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Separation and Its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism

Kevin B. MacDonald

3.70 · Rating details · 61 ratings · 5 reviews

MacDonald develops a theory of anti-Semitism based on an evolutionary interpretation of social identity theory--a major approach to group conflict in contemporary social psychology. Beginning in the ancient world, anti-Semitism has existed under a variety of religious and political regimes. MacDonald explores several theoretically important common themes of anti-Semitic wr ...more

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Paperback, 448 pages

Published November 17th 2003 by 1st Book Library (first published 1998)

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Mar 29, 2019 Victor Finn rated it it was amazing

In many important ways, this book is actually much better than the Culture of Critique. The in-depth look at particular instances of Jewish-Gentile group conflict shows the ways in which Judaism is un-assimilable and that it necessarily results in Gentile societies becoming more collectivist and authoritarian in order to compete against Judaism.

I particularly enjoyed the section on the Late Roman Empire, and how during that time Christianity was defined in its opposition to Judaism, with the fo In many important ways, this book is actually much better than the Culture of Critique. The in-depth look at particular instances of Jewish-Gentile group conflict shows the ways in which Judaism is un-assimilable and that it necessarily results in Gentile societies becoming more collectivist and authoritarian in order to compete against Judaism.

I particularly enjoyed the section on the Late Roman Empire, and how during that time Christianity was defined in its opposition to Judaism, with the former being a universalistic and supernatural religion whereas the latter is an ethnocentric, materialistic religion.

But there were a few things that I felt Kevin Macdonald should have addressed. He mentions how the stubborn refusal of the Jews to refuse to be assimilated by Europeans by intermarriage. But what is the effect of this intermarriage, precisely? We all know that when a White European and a darker-skinned person like an African or an Arab mate, that the children almost invariably come out being darker skinned and not looking European at all, such that Europeans could theoretically wind up being completely assimilated by them through marriage in this way, that European genetic recessive traits could be wiped out through miscegenation. Dr. Macdonald seems to suggest that if Jews were to marry White Europeans, that their own traits would be wiped out in a similar fashion, that is to say that Jewish-White European marriages have the same effect on Jews that intermarriage with Africans has on Whites. This claim is never scientifically proven, which is immensely frustrating in a book that is otherwise intensely academically rigorous. The only proof offered is the fear of the Jews that this is what would happen. But are there any studies of Jewish genes disappearing over time due to intermarriage with white Europeans or do they "stick" in the way that African genes stick to White Europeans?

I also find it strange that during the sections on Christian Rome and the Inquisition, that the question of Jesus' jewishness was never discussed... surely some saint or theologian must have had to comment on the fact that their deity is a Jew, especially given the ferocity of gentile-Jewish conflict? Did no one ever feel uncomfortable worshipping a Jew one day a week and then hating them every other day of the week?

I have heard it said that Jesus' divinity negates his jewishness, or any kind of racial aspect. This argument should have been brought up in the book. It is a huge thing to not mention.

All in all, if you loved the Culture of Critique, as I did, then it is imperative that you read this book as well. The three chapters that form the core of the book, on Late Rome, the Inquisition, and Nazi Germany, are the best of Dr. Macdonald's writings that I have read so far. But there are some questions that needed to be addressed that I feel Kevin should have brought up.

...more

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Jan 25, 2021 Varapanyo Bhikkhu rated it it was amazing

Andrew Joyce:

At the outset I’d like to state that the Culture of Critique series represents a unique and significant leap forward in our understanding of Jewish group behavior, and also in the way we write about and explore this phenomenon. I should stress also that I refer to the entire series, rather than just the extremely popular third book of MacDonald’s trilogy. Taken together, these works offer an unparalleled and truly comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon of Jewish group behavior, an Andrew Joyce:

At the outset I’d like to state that the Culture of Critique series represents a unique and significant leap forward in our understanding of Jewish group behavior, and also in the way we write about and explore this phenomenon. I should stress also that I refer to the entire series, rather than just the extremely popular third book of MacDonald’s trilogy. Taken together, these works offer an unparalleled and truly comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon of Jewish group behavior, and its impact on surrounding societies. I would urge readers to read Separation and Its Discontents in particular. This text, the second of the trilogy and my personal favorite, tends to be under-appreciated because of its blockbuster follow-up, but it really is essential reading for developing an understanding of reactions to Jewish behavior — and the context and methods of Jewish counter-reactions. ... there is currently no better starting point for this subject matter than that offered by Kevin MacDonald.
**
Kevin MacDonald:

... as Leslie White (1966, 3) wrote many years ago in his discussion of the Boasian school of anthropology as a politically inspired cult, “One who follows procedures such as these incurs the risk of being accused of indulging in non-scholarly, personal attacks upon whom he discusses. Such a charge is, in fact, expectable and completely in keeping with the thesis of this essay. We wish to state that no personal attacks are intended.”

No personal or ethnic attacks are intended here, either. Nevertheless, the charge that this is an anti-Semitic book is, to use White’s phrase, expectable and completely in keeping with the thesis of this essay. A major theme of this volume, found especially in Chapters 6 and 7, is that intellectual defenses of Judaism and of Jewish theories of anti-Semitism have throughout its history played a critical role in maintaining Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy. Parts of the book read as a sort of extended discourse on the role of Jewish self-interest, deception, and self-deception in the areas of Jewish historiography, Jewish personal identity, and Jewish conceptualizations of their ingroup and its relations with outgroups. This is therefore first and foremost a book that confidently predicts its own irrelevance to those about whom it is written.
*

Some quotes:

A writer in the Toronto Globe and Mail (May 11, 1993) comments on the incredible sense of commonality he has with other Jews and his ability to recognize other Jews in public places, a talent he says he has heard called “J-dar”. While dining with his prospective gentile wife, he is immediately recognized as Jewish by some other Jews, and there is an immediate “bond of brotherhood” between them that excludes his gentile companion.

[... it is interesting that developmental psychologists have found unusually intense fear reactions among Israeli infants in response to strangers, while the opposite pattern is found for infants from North Germany. The Israeli infants were much more likely to become “inconsolably upset” in reaction to strangers, whereas the North German infants had relatively minor reactions to strangers. The Israeli babies therefore tended to have an unusual degree of stranger anxiety, while the North German babies were the opposite—findings that fit with the hypothesis that Europeans and Jews are on opposite ends of scales of xenophobia and ethnocentrism.The tests were often terminated because of the intense crying of the infants. Sagi et al. find this pattern among both Kibbutz-reared and city-reared infants, although less strongly in the latter. However, the city-reared infants were subjected to somewhat different testing conditions: They were not subjected to a pre-test socialization episode with a stranger. Sagi et al. suggest that the socialization pre-test may have intensified reactions to strangers among the Kibbutz-reared babies, but they note that such pre-tests do not have this effect in samples of infants from Sweden and the U.S. This again highlights the difference between Israeli and European samples.
CofC]
*
Social identity theory proposes that individuals place themselves and others in social categories (groups). In the case of Jews, the categories are Jew and gentile, and this categorization into Jew and non-Jew is indeed a fundamental aspect of the social world of Jews. One of Portnoy’s complaints in Philip Roth’s (1969, 76) famous novel is that “the very first distinction I learned from you, I’m sure, was not night and day, or hot and cold, but goyische and Jewish.”
*
There is an eerie sense in which National Socialist ideology was a mirror image of traditional Jewish ideology. As in the case of Judaism, there was a strong emphasis on racial purity and on the primacy of group ethnic interests rather than individual interests. Like the Jews, the National Socialists were greatly concerned with eugenics. Like the Jews, there was a powerful concern with socializing group members into accepting group goals and with the importance of within-group altruism and cooperation in attaining these goals.Both groups had very powerful internal social controls that punished individuals who violated group goals or attempted to exploit the group by freeloading. The National Socialists enacted a broad range of measures against Jews as a group, including laws against intermarriage and sexual contact, as well as laws preventing socialization between groups and restricting the economic and political opportunities of Jews. These laws were analogous to the elaborate social controls within the Jewish community to prevent social contact with gentiles and to produce high levels of economic and political cooperation.Corresponding to the religious obligation to reproduce and multiply enshrined in the Tanakh, the National Socialists placed a strong emphasis on fertility and enacted laws that restricted abortion and discouraged birth control. In a manner analogous to the traditional Jewish religious obligation to provide dowries for poor girls, the National Socialists enacted laws that enabled needy young couples to marry by providing them loans repayable by having children.As in the society depicted in the Tanakh and throughout Jewish history, the National Socialists regarded people who could not prove the genetic purity of their ancestry as aliens with fewer rights than Germans, with the result that the position of Jews in National Socialist society was analogous to the position of the Nethinim or the Samaritans in ancient Israelite society, or converts in historical Jewish societies, or the Palestinians in contemporary Israel. As with Israel, the state had become the embodiment of an exclusivist ethnic group.Both groups had a well-developed ideology of historical struggle involving the group. Jewish resistance during the period “was founded on militant movements for Zionism, socialism, or Communism—movements that had always provided their members with a strong sense of historical struggle and an identification with group goals rather than individual satisfaction” (Kren & Rappaport 1980, 114)—clearly a statement that could apply not only to Zionism but to traditional Judaism as a whole. We have seen that the National Socialists had a similar ideology of historical struggle and self-sacrifice. Gordon (1984, 114) states that “it was clearly Hitler’s conception that he was working for group goals—those of the ‘Aryan people’ and that his individual fate mattered little.” ...more

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Oct 23, 2013 LPenting rated it did not like it

Shelves: utter-tosh, incompetent-mediocre, antisemitism, race-racism

A JUST-SO STORY POSING AS “SCHOLARSHIP”

Informed by warmed-over Social Darwinism, SAID claims that Judaism evolved from biblical times as a strategy to ensure the genetic fitness and survival of Jews. It argues that Judaism is still used today to maximize Jewish advantages at the expense of others. And it seeks to prove this by drawing on works of reputable (predominantly Jewish) scholars. The problem is, it does not “draw on” these sources; it ransacks them. Mountains of contrary evidence are to A JUST-SO STORY POSING AS “SCHOLARSHIP”

Informed by warmed-over Social Darwinism, SAID claims that Judaism evolved from biblical times as a strategy to ensure the genetic fitness and survival of Jews. It argues that Judaism is still used today to maximize Jewish advantages at the expense of others. And it seeks to prove this by drawing on works of reputable (predominantly Jewish) scholars. The problem is, it does not “draw on” these sources; it ransacks them. Mountains of contrary evidence are toppled in the search for nuggets of “truth”.

Consider SAID’s view of the Jewish role in the Western economy through history – a vast, and complex subject if ever there was one. To MacDonald, a psychologist, not a historian, Jews depleted Gentile resources in collusion with kings and lords, countered only now and then in the Middle Ages by Christian collectivism. SAID ignores the overwhelming evidence that Jewish participation in the pre-modern economies of Europe was widespread because (and as long as) it was indispensable—not only to the wealthy, but to the overall prosperity of commerce (e.g.16th century Venice, 17th-18th century Bordeaux) and manufacturing (e.g. textiles, metalsmithing, leatherwork). Of 19th century Austria, historian George Berkley notes: “It was largely the Jews who had built the country’s steel mills and railroads, who had developed its textile, sugar-refining, meat-packing, and numerous other industries.” They were the backbone of commerce, administration and science in medieval Spain, where the very word “Jew” was synonymous with “literate”. The point is, Jews contributed to the economy as much as they benefited from it. So, too, did the Christian Lombards and others who followed them into usury and trade. To look at the big picture and suggest, as MacDonald does, that Jews depleted “Gentile resources” is to do violence to the evidence supplied by the very sources he cites. Secondly, to suggest that exploitation between members of different ethnic groups is inherently more meaningful than exploitation by class is to take an uncritical, and scientifically unfounded “genetic” view of human conflict. In fact, a preponderance of enmity throughout history has occurs WITHIN ethnic groups and between classes over the distribution of resources. When the Jews left Western Europe en masse at the close of the Middle Ages, was there any letup in the level of exploitation and conflict there? Any historian worth his salt knows the answer to that one.

What SAID ignores, with its zero-sum mentality, is that ALL ethnic groups in America have prospered by COOPERATING with each other. Thanks to the wisdom of our founding fathers and the good sense of the American people, our political institutions, medicine, science, technology, and economy are the envy of the world. ALL ethnic groups (and multiethnics) would suffer catastrophic harm if America split up into ethnic fiefdoms. That’s why only the tiny minority of people suffering from extreme status anxiety contemplate a return to the Dark Ages. As even a Machiavellian like MacDonald must surely recognize, there’s no future in it.

SAID attests to the slipperiness of evolutionary psychology in uncritical hands. MacDonald cites the relative genetic distance between European Jews and non-Jews as proof that Jews have adopted an evolutionary group strategy. Then he cites European Jewish and non-Jewish genetic CLOSENESS as further proof of the same strategy! That is, Jews seek to be separate enough to maintain their distinctiveness, but not separate enough to trigger Gentile efforts to cast them out (like antibodies casting out foreign viruses.) How’s that for an ironclad case? And all this is being unconsciously coordinated by millions of Jews lacking even the most elementary acquaintance with either genetics-- or MacDonald’s “thesis”! Presumably the only way Jews could invalidate it would be by throwing themselves off cliffs like so many lemmings.

SAID cites the traditional endogamy of the Jews as proof of their evolutionary group strategy. Certainly, Christian Europe has been unusually exogamous over the past 1,000 years. Nevertheless, there have always been many exceptions even there (Goody, 185). Were these exceptions practicing evolutionary group strategy, too, or is endogamy a form of this strategy only when Western Jews practice it? What’s more, over 50% of American Jews marry out. Secularism and social tolerance, not a purported shift in evolutionary group strategy, offers the most parsimonious explanation of this switch to exogamy.

Speculation runs wild throughout. SAID supposes that poor Jews were always more likely to leave Judaism, rendering the remaining Jews more eugenically fit. Actually, there’s no conclusive evidence either way. But upper-class Hellenistic Jews probably were the most assimilationist, while the wealthy Sephardim of medieval Europe and wealthy Jews of modern France, Hungary etc certainly were. Men of the upper and middle classes like Montaigne, Proust, Sir William Hershel and quite possibly even Christopher Columbus, were the products of assimilation.

Forgetting that satire is the chief tool of any underdog, including Christians of varying racial, economic, and ethnic backgrounds, MacDonald argues that Jews are willfully engaged in an all-out assault on Western culture. Jewish radicalism is thus a group strategy though he concedes that most Jews are not involved in or support it. In other words, any political movement, left, right or center, can constitute a Jewish group strategy if its Jewish members are self-consciously Jewish (?!) while engaged in these movements. By this logic, when “New Christians” de las Casas, Cervantes, Vitoria, and Suarez championed the cause of the skeptic, the Indian, the common man, and humanism generally, were they practicing a Jewish group strategy? If so, how odd that they failed to perform the most important eugenic task: producing and raising another generation of Jews. And if we don’t regard these progressive figures as practicing evolutionary group strategy, on what basis would we not assume the same of Jewish progressives today?
It’s a good thing for sociobiologists (er, evolutionary psychologists) that they can’t be sued for malpractice. This book makes hash of an interesting field that often lacks the critical rigor we have the right to expect from science.
...more

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Mar 11, 2019 Jukka Aakula rated it really liked it

My book review in the Finnish language https://sarastuslehti.com/2015/01/05/... ...more

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Feb 23, 2011 Fred R rated it liked it

I have a weakness for bold multi-disciplinary historical theorizing, and so I will continue to read Kevin MacDonald despite his obvious defects.

In MacDonald's model, the presence of a cohesive, endogamous, commercially and reproductively competitive group (known as the Jews) within individualistic western societies gives rise to anti-Semitic reactions, which often take on characteristics of the Jews (mostly under the heading "more collectivism") to compete.

This is his explanation, anyway, of C ...more

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About Kevin B. MacDonald

Kevin B. MacDonald

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Kevin MacDonald is an American psychologist. He is a retired professor of psychology at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), best known for his controversial application of evolutionary psychology to characterize Jewish behavior as a "group evolutionary strategy." He is currently the editor of the Occidental Observer, which he says covers "white identity, white interests, and the cultu ...more