Kevin Macdonald - Review Of Separation And Its Discontents - Robert Pois

IDEA A journal of social issues BOOK REVIEWS 1, 1998 -- Vol.3, no.4 See also: Reply to Robert Pois by Kevin MacDonald

Kevin MacDonald: Separation and its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism by Robert Pois

MacDonald, Kevin, SEPARATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS: TOWARD AN EVOLUTIONARY THEORY of ANTI-SEMITISM, Westport, Ct., Greenwood Publishing Group. Praeger, 1998. Pp. v.-325, $65.00. In this work, Professor Kevin MacDonald is concerned with describing how a persistent anti-Semitism, which goes back to Classical times, has developed, adopting itself to an equally persistent and, as this Professor of Psychology, rostered at the University of California, Long Beach presents it, obdurate Jewish presence. Apparently, he is involved in the obverse approach taken in his earlier (1994) work, A PEOPLE THAT SHALL DWELL ALONE: JUDAISM as a GROUP EVOLUTIONARY STRATEGY. I say "apparently," because, not having read MacDonald's previous book concerning Jews, I can only intuit the relationship between this book and the earlier one. Due to the fact, though, that the author often refers to themes raised in the 1994 work, it does appear that this latest book picks up on themes raised in the earlier one (referred to in the text as PTSDA). MacDonald's basic concern is to show how Jews, exclusivist to the point of being racist, clannish, and endogamous, always have stood out, albeit in isolation, as an irritant throughout history. Furthermore, isolated though they may been, they were, and are not, "marginalized" at all, much less passive victims (here, it is crucial to note that MacDonald picks up on some themes raised in A.S. Lindemann's 1997 work, ESAU'S TEARS: MODERN ANTI-SEMITISM AND THE RISE OF THE JEWS. Rather, due mainly to endogamous practices which, in the end, provided for a program of "eugenics" (p. 9), a self-consciously isolated group was able to maintain a "gene pool" which, combined with Jewish child-rearing practices, provided progeny of higher intelligence than that of the peoples in whose midst they have resided. In this regard, and in other contexts as well, MacDonald makes much use of the term "group evolutionary strategy," and, it seems, he views Judaism not so much as a religion, but as "strategies," not only for self-preservation, but for advancement. Varieties of anti-Semitism, as the author sees it, should not be seen as representing aggressive attitudes towards Jews. Rather, in whatever form it has emerged, antiSemitism always has been a defensive strategy, in response to perceived threats posed by

a group - in Christian times to be sure, stigmatized as guilty of deicide - which was able do attain domination in whatever areas they chose to exert themselves. "Jews," MacDonald tells us, "are highly adept at achieving their goals..." (p. 9). This, the author maintains, is due to that high intelligence, mentioned earlier, which has allowed them to become important, if not at times dominant, in finance, the economy in general, and as socioeconomic "middle-men." At the same time, this endogamous, clannish folk, one quite adept--as beings of higher intelligence presumably are -- at seeing that others do almost all physical work, has maintained a basic attitude of contempt for goyim throughout history, an attitude which, MacDonald says, has been and is repressed only for "strategic" reasons. For MacDonald, indeed, as well as for certain varieties of Jews, e.g. Zionists, Jews will always be Jews and as such will be concerned with self-preservation no matter what form it takes. This can involve, at such a time as the Spanish Inquisition, denying their Judaism altogether. In a words, Jews can practice Orthodoxy, reject Orthodoxy in the name of reform, be Zionist or anti-Zionist, espouse varieties of "universalism," such as Marxism, declare themselves to be anti-Marxist; it really doesn't matter. Informed by a well-nighphylogenetic drive for self-preservation, Jews, even if seemingly divided amongst themselves, will always, at base, be concerned with effective "strategies," ones which, indeed, often have gone well beyond those assuring simple self-preservation. Thus, again, anti-Semitism, in whatever "evolved" form it has taken, must be seen as responding to Jewish exclusivity (informed, of course, by the sense of being "chosen"), and success, something which, as many non-Jews have seen it, has been gained in large measure through the labor of others. As indicated earlier, Professor MacDonald does not ignore the role of religion, i.e. the Jews as repudiators of Christ, as being of some importance in the development of antiSemitism. Of greater importance for him, though, was and is the clash over "resources," material, and at times human, between a collectivist, endogamous group, possessed of greater intelligence due to eugenic selection, and less intelligent, but somehow, one gets the feeling, harder working majorities. Have such majorities ever succeeded, through evolved anti-Semitic strategies, in defending themselves against this insular, racially selfassured, and often deceptive people? Yes, MacDonald says, there have been occasions, and these have involved both recognizing the collectivist nature of the Jews, and providing equally collectivist and unified responses to them. Among others, the author cites the anti-Semitic response, which emerged during the late Medieval period, one in which a rising European Christian middle class saw the seemingly perennially successful Jew as a concrete threat regarding control over "resources." What happened then was the formation of a unified Christian "collective" determined to eradicate pernicious Jewish influences. Thus, at the time, MacDonald tells us, there were "two mirage collectivist groups" (p. 119). A presence perceived of as noxious was effectively challenged and, in several contexts, the result was expulsion. Another example to deal effectively with Jewish economic dominance, exclusiveness, and deception was provided by Spain in the mid-15th Century. In the previous century, there had been major efforts to forcibly convert Jews to Christianity. Some Jews chose

not to flee or die, but, indeed, converted. Angered Spaniards discovered, though, that the so-called "New Christians" often practiced Judaism in secret, and that they continued traditional Jewish endogamous practices. At the same time, they had succeeded in holding on to their predominant economic roles. The response to this was the imposition, in the mid-15th century, of the limpieza [1] laws (pp. 122). Now, devotion to Christianity would be equated with the "purity" of blood, a clear recognition on the parts of church and state that, in dealing with a cunning, resourceful, and, when necessary, self-masking people, baptism alone could not assure that at least large numbers of them would not remain the same. Thus the Inquisition, at least in part, resulted from an effort to "purify" Spain, if necessary by expulsion; necessary in dealing with Jewish deception with regards to true conversion. There really was no other way in which to deal with Jewish "crypsis," grounded in racialist attitudes, then to respond with a racism reflecting the needs and will of the majority. What MacDonald sees as Spanish racism, then, was not really aggressive. Rather, it was a mirror-image response to the Jewish variety--one which had always provided that demographic and psychological sustenance necessary to sustain Jewish interests. Spanish racialist anti-Semitism represented a new stage in the evolution of general anti-Semitism. The Spanish episode, one in which Jewish "crypsis" is of particular interest for MacDonald, and he will return to it in several different contexts. For Professor MacDonald, it is plain that the most successful resistance offered to exclusivist, collectivist Judaism was offered by kinds of unified, collectivist responses, at times, necessarily authoritarian. The most effective stage(s) in "evolutionary" antiSemitism see the emergence of "mirror-imaging," i.e., when states, institutions, or best, when populations in general assume a "collectivist," perhaps necessarily authoritarian posture, in order to combat a collectivist Jewish entity which, throughout history, never has changed essentially. What the author sees as central "Western tendencies," --"universalism," and "individualism"--tendencies which Jews often have used for their own purposes, often have inhibited effective collectivist, if necessary, authoritarian responses (p. 133). As MacDonald sees it, the most effective "mirror-imaging" response to Jewish racialist collectivism was posed by National Socialist Germany. In its rejection of the kinds of "universalism" and "individualism" characteristic of Western Christian societies, and, most crucially, its emphasis upon racial purity and group cohesiveness, which made it the most developed "mirror-image" of Judaism, it represented the most thorough-going variant of "evolutionary anti-Semitism." "There is," MacDonald tells us, "an eerie sense in which National Socialist ideology was a mirror image of traditional Jewish ideology" (p. 161). Now, there had emerged a truly effective response, in the name of a collectivist, egalitarian--to be sure, authoritarian--folk community to Jewish racial collectivism. Here, it is crucial to point out that the author does not deny the Holocaust. Quite simply, it appears that it is not all that important for him. What is of importance was the Nazi example--a collectivist, authoritarian, but somewhat egalitarian folk community, headed by a leader who really did understand what Jews were about, had been able to pose an effective challenge to Jewish racialism. As far as the post-World War II Western world is concerned, Professor MacDonald is a

pessimist. Particularly in the United States, with its emphasis upon universalism, individualism, and pluralism, it has been and will continue to be "difficult or impossible to develop unified, cohesive groups of gentiles united in their opposition to Judaism" (p. 276). This is particularly the case since, throughout the Western world in general, ethnic politics is becoming of ever greater importance. Since, as MacDonald sees it, only homogeneous, collectivist societies have offered effective resistance to Judaism, there will remain a fundamental and non-resolvable friction between Judaism and prototypical Western political and social structure..." (Ibid.) It would seem that one would not be pressing the logic of MacDonald's argument to suppose that, in the end, the National Socialist solution was the only one. Throughout his book, but particularly in Chapter 6, MacDonald deals with Jewish "strategies" concerned with responding to anti-Semitism in its various evolved forms. These seem to "cover the waterfront." Outright denial of Judaism ("crypsis"), Zionism, anti-Zionist assimilationism, adherence to Orthodox usages, appeals to universalism, individualism, and pluralism--all have been and are forms which Jews can and will assume to assure the existence of a group which, "since the Enlightenment remains fundamentally in search of a convincing rationale" (p. 275). This is not a religion; rather, a kind of organism, guided by tropisms necessary for survival and advancement. For MacDonald, "the Jew" is indeed what Richard Wagner described such an entity as being, "the plastic demon." Moreover, as MacDonald sees it, Jews, while certainly isolated in some ways, never have been "marginalized." Indeed, due to their eugenically determined intelligence, their wealth, at least in the United States, has become extraordinary, their domination in certain fields, such as the film industry, indisputable, and their abilities as wire-pullers, unparalleled. This most racist of all peoples, at least in the Western world (following the somewhat questionable argument of J.L. Rather, who has written on Richard Wagner, Professor MacDonald sees Benjamin Disraeli as the father of modern European racism), will be able to assume a variety of strategies, defending pluralism being a crucial one. All the while, of course, Jews will be advancing their own interests. It is difficult to respond to one who believes that, first of all, Judaism is nothing but a series of group strategies, and that anti-Semitic "evolutionary" developments have been merely responses to them. For all of his mining, at times, rather selectively, of a number of sources, e.g., the Talmud and Maimonides, MacDonald's grasp of why Jews, or at least large numbers of them, chose to remain at least identifiable as such, sometimes in rather dire circumstances, is rather weak. It is certainly true that, for some, anti-Semitism in general and the Holocaust in particular wax large in Jewish identification (how this is different with regard to the ways in which other despised groups have dealt with respective past experiences is unclear). Also, while it is true that Jews have been successful materially in a number of contexts, most particularly in the United States, the fact remains that history has demonstrated that this has not secured them against quite rapid marginalization (in fact, MacDonald himself has provided examples of this). After all, Jews could prevail in a variety of areas, e.g., in finance and in dominating the liberal presses of Germany and Austria, and be literally helpless in the face of the latest stages of "evolutionary anti-Semitism." In a word, a despised, even if influential, minority group,

can be marginalized very quickly. Professor MacDonald talks of the "self-deception" of Jews regarding the prevalence of anti-Semitism in today's world ("self-deception," of course, being a "strategy" for group cohesiveness). Yet, one does not have to fall back upon a kind of "victimology" to see that, for all of their supposed abilities with regard to deception and wire-pulling, Jews have very legitimate reason to fear anti-Semitism. There may be hints of paranoia, from time to time, but, as that marvelous expression puts it, "Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean that you're not being followed." Professor MacDonald seems to have brought to bear wide-ranging knowledge. To put it mildly, though, there are more obvious problems. Mention has been made of Professor MacDonald's selective mining of Talmudic sources. Here, he is hardly setting a precedent. It has been a traditional approach of anti-Semites for some time. Yes, there are nasty anti-heathen (read anti-Christian) comments in the Talmud. But, if Professor MacDonald was really involved in exploring the 63 sections of this compendium of Jewish oral law and folklore, he would have seen that the Gemara, the commentary upon the oral law, Mishnah, was not informed by a systematic theology. Rather, it was, literally, commentary. In a word, it was a panoply of opinions on one or the other religious and social issue. One can find comments which MacDonald would see as representative of the spirit of an exclusivist people. At the same time, there are other opinions. Indeed, there are some which show a remarkable tolerance, and even concern, for non-Jews; quite extraordinary, one would think, in view of the fact that both the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds were put together in conditions of dispersion and exile. Obviously, if one wants to depict the Talmud as being consistently anti-Goy, great selectivity is necessary. Such was revealed in that tradition which informed the writings of Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Alfred Rosenberg. The same approach is apparent in Professor MacDonald's consideration of Maimonides. Driven into exile, this best known of formally Jewish philosophers, was quite bitter about his experiences at the hands of "heathens," and this found reflection in several contexts. Yet, Maimonides was consistent in his belief that Jews always had to treat non-Jews honestly and with respect. In considering more recent problems, Professor MacDonald declares that, as part of an overall Jewish "strategy," designed to promote Jewish interests and power--particularly as regards liberalization of American emigration policy--Jews exaggerated the Russian pogroms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. If such events, including the wellknown Kishinev massacre of 1903, really were not all that deadly, one wonders what impelled tens of thousands of people to leave their homes for points elsewhere. Or why, for that matter, Jews in the United States, some of them quite recently arrive, would have been sensitized to emigration issues in the first place. Professor MacDonald asserts that pogroms, such as that of Kishinev, were not engendered by official Imperial Russian policy. Rather, they were spontaneous outbreaks on the parts of a population oppressed by Jewish economic exploitation. While there is some truth in this, the fact remains that the Russian government did not exactly discourage such events. Here, the baleful influence of the ferociously anti-Semitic Konstantin Pobedonotsov, Procurator of the Holy Synod, was crucial. Nicholas II's link with the "Union of the Russian People," an anti-Semitic organization whose militant wing was the so-called "Black Hundreds," was

known at the time. In any event, even if the Russian government did not foment pogroms, it did nothing to inhibit local police and militia personnel who certainly were complicitous in them. How "evolutionary" Russian anti-Semitism had to become is debatable, but in any case the 650 anti-Jewish measures in place by the 1880s, to say nothing of the existence of the Pale, were sure-fire guards against crypsis. Professor MacDonald's treatment of some very crucial figures is brief and glib enough to border on caricatures. Here, the very profound, often anguished, concerns of Heinrich Heine, Berthold Auerbach, and Moses Hess must be mentioned. Also, his notion of the significance of the word "chosen" is skewed. From the prophets on, Jewish critics have upbraided their unhappy cohorts for not living up to such a designation and, because of this, being justifiably subject to divine opprobrium. But, perhaps this was due to the emergence of a few "recessive" genes in that awesome pool presumably rendered secure by strict eugenic practices. In any event that "racialism" which developed out of the notion of "chosenness" was not "mirror-imaged" by that of the Nazis or their ideological predecessors who saw Aryanism as not merely providing an example for the rest of humanity, but in a non-transcendent world dominated by racial mysticism, calling for, if not proscribing, domination. Professor MacDonald seems to think that if a people, whatever successes enjoyed by some, nonetheless confronted traumas imposed by persecution, expulsion and exile on a fairly regular basis, learned to live by its wits, it amounted to a kind of cheating. Indeed, it would seem that Jewish interest, at least those acceptable to MacDonald, would best have been served if Jews had remained kind of witless. But then, of course, they wouldn't have been Jews. None of this, though, really matters. For MacDonald, the Jew was and is the "plastic demon". Jews--the poor bastards--can assume any role or position they want (maybe Otto Weininger would be an exception for him) and still always be guided by a hidden agenda provided by phylogenesis. Moses, Maimonides, the Bal Shem Tov, Mayer Anselm Rothschild, Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx, Benjamin Disraeli, Theodor Herzl, Sigmund Freud (who MacDonald misrepresents with regard to his overall position on Zionism), Lilian Wald, Benjamin ("Bugsy") Siegel, Martin Buber--what does it matter? Particularly for one who, in the end, has a somewhat conventional racist approach, albeit far more sophisticated than average (here, MacDonald's emphasis on chromosomal engineering sets him apart), Jews, after all, the original racists, will have to live with a continuously evolving, and, of course, justifiable, anti-Semitism, this time and forever more, world without end. One gets the feeling that the best way of avoiding another frustrationengendered fling at genocide, would be for Jews to engage in a massive act of selfnegation. For one, though, who has taken the time to exhume the work of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, while recognizing its importance in the ideational world of Adolf Hitler, such an approach quite logically would be the most humane. Robert A. Pois Department of History University of Colorado, Boulder Footnotes [1]

As MacDonanld explains: Limpieza de sangre: purity of blood. "A major function of

the inquisition was to enforce the limpieza statutes and to scrutiinize the genitic ancestry of the individual brought within its purview" p. 122 See also: Reply to Robert Pois by Kevin MacDonald

Reply to Robert Pois by Kevin MacDonald

Robert Pois provides a generally negative reading of Separation and Its Discontents based not so much on inaccuracies or omissions on my part, but, I think, on his perception that my book presents a not very flattering portrayal of Judaism. I do indeed view Judaism “as `strategies,' not only for self-preservation, but for advancement,” and in general I perceive the most egregious examples of anti-Semitism to involve real conflicts of interest between Jews and segments of the gentile population. In this regard, as Pois notes, my book reflects several themes found in Albert S. Lindemann's Esau's Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews. In general, Pois does not seriously critique my main proposals for conceptualizing anti-Semitism, my summaries of the content of 2000 years of anti-Semitic writings, my portrayal of major Western antiSemitic movements fundamentally as collectivist responses to real conflicts of interests with Jews, my characterization of Jewish strategies for self-defense, my descriptions of the rationalizations, apologia and self-deceptions so central to maintaining ingroup pride and presenting Judaism to outgroups, or my characterization of the present state of Diaspora Judaism. His review contains a series of isolated criticisms of my scholarship, and there is an ad hominem tendency in Pois's remarks that finally cannot be contained. Many of his criticisms represent failures to distinguish my analysis from that of the antiSemitic ideologies I describe--a discreditable project at best. Pois overstates my position when he claims that “Varieties of anti-Semitism, as the author sees it, should not be seen as representing aggressive attitudes towards Jews. Rather, in whatever form it has emerged, anti-Semitism always has been a defensive strategy, in response to perceived threats posed by a group--in Christian times, to be sure, stigmatized as guilty of deicide--which was able do attain domination in whatever areas they chose to exert themselves.” In Chapter 1, I note that negative attitudes toward outgroups are very easily triggered and occur even in the absence of group conflict. In agreement with the findings of social psychology, Chapter 2 shows that Jewish clannishness and separateness have been sufficient conditions for at least moderate levels anti-Semitism, so that resource competition is not a necessary condition. In Chapter 6 I show that since the Enlightenment Jewish groups have been quite aware of this and have acted to lessen external signs of separateness (e.g., the Reform movement) while exhibiting great concern with the corrosive effects of these assimilative tendencies on group continuity. To be sure, I do believe that the great anti-Semitic movements that have periodically convulsed Western history have indeed been at heart collectivist responses to real, not illusory resource competition with Jews. Similarly, I do not maintain that “Judaism is nothing but a series of group strategies, and that anti-Semitic `evolutionary' developments have been merely responses to them.” I would not attempt to deny, for example, that the subjective psychological content of

being a Jew has often involved religious belief and that there are other facets of antiSemitic movements as well, oftentimes including Christian religious belief. Nevertheless, I think that my emphasis on resource and reproductive competition and other conflicts of interest as well as my emphasis on the biological moment of Judaism (endogamy, consanguinity, eugenics, etc.) is necessary for understanding major anti-Semitic movements and, as I try to show, often gets at the heart of the concerns of those involved in these conflicts. (At critical junctures in representing my argument Pois places quotes around key concepts [e.g., “resources,” “gene pool,” “evolutionary,” “eugenics,” “crypsis” and even “individualism” and “universalism”] as if to suggest their illusory nature or to suggest that I am using the words in an unusual or idiosyncratic manner. But since no argument is given, it is difficult to know how to respond.) Pois claims that “For all of his mining, at times, rather selectively, of a number of sources, e.g., the Talmud and Maimonides, MacDonald's grasp of why Jews, or at least large numbers of them, chose to remain at least identifiable as such, sometimes in rather dire circumstances, is rather weak.” Jewish identification is a vast and complex topic, and Pois only hints at a small part of my discussion, most of which occurs in Chapters 1, 7 and 8 and is continued as a major theme of the recently published The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998). Rather than emphasizing the Talmud and Maimonides, the focus throughout is on social identity processes and ethnocentrism. These processes in turn lead to self-perceptions as a persecuted but morally and intellectually superior group. They also quite often lead to a great deal of ambiguity in personal identity related to being Jewish in a modern Western society in which ethnic identification has only a precarious legitimacy. And there is a great deal of self-deception related not only to self-images of persecution and moral superiority but also to assertions of lack of Jewish identity. Pois seems to argue that the role of persecution in Jewish identity is in some sense justified because in fact there are historical examples (he mentions Austria) where Jews have been marginalized very quickly after assuming a very prominent position in society. I do not disagree with this assessment, and indeed in Chapter 6 I comment that despite the hypertrophied status of persecution and anti-Semitism in Jewish identity, Jews have had good reason to fear the wrath of the people they live among. In general, I think that Jews, far more than most people, see themselves as a link in a long chain going backwards in time and extending into the future. A critical component of this sense of historical peoplehood is the view that Jews have been repeatedly and unjustly victimized. Most European Jews are made to be aware that Jews were expelled from England, France and Spain, that the Crusaders conducted anti-Jewish pogroms, that the Catholic Church was often anti-Jewish, that antiSemitism was a very powerful force in Eastern and central Europe in more recent times, and that anti-Semitism was a fairly powerful force even in the United States until after World War II. These phenomena are then filtered through the lens of the ingroup where they become tinged with powerful moral overtones and become a potent source of personal identity. My point however, is that there is every reason to suppose that these self-perceptions contain elements of distortion, particularly as they relate to the role of Jewish behavior in causing anti-Semitism. As I show in Chapter 7, such perceptions have had a strong influence on Jewish historiography written by Jews.

Pois claims that I have selectively mined the Talmud to find passages in which Judaism is portrayed as exclusivist, “a traditional approach of anti-Semites for some time.” This seems to imply that I am using the Talmud as an element of my attempt to characterize Judaism. However, characterizing Judaism is not the purpose of the volume under review. This topic is covered in A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy where the Talmud has a bit part at best. Most of my discussion of the Talmud in the volume under review occurs in sections where I discuss the long history of anti-Jewish writing centered around statements to be found in the Talmud. Thus in Chapter 2, I show that statements gleaned from the Talmud have been an issue in Jewish-gentile relations--that indeed it is “a traditional approach of anti-Semites,” along with other themes such as Jewish clannishness and allegations of Jewish disloyalty and economic and cultural domination. And in Chapter 7, I discuss the Talmud as a focal point of Jewish-Christian apologetics, the point being that Jews have vigorously defended the Talmud against its attackers, as Professor Pois does in his review. The major exception is in Chapter 1, where I use writings on gentile uncleanness to illustrate the general proposition that in-groups tend to develop negative views of outgroup members. Writings on gentile uncleanness appear in a wide range of canonical Jewish writing dating at least from the first century b.c., including the Mishnah, the Talmuds, Tosefta, the Books of Judith and Jubilees, and later in authoritative sources such as Maimonides. Maimonides may indeed have had negative experiences with gentiles and this may have influenced the tone of his writings, as Pois notes, but his rendering of the law of gentile uncleanness was squarely within the Jewish tradition. Since the publication of SEPARATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS, I have found a similar ideology of outgroup uncleanness among the Romany (Gypsies), another notable Diaspora group. Professor Pois takes me to task for noting that Jewish accounts of the pogroms in Czarist Russia were exaggerated. In this regard I am merely utilizing the work of Professor Lindemann and other scholars such as E. H. Judge (EASTER IN KISHINEV: ANATOMY OF A POGROM; New York: NYU Press, 1992). This is not to claim that there was not a hostile environment in Russia toward Jews during this period or that the Czarist government had a benign attitude toward its Jewish population. I agree completely that anti-Semitism among large segments of the Russian population (which was, in my view, the main source of the pogroms), laws regulating Jewish mobility and Jewish economic behavior, and widespread poverty among Jews were important in stimulating Jewish emigration to the United States and elsewhere. There were also differences between the anti-Semitism of the ruling elites in Czarist Russia and that of the peasantry, with many of the latter viewing the Jews as instruments of the nobility in oppressing them. Professor Pois also complains that my treatment of certain Jewish intellectuals, such as Benjamin Disraeli, Heinrich Heine, and Moses Hess, fails to present the nuances of their thought. These writers are profiled in a section on Jewish racialist writing in Chapter 5, and I do not claim to have portrayed all of their ideas and concerns. My point is that they did have racialist conceptions of the Jewish people and that the views of such well-known intellectuals may well have influenced gentile perceptions of Jews. Whatever “very profound, often anguished, concerns” drove these writers, all of them had a very high opinion of Jewish ability and accomplishments. As Lindemann (1997, 77) notes, Disraeli “may have been, both as a writer and even more as a personal symbol, the most

influential propagator of the concept of race in the nineteenth century, particularly publicizing the Jews' alleged taste for power, their sense of superiority, their mysteriousness, their clandestine international connections, and their arrogant pride in being a pure race.” Beginning with Disraeli, it was common among intellectuals generally during this period to believe in the reality of racial/ethnic differences in ability. I am also accused of misusing the concept of chosenness. I used this aspect of Jewish religious ideology to illustrate several ideas: that there is no requirement that beliefs about either the ingroup or the outgroup be true (p. 11); that it has sometimes figured in anti-Jewish writing (pp. 35, 213); that it has figured in apologetic arguments developed by Jews (pp. 211, 214) (e.g., Kaufman Kohler's comment that “Israel is the champion of the Lord, chosen to battle and suffer for the supreme values of mankind, for freedom and justice, truth and humanity; the man of woe and grief, whose blood is to fertilize the soil with the seeds of righteousness and love for mankind.”); that the idea of chosenness and the fear of exogamy are linked together in Deuteronomy 7:2–6; that (quoting Hannah Arendt) the self-deceptive idea that Jews are morally superior is a modern version of the idea of chosenness; and that statements that Jews are the chosen people are still endorsed by Jewish activists (p. 278n.5). Regarding the latter, I quote Woocher to the effect that “civil Judaism, like many modern Jews, often finds the traditional language of chosenness, and the implications of that language discomforting. For this reason, it is possible to lose sight of how critical the myth of chosenness really is, to fail to recognize that it is the glue which holds together the pragmatic ethos and the transcendent vision of civil Judaism.”. I agree with Pois that “From the prophets on, Jewish critics have upbraided their unhappy cohorts for not living up to such a designation and, because of this, being justifiably subject to divine opprobrium.” But this hardly exhausts the uses of the idea of chosenness in Jewish self-conceptions or in how gentiles have perceived Jews. Pois then asserts that “that `racialism' which developed out of the notion of `chosenness was not `mirror-imaged' by that of the Nazis or their ideological predecessors who saw Aryanism as not merely providing an example for the rest of humanity, but in a nontranscendent world dominated by racial mysticism, calling for, if not proscribing [sic], domination.” I rather doubt that the concept of chosenness is a sufficient explanation of Jewish racialist theories. The summaries on pp. 148–160 and pp. 224–226 indicate that this body of theory was motivated by a desire to extol Jewish virtues, develop ingroup pride, maintain racial purity, and defend Jews against the charges of anti-Semites. Jewish racial superiority often went well beyond the belief that Jews were morally superior (“an example to the rest of humanity”, as Pois has it) to the ideas that Jews were intellectually superior and that they were genetically inclined to form elites (a form of domination; see, e.g., the comment attributed to Julian Benda in which he mentions the view among Jewish elite businessmen of the natural subjugation of non-Jews by Jews; p. 156). My view is that, apart from notions of Jewish ethical superiority (which Pois seems to subscribe to and which seems to me little more than ingroup glorification), these ideas have substantial empirical support. As has happened so often in the past, Jews have attained an elite status in contemporary Western societies, and there is very good evidence that an important contributing factor is superior Jewish intelligence resulting from the long history of eugenics within the Jewish community. Furthermore, there is nothing in Pois's comments that would lead me to retract my view that Chamberlain,

Hitler, and other German racialists were deeply aware that Jews had always placed a very high premium on genetic purity and conceived themselves as a separate and superior race. Pois then makes the following comment: “Professor MacDonald seems to think that if a people, whatever successes enjoyed by some, nonetheless confronted traumas imposed by persecution, expulsion and exile on a fairly regular basis, learned to live by its wits, it amounted to a kind of cheating. Indeed, it would seem that Jewish interest, at least those acceptable to MacDonald, would best have been served if Jews had remained kind of witless. But then, of course, they wouldn't have been Jews.” I take this to imply that I see Jewish strategies as in some sense immoral, that they involve cheating in the game of life. On the contrary, I have tried my best to refrain from moralism in my account, though I have encountered a great many examples of moralistic writing among Jewish historians and other intellectual activists (see p. 216ff), and I suppose that Pois falls into this camp. As an evolutionist I simply see strategies as successful or unsuccessful. I fully expect people, ethnic groups, and nations to behave in a Machiavellian manner. In my view moralism functions mainly to rally ingroup loyalty and develop guilt in outgroups, but such rhetoric plays no role in scientific analysis. Pois then states that “For MacDonald, the Jew was and is the `plastic demon.' Jews . . . can assume any role or position they want . . . and still always be guided by a hidden agenda provided by phylogenesis.” Pois then provides a long list of ethnic Jews with a wide range of Jewish identification and very different Jewish agendas or no Jewish agenda at all, presumably in an attempt to show that such a disparate group could not conceivably be subjected to any kind of systematic analysis. My view is that Jewish identification and the adoption of a Jewish agenda by a particular person are empirical matters. I rather doubt that Bugsy Siegel had a Jewish agenda and I have no idea if he even considered himself a Jew. The Jewish status of several others in the list is complex and ambiguous, and there is no question that even those with a strong Jewish identification often had very different Jewish agendas. This is altogether a fascinating topic. In the recently published THE CULTURE OF CRITIQUE I discuss various 20thcentury Jewish intellectual and political movements. In each case I am careful to evaluate the empirical evidence on these people's Jewish identification and the extent to which they viewed their work as advancing a specifically Jewish agenda, with no assumption that all Jewish agendas are likely to be successful in achieving their aims or that all Jews have the same agenda, much less an agenda determined by “phylogenesis.” My view is that humans are “flexible strategizers” rather than preprogrammed robots, with general purpose intellectual abilities able to respond to novel contingencies in an adaptive manner (see p. 177). Pois concludes his review by stating that I am led to the conclusion that “Jews, after all, the original racists, will have to live with a continuously evolving, and, of course, justifiable, anti-Semitism, this time and forever more, world without end. One gets the feeling that the best way of avoiding another frustration-engendered fling at genocide, would be for Jews to engage in a massive act of self-negation.” As indicated above, I reject the moral overtones implied by the term “justifiable.” I would prefer the phrase “scientifically understandable.” Unlike some recent comments to the H-ANTISEMITISM

list, I do believe that anti-Semitism is scientifically understandable rather than a phenomenon that should be permanently relegated to an area beyond rational investigation. (The mystification of anti-Semitism has its own political usefulness of course, leaving it solely in the realm of moralism and philosophical speculation--an agenda of the currently influential movement of postmodernism.) I do, however, think that a significant degree of anti-Semitism is likely to be chronic in societies where Jews reside in significant numbers. In saying this I am certainly not being mean spirited or even particularly original. Jewish intellectuals have long been deeply aware that antiSemitism has been a chronic issue throughout history (see pp. 26–32), and it is common to believe that a low level of anti-Semitism actually benefits Jews (see pp. 177–181). However, as discussed in Chapter 6 of my book, Jews have developed a remarkable array of strategies to combat the more egregious forms of anti-Semitism, and I have no doubt that they will continue to successfully combat these threats to their group evolutionary strategy far into the foreseeable future.

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