 The original trilogy, released between 1994–1998. | |
A People That Shall Dwell Alone Separation and Its Discontents The Culture of Critique | |
| Author | Kevin B. MacDonald |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Psychology |
| Publisher | Praeger Publishing Washington Summit Publishers AuthorHouse |
| Published | 1994–2004 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover andpaperback |
The Culture of Critique series is a trilogy of books byKevin B. MacDonald that promoteantisemitic conspiracy theories.[1] MacDonald, awhite supremacist and retired professor of evolutionary psychology, claims thatevolutionary psychology provides the motivations behindJewish group behavior andculture. Through the series, MacDonald asserts that Jews as a group have biologically evolved to be highly ethnocentric and hostile to the interests ofwhite people. He asserts Jewish behavior and culture are central causes ofantisemitism, and promotesconspiracy theories about alleged Jewish control and influence in government policy and political movements.
The overwhelming majority of academic and journalistic reviews of MacDonald's work have dismissed it aspseudoscience grounded in conspiracy theories, and replete with misrepresentations and cherry-picking of sources. The work is regarded as having been motivated by MacDonald'santisemitic bias, rather than being an honest product of academic research.[2][3][4][5]
The trilogy includes:
The first books constitute what is known as MacDonald's "trilogy." In this trilogy, he describes Judaism as a "group evolutionary strategy" to enhance the ability ofJews to out-compete non-Jews for resources. He argues that Judaism fosters in Jews a series of marked genetic traits, including above-averageverbal intelligence and a strong tendency towardcollectivist behavior. MacDonald also notes a negative shift in tone from the first book to the third, and attributes it to having learned more, read more, and "changed greatly" in that time. MacDonald's trilogy has been described as significant for "its potential to forge a standardized anti-Semitic critique in the far right."[9]
The trilogy was followed by additional writings on the topic published byThe Occidental Quarterly, a periodical MacDonald currently edits:
MacDonald describesJudaism as having or being a "group evolutionary strategy" aimed at limitingexogamy, enforcing cultural segregation, promoting in-group charity and economic cooperation, and regulating in-group marriage and births to achieve high levels of intelligence, ability to acquire resources, parenting care, and group allegiance. He examines evidence from Jewish history, culture, and genetics supporting his thesis, arguing that Judaism is based on a strong—and possibly genetically based—predisposition toethnocentrism characteristic of Middle Eastern cultures generally but exacerbated as a result of selective effects resulting from Jewish cultural practices. He considers the use of the complex and extensive Jewish scriptures and the high prestige ofRabbinic learning aseugenic mechanisms for promoting Jewish verbal intelligence anddexterity.[citation needed][original research?]
Developing his work inA People That Shall Dwell Alone, MacDonald examines antisemitism as a test case for an evolutionary analysis of ethnic conflict in general, applying social identity theory to three critical periods of institutionalized antisemitism: the Roman Empire in the fourth century; theIberian inquisitions from the fourteenth century; andGerman Nazism in the period 1933–45. He argues that antisemitism is a consequence of resource competition between groups in which each group is rationally pursuing its own interests rather than a manifestation of irrational malice by non-Jewish out-groups, and asserts that Jews, particularly strongly identified Jews, will be relatively prone to self-deception by ignoring or rationalizing negative information about themselves and their in-group. Finally, he discusses whether Judaism has ceased to be an evolutionary strategy because of the current levels of intermarriage among some groups of diaspora Jews, arguing that it has not ceased to be so and that it continues to flourish.[citation needed][original research?]
MacDonald examinesBoasian anthropology,political radicalism,psychoanalysis, theFrankfurt School, andThe New York Intellectuals, arguing that Jews dominated these intellectual movements and that a strong sense of Jewish identity was characteristic of the great majority of the individuals in these movements. He argues that these individuals were pursuing a Jewish ethnic agenda in establishing and participating in these movements, while writing that the Jewish community does not constitute a unified movement and that only a small and elite minority of that community participated in these movements.[citation needed][original research?]
He claims Jewish efforts to shapeUnited States immigration policy were in opposition to what he sees as the interests of the peoples of non-Jewish European descent, particularly the peoples of Northern and Western Europe. He concludes the book by claiming that the intellectual movements he examines are movements that are either "Jewish" by nature or Jewish-controlled: "the result has been a widening gulf between the cultural successes of Jews and Gentiles and a disaster for society as a whole."[citation needed][original research?]
Describing the evolution of his thinking over the course of his writing the trilogy, MacDonald says in his preface to the 2002 paperback edition ofThe Culture of Critique:
I think there is a noticeable shift in my tone from the first book to the third simply because (I'd like to think) I knew a lot more and had read a lot more. People often say after reading the first book that they think I really admire Jews, but they are unlikely to say that about the last two and especially aboutCofC. That is because by the time I wroteCofC I had changed greatly from the person who wrote the first book.[10]
The series has been widely criticized by academics and researchers as antisemitic and scientifically unsupportable.
Slate magazine carried an article byJudith Shulevitz, then Art and Entertainment editor of the Culturebox, entitled "Evolutionary Psychology's Anti-Semite," continuing the discussion followed by an attempted rebuttal by MacDonald. According to Shulevitz, MacDonald's arguments are prescriptive: "Toward the end of the third book, MacDonald lays out his solution for restoring what he calls 'parity' between the Jews and other ethnic groups: systematic discrimination against Jews in college admission and employment and heavy taxation of Jews 'to counter the Jewish advantage in the possession of wealth.'"[11] MacDonald replied that in the actual passage fromThe Culture of Critique quoted by Shulevitz, he was speaking hypothetically of the consequences of competition between ethnic groups of differing abilities.[12]Mark Potok of theSouthern Poverty Law Center has said of MacDonald that "he put the anti-Semitism under the guise of scholarly work... Kevin MacDonald’s work is nothing but gussied-up anti-Semitism. At base it says that Jews are out to get us through their agenda... His work is bandied about by just about every neo-Nazi group in America."[13]
TheAnti-Defamation League has included MacDonald in its list of American extremists,Extremism in America, and has written a report[14] on his views and ties. According to the ADL, MacDonald's views on Jews mimic those of antisemites from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In a letter toSlate magazine,Harvard University psychology professorSteven Pinker wrote:
The suggestion that scholars "can't ignore bad ideas" is a nonstarter. In science there are a thousand bad ideas for every good one. "Doing battle" against all of them is not an option for mere mortals, and doing battle against some of them is a tacit acknowledgment that those have enough merit to exceed the onerous threshold of attention-worthiness. MacDonald's ideas, as presented in summaries that would serve as a basis for further examination, do not pass that threshold, for many reasons:
1. By stating that Jews promulgate scientific hypotheses because they are Jewish, he is engaging inad hominem argumentation that is outside the bounds of normal scientific discourse and an obvious waste of time to engage. MacDonald has already announced that I will reject his ideas because I am Jewish, so what's the point of replying to them?
2. MacDonald's main axioms –group selection of behavioral adaptations, and behaviorally relevant genetic cohesiveness of ethnic groups – are opposed by powerful bodies of data and theory, whichTooby,Cosmides, and many other evolutionary psychologists have written about in detail. Of course any assumption can be questioned, but there are no signs that MacDonald has taken on the burden of proof of showing that the majority view is wrong.
3. MacDonald's various theses, even if worthy of scientific debate individually, collectively add up to a consistently invidious portrayal of Jews, couched in value-laden, disparaging language. It is impossible to avoid the impression that this is not an ordinary scientific hypothesis.
4. The argument, as presented in the summaries, fails two basic tests of scientific credibility: a control group (in this case, other minority ethnic groups), and a comparison with alternative hypotheses (such asThomas Sowell's convincing analysis of "middlemen minorities" such as the Jews, presented in his magisterial study of migration, race, conquest, and culture).[15]
Pinker closed by commenting that he had "not plowed through MacDonald's trilogy and therefore run the complementary risks of being unfair to his arguments, and of not refuting them resoundingly enough."[15]
A paper by David Lieberman, a Holocaust researcher atBrandeis University, alleges that MacDonald has distorted evidence and chosen evidence selectively for rhetorical purposes.[16]
John Tooby, past president of theHuman Behavior and Evolution Society and a professor ofanthropology at theUniversity of California, Santa Barbara, insists that MacDonald is not an evolutionary psychologist, and that he advocates a generally discredited view of natural selection. Tooby, the founder of MacDonald's field of evolutionary psychology, criticized MacDonald in an article for theSalon website in 2000: "MacDonald's ideas—not just on Jews—violate fundamental principles of the field."[17]
Reviewing MacDonald'sA People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy inThe Jewish Quarterly Review,Sander Gilman, professor of the Liberal Arts and Medicine at theUniversity of Illinois at Chicago, describes MacDonald's arguments about a Jewish group evolutionary strategy as "bizarre". According to Gilman, "MacDonald recasts all of the hoary old myths about Jewish psychological difference and its presumed link to Jewish superior intelligence in contemporary sociobiological garb." Gilman also charges that "MacDonald manipulates his sources rather shamelessly," including Gilman's own work. Gilman concludes that MacDonald's book "is the most recent chapter in the continued myth-building concerning Jewish superior intelligence and achievement. It is, like the numerous earlier works, of interest in how positive images turn into the means by which Jewish difference is stressed and Jewish acculturation is shown to be pathological."[5]
Reviewing MacDonald'sA People That Shall Dwell Alone in theJournal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Eugen Schoenfeld, Professor Emeritus of Sociology atGeorgia State University, commented that "the book is controversial, not only because of its theoretical approach, but also, and perhaps primarily, because of sloppy scholarship." Schoenfeld writes that MacDonald "selects historical incidents that can be used to support his thesis and conveniently omits others that challenge his thesis." Schoenfeld points to what he sees as MacDonald's "unfamiliarity with both the sociological frame of reference and historical knowledge," and as an example, notes that MacDonald's comparison of Jewish collectivism during the biblical period with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English individualism "indicates a total ignorance of the impact of industrialization on Western societies."[3]
On the other hand, Laurence Loeb of theUniversity of Utah, writing for theJewish Folklore and Ethnology Review in 1997, gaveA People That Shall Dwell Alone a mostly positive review, calling it a "tour-de-force" that, despite containing "quite a number of errors, some of them glaring," nonetheless represented a "watershed contribution to the understanding of Judaism and Jewish life" based on a "cautious, careful assembling of evidence."[18]
Reviewing MacDonald'sSeparation and Its Discontents in theAmerican Jewish Society Review in 2000,Zev Garber, Professor of Jewish Studies atLos Angeles Valley College, wrote that MacDonald works from the assumption that the dual Torah is the blueprint of the eventual Jewish dominion over the world and that he sees contemporary antisemitism, the Holocaust, and attacks against Israel as "provoked by Jews themselves. In this scenario, Jews imagine themselves as innocent victims of hatred and violence." Garber concludes that MacDonald's "rambling who-is-who-isn't roundup of Jews responsible for the 'Jewish Problem' borders on the irrational and is conducive to misrepresentation."[19]
Daniel Kriegman, an evolutionary psychologist, criticized MacDonald's work as "pseudoscientific theorizing ... MacDonald is not the first person to avoid the narcissistic injury of having his ideas rejected by concluding that there was a conspiracy against him rather than becoming aware of the substandard nature [as evidenced in his trilogy] of his thinking."[20]
A history professor at MacDonald's university, Don Schwarz, called MacDonald's claims aboutJewish history "unsupportable."[17] Philosophy Professor Warren Weinstein said that MacDonald's work was not science at all, but "something else, masquerading as science": and that "It is in the great tradition of Nazi and Stalinist science which clearly and scientifically proved that their respective insanities were objectively true and defensible."[21]
Academic Jaff Schatz has accused MacDonald of misrepresenting and misusing his work.[22]
John Hartung, the former associate editor of theJournal of Neurosurgical Anesthesiology and an associate professor of anesthesiology at theState University of New York, said that MacDonald'sThe Culture of Critique was "quite disturbing, seriously misinformed about evolutionary genetics, and suffering from a huge blind spot about the nature of Christianity."[21]
In a 2000 review in the journalShofar, reviewer Jefferson A. Singer wrote that he considered the book to be "written out of a deep and destructive hatred for Jews," and questioned the editorial policy of the books' publisher, Praeger, in "bringing a book of such dubious scientific merit to a larger audience and in giving it an air of legitimacy it does not deserve."[23]
In March 2018, Nathan Cofnas, a philosophy graduate student at theUniversity of Oxford, published a critique of MacDonald's theory in the journalHuman Nature where he concluded that MacDonald relied "on systematically misrepresented sources and cherry-picked facts."[24] The paper was downloaded on more occasions in a single month than the rest of the journal's articles typically receive in a full year.[25] Cofnas's article prompted a response defending MacDonald from Edward Dutton, a theologian and YouTuber affiliated withRichard Lynn's think tank, the Ulster Institute for Social Research. Dutton's response was rejected byHuman Nature, and was instead published byEvolutionary Psychological Science.[26] The attention prompted by Cofnas's paper was itself commented on. AnthropologistRobert Boyd of the Arizona State described the topic itself as "totally toxic," Steven Pinker described MacDonald's and Dutton's arguments as "extraordinarily weak," while Aryeh Tuchman of theAnti-Defamation League said that the renewed attention falsely implied that MacDonald'santisemitic tropes have academic legitimacy.[25]
Steven Pinker, the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, wrote that MacDonald's work fails "basic tests of scientific credibility." Another scientist, John Tooby, who, along with his wife Leda Cosmides, gave the field of evolutionary psychology its name in 1992, directly challenged MacDonald's work. Tooby told Salon.com in 2000 that "MacDonald's ideas — not just on Jews — violate fundamental principles of the field." John Hartung, the associate editor of the Journal of Neurosurgical Anesthesiology and an associate professor of anesthesiology at the State University of New York, called MacDonald's The Culture of Critique "quite disturbing, seriously misinformed about evolutionary genetics, and suffering from a huge blind spot about the nature of Christianity."