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Chronicles Vol. 24 No. 9 September 200
POLEMICS & EXCHANGES
On The Culture of Critique
I thank Paul Gottfried for a generally accurate and positive review of my
book, The Culture of Critique ("A Race Apart," Opinions, June). Nevertheless,
there are a few issues that bear discussion, the most important of which is
the role of Jewish organizations and intellectuals with strong Jewish
identifications as agents of change in the cultural transformations that have
occurred in Western societies over the past 50 years. In general, Jewish
intellectual and political movements were a necessary condition for these
changes, not a sufficient condition, as Gottfried suggests. In the case of
U.S. immigration policy, there simply were no other pressure groups pushing
for liberalized immigration during the period under consideration (up to
1965). Moreover, I do not assume that these movements are part of a monolithic
Jewish "conspiracy"; my argument is that these movements were dominated by
individuals who identified themselves as Jews and who viewed their
intellectual and political activities as advancing specific Jewish interests,
especially the eradication of antisemitism.
Gotffried attributes the sea change in immigration to "a general cultural
change that beset Western societies and was pushed by the managerial state." I
agree that multiethnic immigration resulted from a general cultural shift, but
we still must develop theories for the origin of this shift, and Jewish
intellectual and political movements were a necessary condition. Fundamental
to this transformation was the decline of ethnic consciousness among European
peoples. It is fascinating to contrast the immigration debates of the 1920's
with those of the 50's and 60's. The restrictionists of the 20's unabashedly
asserted the right of Europeanderived peoples, who colonized and created the
political and economic culture of the country, to maintain it as their
possession.
By the 1950's (and certainly by the 60's), it was impossible to make such
assertions without being deemed not only a racist but an intellectual
Neanderthal. Such assertions conflicted with the Basin wisdom that genetic
differences between peoples were trivial and irrelevant; they conflicted with
the Marxist belief that all peoples were equal and that nationalism and
assertions of ethnic interests were reactionary; they were deemed a sure sign
of psychopathology within the frameworks of psychoanalysis and the Frankfurt
School; and they would have been regarded, as the babbles of country bumpkins
by the New York intellectuals who spouted variants of all these ideologies
from prestigious academic and media institutions. There may, indeed, have been
other forces that relegated such a mindset to the political and intellectual
fringe--Gotffried mentions liberal Protestantism and the managerial state--but
it is difficult to understand the effectiveness of either of these influences
in the absence of the Jewish movements I describe. The rise of a de-ethnicized
gentile managerial elite--exemplified by Bill Clinton--that rejects
traditional cultural institutions and is interwoven with a critical mass of
ethnically conscious Jews is an important fact of our current political life.
The rise of such an elite is hardly an inevitable consequence of modernization
or any other force I am aware of. Such de-ethnicized managerial elites are
unique to European and European-derived societies; they are not found
elsewhere in the world, including highly developed nations such as Japan and
Israel and the undeveloped nations of Africa.
There is little doubt that there is something about European cultures that
makes them susceptible to the movements I discuss. I think there is real value
in Gotffried's suggestion that Protestant culture--particularly its emphasis
on social guilt-provides a uniquely fertile ground for the movements I
discuss. But it is noteworthy that the cultural shifts under consideration
have also occurred in traditionally Catholic countries, such as France and
Italy, where Protestantism has not been a factor.
There are a few other minor issues I might quarrel with. Gotffried claims
that intermarriage occurred frequently in pre-Rabbinic Judaism and that my
views on Jewish rejection of exogamy are inappropriate generalizations from
restrictions on the Kohanim (i.e., the priestly caste). It is true that
Solomon and other Israelite kings had children by foreign concubines. However,
the offspring of these relationships had a separate status within Israelite
society, below the pure Israelite stock, even into Rabbinic times--a
phenomenon that attests to the importance of bloodlines throughout Jewish
history. While the marriage practices of the Kohanim are indeed stricter than
those of other Jews, there is no question that marriage into the Jewish gene
pool was very infrequent until quite recently, and modern population genetic
studies show very little genetic admixture between Jews and surrounding
populations. These data are described in my book A People That Shall Dwell
Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy (1994). Current rates of
intermarriage may be a highly questionable indicator of the long-term
prospects of Jewish continuity as an endogamous ethnic group. First, Judaism
may well end up retaining its ethnic coherence even in the face of high levels
of intermarriage if, as appears to be the case, a high percentage of the
children and grandchildren of intermarriage eventually leave Judaism either
because they become completely assimilated or because they feel unwelcome in
the Jewish community. Secondly, despite the current high rates of
intermarriage, there is clearly a core of highly committed individuals in all
the major sects of Judaism for whom genetic or cultural assimilation is
anathema. Intense commitment to ethnocentrism and endogamy continues to be
characteristic of the increasingly numerous, prolific, and influential Jewish
Orthodox and fundamentalist movements, and conversion and intermarriage remain
controversial even within the most liberal sectors of the Jewish community.
Finally, Gottfried rejects my theory that the high levels of IQ found among
Ashkenazi Jews and some historical Sephardic populations indicate a higher
genetic potential of intelligence among these Jewish groups. While it is true
that some Jewish populations have undistinguished lQs, it seems very likely
that, whatever cultural pushes there have been for IQ within Jewish groups,
there is also a strong genetic component. Current research suggests a maximum
variation of ten IQ points through environmental manipulations such as
adoption. Gottfried is correct in noting that different groups have waxed and
waned in importance throughout history, but Jewish groups have repeatedly
assumed a very high degree of social and economic importance, from the late
Roman Empire to 15th-century Spain and 19th- and 20th-century Europe.
--Kevin MacDonald
Long Beach, CA
Dr. Gotffried Replies: My differences with Kevin MacDonald are ones of
emphasis more than of substance. Like him, I recognize the existence of a
double standard in the way American and other Jews stress ethnic solidarity
for themselves but the moral necessity of multiculturalism for white
Christians. This double standard offers the hermeneutic key to the comments of
Slate editor Judy Shulevitz (May 2). In response to a complaint that American
Jews denounced Bob Jones University for discouraging interracial dating but
stubbornly practice tribalism in their own group, Shulevitz contrasted white
Christian "racism" to the "ethnic chauvinism" characteristic of blacks and
Jews. Because of their "historical burdens," the distaste for outsiders felt
by Jews and blacks is excusable and not to be compared to the "reprehensible"
objection of a white Southerner contemplating his child's marriage to a black.
(Shulevitz's critic happens to be Jewish.) American Christians with mainstream
journalistic respectability do not choose to raise embarrassing questions
about Jewish claims to ethnic exceptionalism, despite the fact that Jews have
risen far in the United States, encountering on the whole less discrimination
than most ethnic Catholics.
Where I do disagree with MacDonald is on the importance assigned to Jewish
efforts to "deethnicize" Western Christian societies. Although both the
Frankfurt School and Boasian anthropologists have pushed for an engineered and
misnamed "open" society, as have the Anti-Defamation League and the American
Jewish Congress, such groups do not provide a sufficient or even "necessary"
cause for the changes in question. Between the 1920's, when immigration into
the United States was restricted, and the watershed immigration act of 1965,
there were political and cultural developments that strongly shaped the
present attitudes toward diversity as a civil religion. The two most critical
of these developments were the consolidation of a managerial state committed
to broad social reconstruction and, ultimately, the eradication of national
loyalties, and the collapse of WASPdom into its present culture of
selfmortification. MacDonald rightly notes that Jewish intellectuals and
organizations worked to advance both trends, but that point does not provide a
comprehensive explanation of what happened. Vast social engineering occurred
in Scandinavia before it reached the United States and unfolded there largely
in the absence of Jews. Moreover, as amply demonstrated by Ray Honeyford,
Claus Nordbruch, and René Girard, Christian clergy in Europe have tirelessly
endorsed the multicultural agenda long identified here with Jews and liberal
Protestants. Indeed, the radicalizing function attributed to Jews has been
effectively incarnated by different minorities in different places at
different times: Huguenots in France, Old Believers in Russia, and Irish
Catholics and non-Anglican Protestants in England have all stirred the pot of
social discontent because of their sense of marginalization. Today in Canada,
ethnic Catholics support the left as enthusiastically and one-sidedly as do
the descendants of Eastern European Jews.
MacDonald's insistence that Ashkenazic Jews are naturally more intelligent
than other EuropeanAmericans gives me pause. If true, that might justify
(certainly from the standpoint of racial nationalists who seem to accept this
cognitive disparity) the social subordination of white gentiles to a Jewish
master race. In this view, Jewish domination of relatively dullwitted goyim
should be hailed as an intellectual step forward, particularly if white
gentiles, as measured by IQ tests, are somewhere midway between Jews and
American blacks. What is hard to figure out is why racialists assume they have
a right to control less intelligent races but that whites should not be
subject to cognitively superior Jews. For all I know, MacDonald may be right
about the genetic advantages of my ethnic kin in relation to his, but there is
another explanation for the observed disparities in achievements. Jews, like
Asians, try harder than most WASPs to succeed on standardized tests, as well
as in professions. The striking feature is not how well others do, but how
totally WASPdom has collapsed. In One Nation Under God (1993), authors Barry
A. Kosmin and S.P. Lachman demonstrate that even the highest WASP group
achievers, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, now lag behind white Catholics as
well as Jews in educational advancement and family income. Until convinced by
further evidence, I assume that the reason for this lag is cultural.
Protestants who wallow in social guilt and have lost the Puritan virtues are
headed for selfdestruction. But they have certainly not been cognitively
shortchanged. Nor have the other scions of a rich European civilization, which
has been indispensable for the intellectual and artistic enrichment of Jews
and other groups. A final point: To my knowledge, there was no social stigma
attached to ancient Jewish royalty born of intermarriage, although MacDonald
may have other sources of information.
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