A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism As a Group Evolutionary Strategy, With Diaspora Peoples

Rating:
Summary: Five stars for courage
Review: I do not feel qualified to judge the academic merits of Professor Kevin MacDonald's book; however, I gladly give him five stars for sheer courage. Writing about Jewish subjects is nowadays a very risky business unless one limits himself to the conventional pietisms and platitudes. Prof. MacDonald certainly doesn't do that. Predictably enough, his works (just like the books of Albert S. Lindemann on the real causes of "antisemitism"), triggered the usual hysteria and howls of rage. All the more reason to read them!

Rating:
Summary: The new anti-semitism
Review: It is always good to look at every side of an issue. This book is just as its title says. It gives a suprising "inside look" to outsiders.
Mind you, this book does NOT discuss religion. After reading it you will gain knowledge on how certain peoples who perfer to live in their own little "cliques" think.

Rating:
Summary: The new anti-semitism
Review: MacDonald is another of those neo-Darwinists who has fed racism under the guise of scholarship. His work is largely speculative and is a house of delusion constructed upon scholarly goobledy gop. He also has the distinction of being a witness in support of David Irving's law suit against Deborah Lipstadt for her truthful characterization of Irving as an anti-semite. Irving lost and the judge basically affirmed Lipstadt's view by stating that Irving was what he was - an antisemite, and a disgrace. Irving, like Ernst Zundel, still rages in his anti-semitism and claims that the holocaust didn't really happen. MacDonald is not quite as blatant or known as Irving who has been filmed at meetings of former Nazi (S.S.) soldiers' reunions, nor as transparent as Zundel, but his form of supporting the tradition is perhaps more dangerous as it seems to be scholarly before one sees the overall perspective. Previous listings of reviews of his books are a mix of those who recognize him for what he is, and anti-semites whose views are sometimes rather blatant.
MacDonald is an example of the heavy price society sometimes pays for freedom - in this case, academic freedom. I once wrote him asking him why he did not pick Scottish people (his origin I presume) as a study in survival strategy. That might have been interesting to read. He did not have the grace to reply. Not at all surprising. He is who he is.

Rating:
Summary: Publishers iUniverse and Praeger should be ashamed
Review: PTSDA gives evolutionary psychology a black eye. It's so grotesquely inept and speculative that at least one leader in the field denies that MacDonald IS an evolutionary psychologist.

Its argument in brief: Judaism evolved as a strategy aimed at maximizing Jewish genetic fitness and survival. Its group strategies include: group coercion, segregation, intragroup altruism, social control, and collectivism.

PTSDA's entire discourse on Jewish collectivism would be laughable were it not so frequently dishonest. MacDonald observes that "Conformity to group attitudes and behavior is an extremely important aspect of social control in traditional Jewish communities." Actually, BY DEFINITION, conformity is an extremely important aspect of social control in ANY traditional community, Gentile included. Conversely, lack of conformity to group goals, self-reliance, individual responsibility and the desire to "find oneself" are modern qualities. Curiously, PTSDA doesn't seem to recognize these qualities in American Jews, although the term "self-actualization" was coined by the Jewish psychologist Maslow. Harry Triandis, a leading theorist on collectivism, upon whom MacDonald relies heavily for support told me some years ago that : "Most American Jews tend to be idiocentric [individualistic] although they are probably allocentric [collectivist] in family matters (less divorce)."

PTSDA also ignores the plethora of studies showing that Jewish families score higher on autonomy than any other ethnic/religious group. As Jews are also more secular & liberal, they are LESS, not more, likely to subscribe to the fundamentalist (collectivist) notion that "ingroup norms are universally valid" or that ingroup authorities merit unquestioned obedience. Nor do Jews gravitate to the extreme right wing, with its collectivist tendency toward "distrust of and unwillingness to cooperate with outgroups" (immigrants, blacks, gays). Jews also donate proportionately less charity to Jewish institutions than Christians donate to Christian institutions -- about half vs. 70%. So much for the "high degree of nepotism and within-group charity" PTSDA purports to find among Jews. PTSDA's own source (Ellman) notes that "as late as 1950, 57% of American Christians polled said they would not marry a Jew." Why then doesn't MacDonald call mid-century CHRISTIANS collectivist?

Evidence refuting PTSDA's claim that Jews have been distinctively authoritarian through history can be found in the books's own voluminous references. They indicate that: 1) the abject gratitude commonly expected of children toward their parents in most other (including European) societies was less salient among Jews; 2) Jewish diaspora communities were generally less punitive than their Gentile neighbors; 3) at a time when the Church barred the lower classes from reading, all classes of Jews mixed together in the synagogues and Beit Midrash, where they read and DEBATED the Talmud together with their rabbis.

MacDonald is aware of this, and not just because the material can be found in the works he cites. Elsewhere, when he is discussing not collectivism but high-investment parenting by Jews he readily describes how it encourages Jewish children to "express opinions and contribute to solving problems."

More dishonesty: to find evidence of a Jewish eugenic strategy, PTSDA, (citing Ellman) contends that "Not surprisingly a recent survey [NJPS] indicated that the group least likely to defect from Judaism was the highly educated." Actually Ellman contrasts this ONE highly ambiguous study with 'SEVERAL' others which found the opposite to be true.

PTSDA asserts that Jews are innately more intelligent. Yet the very citation and page number it uses for support contains a passage that undermines its case -- so PTSDA omits it. It reads: Without "specific knowledge" of the "genetic mechanisms" involved, "we have no way to decide whether genetic factors have contributed to the intellectual excellence of the Jewish group. The means to a solution do not exist..." (Vogel, 609). As for Oriental Jews, who MacDonald suggests are innately less intelligent, studies show that Oriental Jewish children raised in the same kibbutz environment as Ashkenazim score comparably on IQ tests.

Some closing observations: 1) the eugenics practices PTSDA purports to find among Ashkenazim (intermarriage among the intellectually gifted) were rare among the Sephardim, who outnumbered the Ashkenazim in medieval times and produced some of the greatest minds of early modern Europe. (Conspicuously, given its large bibliography and theme, PTSDA fails to cite Feuer's well-known refutation of the sociobiological theory of Jewish intelligence). 2) Infanticide, arguably a 'eugenic" practice that disproportionately claimed the lives of the poor, fatherless or handicapped, was exceedingly rare among Jews, who didn't require the foundling hospitals set up in London and Paris for this purpose. Might we not propose a "eugenic advantage" for Christians based on the same "logic" that informs PTSDA? 3) No hard evidence was presented for the "thesis" that Jews are BIOLOGICALLY PREDISPOSED to psychological traits such as collectivism and ethnocentrism. 4) PTSDA's claim that the haverim attempted genetic discrimination against lower class Jews is baseless. 5) Notwithstanding sporadic cultural and economic rivalries, the claim that Jews discriminated against one another based on genetic distance is easily refuted. For example, although a recent study suggests that Yemeni Jews are genetically distant from even Oriental Jews, evidence for any specifically anti-Yemeni behavior is conspicuously absent. 6) Concerning the "purely instrumental" economic relations that Jews allegedly practiced with Gentiles, PTSDA fails to consider how closed Christian guilds were or how instrumental was the economic behavior of Gentiles-- towards Jews and each other. 7) PTSDA highlights parochialism in Judaism, but omits the vast literature on Jewish universalism and cosmopolitanism. 8) In arguing for Jewish verbal over visuospatial inteligence, PTSDA must ascribe the disproportionate contributions of Jewish mathematicians, physicists, chemists and inventors to their prodigious verbal skills! 9) If Sephardim really practiced evolutionary group strategy, all should have left Iberia; instead, most stayed, converted and vanished from history.

Praeger, and perhaps Cal State as well, should be ashamed for letting their academic standards sink so low.

Rating:
Summary: Publishers iUniverse and Praeger should be ashamed
Review: This books central theme is trying to portray a scholarly analysis of Jewish behavior and how that behavior has made Jews both successful and targets of attacks. Yet the analysis has several major flaws. The book tries to pass off as scholarship a reasoning that says Jews have been mean to gentiles and that Jews therefore somehow deserved anti-Semitism. This analysis ignores something central. It is true that Jews, having moved to Europe during the Roman occupation in the first century A.D, began to cultivate certain habits of intermarriage and religious cohesion. Because Jews lived all over the old Roman empire they became perfect intermediaries for trade and eventually became involved in Academia and Banking, two strains that would give anti-Semites much powder for their arguments. Yet these traits are not in themselves explanatory of the ingrained, institutionalized hatred that some on the west had for Judaism. The Europeans accused Jews of being capitalists and communists. They accused Jews of both `sticking together' and `putting their heads where they don't belong'. They accused Jews of being both `religious fanatics' and `secular atheists'. Well how is it possible that all these accusations are true, certainly this book does not reconcile the fact that the accusations against Jews in Anti-Semitism have little factual basis and are more the creation of anti-Semites, who love to find worldwide conspiracies.

This books Pseudo-scholarship is not really worthy of its subject. The author quotes many sources that supposedly portray anti-gentilism within Judaism, but the truth is no such thing exists. Probably the only worthwhile section of this book is the introduction where draws comparisons between Jews and the Chinese Diaspora or the Gypsies, if he had stuck to this theme maybe the book would have had more substance.

Rating:
Summary: A flawed analysis
Review: This books central theme is trying to portray a scholarly analysis of Jewish behavior and how that behavior has made Jews both successful and targets of attacks. Yet the analysis has several major flaws. The book tries to pass off as scholarship a reasoning that says Jews have been mean to gentiles and that Jews therefore somehow deserved anti-Semitism. This analysis ignores something central. It is true that Jews, having moved to Europe during the Roman occupation in the first century A.D, began to cultivate certain habits of intermarriage and religious cohesion. Because Jews lived all over the old Roman empire they became perfect intermediaries for trade and eventually became involved in Academia and Banking, two strains that would give anti-Semites much powder for their arguments. Yet these traits are not in themselves explanatory of the ingrained, institutionalized hatred that some on the west had for Judaism. The Europeans accused Jews of being capitalists and communists. They accused Jews of both 'sticking together' and 'putting their heads where they don't belong'. They accused Jews of being both 'religious fanatics' and 'secular atheists'. Well how is it possible that all these accusations are true, certainly this book does not reconcile the fact that the accusations against Jews in Anti-Semitism have little factual basis and are more the creation of anti-Semites, who love to find worldwide conspiracies.

This books Pseudo-scholarship is not really worthy of its subject. The author quotes many sources that supposedly portray anti-gentilism within Judaism, but the truth is no such thing exists. Probably the only worthwhile section of this book is the introduction where draws comparisons between Jews and the Chinese Diaspora or the Gypsies, if he had stuck to this theme maybe the book would have had more substance.