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, 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. "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-nigh-
phylogenetic 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 anti-
Semitism. 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 self-
assured, 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" anti-
Semitism 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 well-
known 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 frustration-
engendered fling at genocide, would be for Jews to engage in a massive act of self-
negation. 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 anti-
Semitic 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 anti-
Semitic 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 anti-
Semitic 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 anti-
Semitism 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 non-
transcendent 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 20th-
century 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 anti-
Semitism 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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