Congressional candidate Paul Nehlen has grown closer to white nationalist leaders and thinkers in recent months. Image by Twitter

By Sam Kestenbaum December 27, 2017

Paul Nehlen, the Republican politician seeking to unseat Speaker of the House Paul Ryan from Congress in 2018, has been increasingly flirting with the online “alt-right” by posting memes and appearing on white nationalist podcasts. On Tuesday night, he proudly shared one of the books currently on his shelf: a title by an author known as the “neo-Nazi movement’s favorite academic.”

“The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements” is the best known book by Kevin MacDonald, a retired professor of psychology widely praised in white nationalist circles for his writing about Jews and perceived Jewish power.

MacDonald, the editor of the “white identity” website The Occidental Observer, advances boilerplate white nationalist claims about Jews, seeing them as controlling and manipulating American institutions for their own ends. His work draws on his psychology background, and he casts Jewish behavior as a type of self-preservation “group evolutionary strategy.”

MacDonald is part of the academic-styled sphere of the broader white nationalist movement and has collaborated with “alt-right” figureheads like Richard Spencer.

To read more about Paul Nehlen, go here and here.

Email Sam Kestenbaum at kestenbaum@forward.com and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum

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