Jewish issues.

The following is the published version of “The Default Hypothesis Fails to Explain Jewish Influence,” now titled “The Failure of the “Default Hypothesis of Jewish Influence,” differing only in the formatting in order to make it conform to the style and header space limitations of The Occidental Quarterly.

[1] David. A. Hollinger, Science, Jews, and Secular Culture: Studies in Mid-Twentieth-Century American Intellectual History (Princeton University Press, 1996), 4.

[2] Kevin MacDonald, “The Default Hypothesis Fails to Explain Jewish Influence,” The Occidental Observer (January 1, 2022). https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2022/01/01/the-default-hypothesis-fails-to-explain-jewish-influence/

[3] Kevin MacDonald, “My Paper on Jewish Influence Blows Up,” The Occidental Observer (January 7, 2022). https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2022/01/07/my-paper-on-jewish-influence-blows-up/

[4] The reviews may be found here: http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/PhilosophiaCompiledReviews.pdf

[5] My reply: http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/PhilosophiaReviews.pdf

[6] See: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11406-021-00439-y

[7] See: https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1007%2Fs11406-021-00439-y/MediaObjects/11406_2021_439_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

[8] See: http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/Anti-JewishNarrativePDF.pdf

[9] Kevin MacDonald, “Preface to the First Paperback Edition of The Culture of Critique.”  http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/PrefacePPB.pdf

[10] Kevin MacDonald, Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition: Evolutionary Origins, History, and Prospects for the Future” (CreateSpace, 2019).

[11] Joseph Henrich, The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2020).

[12] See Nathan Cofnas: https://twitter.com/nathancofnas/status/1543422912413466624?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

[13] See: https://heterodoxacademy.org/our-mission/

[14] Jonathan Haidt, “Post-partisan Social Psychology.” Presentation at the meetings of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, San Antonio, TX, January 27, 2011.

 

Tucker Carlson on Trump Threats to Iran

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Tucker Carlson sends out an email with current news stories, including one today on Trump’s threats to bomb Iran. What’s a bit surprising, given Carlson’s support for Trump, is this criticism of the Trump administration: “While the president’s administration has made meaningful efforts to achieve peace in Ukraine, it continues to maintain a blindspot when it comes to Iran. Its rhetoric toward the Ayatollah-run nation, including threatening to bomb its homeland, has increased tension between the White House and Tehran, and Washington’s continued and unconditional backing of Israel has led to U.S. service members being thrust into harm’s way at the hands of the Houthis in Yemen.” Such a sentiment is not present in the Fox News article that the comment links to.

Candace Owens goes off on the Israel Lobby

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Wokeness at UBC: Bicycles for BIPOCs and a punctuation-free Ph.D. dissertation

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University of British Columbia seems to be on the far end of super-woke. I get emails from someone monitoring the situation: ‘

Bikes for BIPOC

This is a bike redistribution program for UBC students who are Black and/or Indigenous and/or People Of Colour to promote access to bikes as a mode of autonomy, safe and reliable transportation, health and joy. The aim of this program is to support BIPOC students and address inequalities of material wealth and access to transportation. We approach bike distribution with a Racial Justice lens and seek to provide accessible transportation to folks who are typically not prioritized in the bike industry.

Why an Architect Wrote a 52,438-Word Dissertation With No Punctuation

An architect pursuing a doctorate at the University of British Columbia wrote his 149-page, 52,438-word dissertation without any periods or commas. Patrick Stewart, 61, who belongs to the Nisga’a, a group of indigenous people in British Columbia, told Canada’s National Post that his dissertation, entitled “Indigenous Architecture through Indigenous Knowledge,” was designed to raise awareness about “the blind acceptance of English language conventions in academia” and to make a statement about “aboriginal culture, colonialism.” And he claimed there is “nothing in the (UBC dissertation) rules about formats or punctuation.” When he defended his punctuation-free dissertation, the examiners accepted it unanimously.

Macron and Corruption: Judge in Le Pen’s case is close ally of Macron

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The normalization of banning political opposition will go nowhere good.

Robert W Malone MD, MS

Emmanuel Macron is a lame-duck president without a parliamentary majority. He has turned France is another EU-corrupted government – stopping free and fair elections by use of the courts.

Macron’s judges took claimed finance violations and turned it into a criminal complaint to bar his populist opponent from being able to challenge him. Presidential candidate Marine Le Pen’s staffers were being paid by the EU to work with MPs. But they commingled work processes and worked for French MPs too. This is not embezzlement. This is a finance violation. It should never have ended up in a court of law.

Macron is evil — he arranged for this court verdict by choosing a close ally as the judge of Le Pen’s court case. Marine Le Pen, who heads the National Rally (RN) party was convicted of embezzlement and barred from running for public office for five years, sentenced to four years in prison, with two years suspended and two under house arrest, and was fined €100,000 ($108,000).

To be clear, this court case was based on a technicality — the EU claimed she used money meant to hire one category of employee, and instead, they claim she and other party officials hired people to work on national issues. The EU claims that money intended for European Union parliamentary aides was used to instead pay for staff who worked for the national party issues — between 2004 and 2016. So, just like the lawfare used against Trump, they used finance violations that mainly occurred over two decades ago to take down the opposition party to Macron.

The decision effectively removes her from the 2027 presidential race, where she was seen as a leading candidate. So broad are the political implications that most of Le Pen’s opponents said the Paris court had gone too far.

This is the same France that has imprisoned the CEO of Telegram because he permits free speech.Macron has become a dictator.

We can expect large political protests in France in the coming months – but it is doubtful that they will make a difference.

Either arresting conservative political opponents or banning them from running for public office has been normalized. It has recently happened in Brazil and Romania.

In Germany, similar tactics are being used. Except there,  they are just trying to ban the entire conservative Alternative for Germany (AFD) party outright.

Germany’s constitution allows the Federal Constitutional Court to ban parties deemed to “seek to undermine or abolish the free democratic basic order.” With this in mind, the courts and the deep state have already begun to find ways to ban the AfD from elections. The German parliament is set to debate an application for a ban on the AfD in a plenary session for the first time next week.

In the United States, liberals and liberal courts tried to stop President Trump from running for office. In December 2023, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Trump was ineligible to run for president in Colorado after ruling that he engaged in an insurrection. The U.S. Supreme Court later overturned this decision, remember that it was only due to the intersession of the Supreme Court that these antics came to an end for the last round of elections. We can be sure that tactic will be used again in future elections.

Now, these same liberals are using lawfare to stop President Trump’s political agenda. They have flooded lower courts with liberal judges, who are using their positions in ways not intended by the US Constitution to impede Trump’s foreign and domestic policies.

Be careful what you wish for:

In Romania, my friend George Simion, who is conservative, has now risen to the top of the polls after the presidential candidate Călin Georgescu was banned from holding office.

The people in Romania know what a totalitarian government looks like and they are not having it. If Călin Georgescu can’t run, the people will transfer their votes over to the candidate that Călin Georgescu endorses, and in this case, that is George-Nicolae Simion.

The graphic above shows that Georgescu received 22% of the vote in the fall election and Simion received 13% of the vote. For a total of 35% of the vote total. In a poll conducted in March 2025, Simion has picked up most of Georgescu’s support and is polling at 30%, putting him well in the lead for the May 4 presidential election.

Le Pen and the Guillotine of Democracy

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Constantin von Hoffmeister at Eurosiberia:

Marine Le Pen has been banned from running in the French presidential election in 2027. That is the headline — no metaphor, no nuance, just the hard blade falling. They have not defeated her in the arena of debate or vision. They have simply locked the gates. The queen is removed from the board while the game continues, rigged, trembling with fear of her return. This is not just a courtroom. It is a theater of ritual execution where she stands condemned. A drama unfolds, stripped of the honesty of tragedy. The victim is more than a political figure. She embodies a nation’s revolt. The French courts, acting as instruments of a supranational entity, have declared their verdict: Marine Le Pen, guilty of daring to resist. They allege that between 2004 and 2016, she “misused” approximately €4.5 million by employing assistants who purportedly served her party, the National Rally, rather than engaging in “legitimate parliamentary work.” Yet, the true specter haunting this proceeding is sovereignty itself.

The stripping of her passive voting rights is no minor legal footnote. It is the deliberate dismantling of the people’s right to choose their leader. The timing reveals a calculated act of sabotage, targeting those who challenge the prevailing liberal-leftist orthodoxy. The judiciary intervenes precisely when national stakes are high and the challenger articulates the voice of the people. Le Pen bleeds where relics remain inert. Her appeal is anticipated, yet such appeals often reverberate as futile gasps in chambers where verdicts are preordained.

We have witnessed this pattern before. The name Georgescu lingers like smoke in the annals of political betrayal. Recall him — the Romanian patriot who dared to wield the people’s language, demanding that Brussels bow to Bucharest. And beyond Georgescu, the image of Codreanu — the Captain — stirs in the shadows, a martyr whose memory still strikes fear in the heart of the bureaucratic empire. Georgescu, like Codreanu before him, refused to kneel, and for this defiance he was exiled from the democratic illusion. He stood on the brink of victory until the machinery of the European Union turned against him. Legal instruments were manipulated, bureaucratic paragraphs invoked, and overnight he was erased from an election he was poised to win. No tanks rolled through the streets. The EU required only parchment and procedural cunning. Brussels remained indifferent. Europe consumes its progeny without remorse. Georgescu’s appeal also amounted to naught as everything is manipulated and fake.

They call this “the rule of law.” Yet, in a Union where law bends to ideological whims, it becomes a velvet-covered cudgel. The Eurocrats are untroubled by corruption but unsettled by purity — the kind that speaks of heritage, lineage, and a Europe forged through centuries, not fleeting trends. Le Pen, like Georgescu, transgresses by asserting that identity endures. That France exists beyond mere rhetoric — as land, as border stones, as war memorials, as the aroma of freshly baked bread at dawn in a village untouched by the perversions of modernity.

The real trial unfolds now, everywhere. Do we submit to the tyranny of documents, faceless magistrates, and directives penned in sanitized language? Or do we rise as heretics against their global dogma? Le Pen is more than a name struck from a ballot. She has become a symbol — bruised and defiant. Declaring her unelectable aims to render her unthinkable. Yet thought fights against suppression. If Europe is to experience a renaissance, its heartbeat will resonate through anguish and unvarnished truth.

They may have seized a presidency, but the soul of the continent remains beyond their grasp. That essence cannot be prosecuted. It will not be silenced by legal decrees. The European patriot — like the phoenix rising from ancestral ashes — ascends. Every prohibited ballot, every silenced candidate, fuels the fire. Le Pen’s so-called “political death” marks the opening stanza of the next anthem. This epic will not be broadcast. It will be told in metaphorical catacombs, illuminated by flickering candlelight, and spoken in codes decipherable only by ancient bloodlines.

If you enjoy my writings, please consider purchasing my books Esoteric Trumpism and MULTIPOLARITY!.

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More Gender Lunacy, Financed by Canadian Taxpayers

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Just when you thought it couldn’t get any weirder, Canadian taxpayers are expected to pay for a vagina for a man who wants to keep his penis. To do otherwise would be to  somehow “endanger his/her[??]  security.” It’s a great complement to today’s feature article by Tobias Langdon, “A Clown Called Chleo: Fetishism, Feminism and the Toxicity of TERFs.” A major theme of Langdon’s article is the hierarchy of leftist lunacy, with the weirdest lunatics having a privileged position. Well, this creature is definitely at the top of the hierarchy.

Ontario resident who wants both a vagina and penis wins public funding for unique surgery

A court has ruled Ontario must pay for a penis-sparing vaginoplasty for a person who identifies as neither fully female nor fully male

Ontario has been ordered to pay for surgery for a resident who is seeking to have a vagina constructed while leaving their penis intact. Denying the procedure would infringe on the person’s Charter-protected right to security of the person, an Ontario court said in its ruling. The unanimous decision by a three-member panel of judges of Ontario’s Divisional Court could expand access to a novel “bottom surgery” for people who identify as non-binary, meaning neither fully male nor fully female.

Ontario has been ordered to pay for surgery for a resident who is seeking to have a vagina constructed while leaving their penis intact.

Denying the procedure would infringe on the person’s Charter-protected right to security of the person, an Ontario court said in its ruling.

The unanimous decision by a three-member panel of judges of Ontario’s Divisional Court could expand access to a novel “bottom surgery” for people who identify as non-binary, meaning neither fully male nor fully female.

The Ontario resident, identified in court documents as K.S., has been locked in a legal battle with the Ontario Health Insurance Plan since 2022, when OHIP denied a funding request to have a penile preserving vaginoplasty performed at a clinic in Austin, Texas.

The surgery, which is not available anywhere in Canada, involves creating a vaginal canal, or opening, without removing the penis.

K.S., 33, was born male but identifies as female dominant and uses a feminine name.

OHIP denied her request for funding, arguing that the procedure is not included on its list of sex-reassignment procedures, and is therefore not an insured service.

K.S. appealed OHIP’s decision to Ontario’s Health Services Appeal and Review Board, arguing that forcing her to have her penis removed would invalidate her identity and be akin to an illegal act of conversion therapy.