Are taboos against fascism breaking down in colleges and universities?

In the past few years Nazi ideology has burst out of the fringes, with avowed fascists like Richard Spencer publicly espousing racist ideology.

But academia, one would think, would be impervious to this trend. One would be wrong.

Writing in Evolution News, historian Richard Weikart points out that while widely derided, Darwinist theory being misapplied to bolster racist and anti-Semitic ideology seems to be making a comeback.

"The journal Evolutionary Psychological Science, which has eminent evolutionary psychologists, such as Harvard’s Steven Pinker, on its editorial board, recently carried an article defending the anti-Semitic, racist views of Kevin MacDonald, a white supremacist and emeritus professor of psychology at California State University, Long Beach," writes Weikart.

"MacDonald’s views are eerily similar to those of scientists I examine in my historical scholarship: racial groups are in a human struggle for existence, behavioral traits are biologically innate, and stereotypical Jewish traits are evolutionary strategies for beating other races in racial competition," he writes. "MacDonald claims that anti-Semitism is a defensive strategy to help white Europeans and their descendants triumph over the Jews."

"Darwin and many early Darwinists saw racism and human inequality as part and parcel of their theory. MacDonald is trying to resurrect this troubling legacy of Darwinian theory," Weikart concludes.