Oxford PhD student Nathan Cofnas responds to my inquiry: “Miller might be right–he probably is right–but this article standing alone is not very convincing. These half-baked refutations of MacDonald aren’t really helpful.”
Abraham Miller (retired political science professor) writes in the Wall Street Journal:
He further argues that Jews are genetically programmed to undermine Christian civilization. Intellectual movements such as multiculturalism and liberalism serve, in his view, to heighten Jewish advantage because a Christian majority mired in a multicultural society is less likely to foster anti-Semitism.
Which brings us to his explanation of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965. Mr. MacDonald claims that Jewish communal organizations led the effort to enact the law, which eliminated preferential quotas for Western European immigration and increased the total number of immigrants. That led to an increase in non-European immigration. In Mr. MacDonald’s view, the act started the “replacement” of white Christians by a more ethnically diverse population.
It is true that Jewish communal organizations are major supporters of multiculturalism. Then again, so are most mainstream churches, on both sides of the papal divide. Christian communal groups loudly extol their commitment to inclusion and diversity.
But Jewish leadership was neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the passage of the 1965 immigration law. Rather, a liberalizing wave had already swept the West in the decades after World War II, bringing an end to colonialism and informing U.S. competition with the Soviet Union. In this context, America’s 1924 immigration law, which favored Western European immigration, had become an international embarrassment.
As early as 1952, President Harry Truman appointed a Commission on Immigration and Naturalization, whose report served as the foundation for the 1965 act. The report affirmed the country’s need for workers, but and it was highly critical of the foreign-policy problems caused by the then-current immigration policy. The report specifically cited Radio Moscow’s use of America’s exclusionary immigration policy to spread anti-Americanism in Asia, especially Korea.
The 1965 law’s chief sponsors were Sen. Philip Hart of Michigan and Rep. Emanuel Celler. Hart was Catholic; Celler had three Jewish grandparents and one Catholic one. Would Mr. MacDonald say Celler’s Jewish and Catholic genes were in conflict over immigration policy?
One of the most significant provisions of the act allowed chain migration, in which immigrants sponsor family members to come to America. Rep. Michael A. Feighan of Ohio, a conservative Democrat and Catholic, was responsible for this measure. He saw chain migration as promoting family values.
The bill passed overwhelmingly, with support from 85% of Republicans and 74% of Democrats. Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Catholic, was a major proponent and legislative orchestrator of the bill. President Lyndon Johnson, who belonged to the Disciples of Christ, signed the bill at the Statue of Liberty. Jewish support was not the key to its passage. The bill was widely popular—and more so with Republicans, even though most Jews, then as now, were Democrats.
From the WSJ comments:
* The multicultural theory makes no sense. How does bringing in millions of Muslim immigrants who are bigtime Jew-haters help the Jews advance their supposed master plan? Doesn’t seem to be working out too well for the Jews of France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, etc. Who are facing Pogrom levels of danger with the daily harassment, threats and assaults on their communities.
* Our 1924 law had become an “international embarrassment”? That is a good reason for change?
What is missing in the article is emphasis on the year of the new law’s passage: 1965. That was a year of massive righteousness about sins, real or imagined. Medicare and the Voting Rights Act were passed that year too, were they not? Chain migration from Mali was favored over the immigration of able Europeans. That was not rational policy; it was fanciful self-righteousness, perhaps even the birth of multiculti, with unforeseen but forseeable outcomes.
* Nicholas Wade, in his book Before the Dawn, advances a theory to the effect that the exclusion of European Jews from agriculture and most trades effectively confined them to economic activities that required highly expressed intellectual traits. This would have occurred over a short period (seven or eight centuries).
In defense of this idea, Wade points out that many of the dangerous genetic diseases that occur far more frequently among Ashkenazi Jews than among other populations also correspond closely with highly expressed intellectual traits. That fits the model of a hastily evolved response to a harsh environment.
* All this paranoia and suspicion about a religion that is rapidly assimilating and at the current rate will soon lose almost all distinction from the dominant, post-Christian culture.
* Not necessarily true. Orthodox Jews remain true to their faith and vehemently oppose miscegenation, which the Old Testament characterizes as a sin.
“Thou shalt not sow thy vineyard with two kinds of seed; lest the fullness of the seed which thou hast sown be forfeited together with the increase of the vineyard.” -Deuteronomy 22:9.
* This is a strange opinion piece, given that the Charlottesville events were quite some time ago, and that the essay ends up talking about the 1965 Immigration Act for the most part.
I would interpret the slogan as follows: “the Democratic party, the MSM, the universities, and the entertainment industries are run by those, including a highly disproportionate percentage of Jewish people, who have a common, conscious agenda of reducing whites to a cultural and literal minority in the US”.
As for this – “It is true that Jewish communal organizations are major supporters of multiculturalism.” -, this does not seem to be the case in Israel, does it?
Kevin MacDonald vs Nathan Cofnas (3-29-23)
JQ Debate: Nathan Cofnas Critiques Kevin MacDonald (4-17-18)
STANDING ON A WOOD CRATE, CRITIQUING NATHAN COFNAS ON KMAC (3-25-18)
Nathan Cofnas: Still No Evidence for a Jewish Group Evolutionary Strategy (1-8-23)
Nathan Cofnas Interview March 20, 2018
JF Gariepy’s Review Of The Nathan Cofnas Critique
JF Gariepy’s Review Of The Nathan Cofnas Critique II
The Cofnas Critique Gets A Challenge From Historian J. Otto Pohl (2-16-19)
The Cofnas Critique Gets A Challenge From Historian J. Otto Pohl II
Oxford University’s Nathan Cofnas Critiques KMAC’s Culture Of Critique Book (3-10-18)
