Kevin MacDonald, Ph.D.

CSULB, Department of Psychology

Kevin MacDonald (1998) Separation and Its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism. Westport, CT: Praeger. ISBN 0-275-94870-6 (Hdbk) US$65.00, UK£51.95 Pp. x + 326.

by RICHARD MACHALEK, Department of Sociology, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071-3293, U.S.A.

Kevin MacDonald, Professor of Psychology at California State University, Long Beach, proposes to explain anti-Semitism at the levels of both proximate and ultimate causation. He uses "social identity theory" to isolate proximate causes and neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory to identify ultimate causes. Central to his explanation is the notion that Judaism is a "group evolutionary strategy" that promotes both high levels of intragroup cooperation among Jews as well as intense conflict between Jews and gentiles who, in turn, evolve "reactive" counter-strategies, a key component of which is anti-Semitism. By so doing, MacDonald argues that causal processes at both the social psychological and evolutionary levels are implicated in generating and sustaining anti-Semitism. Central to his argument is the thesis that anti-Semitism is a response to features of the "group evolutionary strategy" of Judaism itself. Specifically, MacDonald argues that anti-Semitism is an expression of a gentile "group evolutionary strategy" that is elicited by the cultural and genetic separatist forces that define the history of Judaism. As such, MacDonald sees Judaism and anti-Semitism as "mirror image" group evolutionary strategies which, once activated, sustain each other via various proximate mechanisms specified in social identity theory (e.g., reciprocal negative stereotyping).
MacDonald tries to give social identity theory more explanatory bite by shoring it up with neo-Darwinian science. Having identified various proximate social psychological mechanisms implicated in anti-Semitism, MacDonald then contends that both these mechanisms and the empirical patterns they produce are "consistent with" key explanatory mechanisms featured in evolutionary theory. In that regard, he sees numerous aspects of the dynamics linking Judaism and anti-Semitism as consistent with what one would predict using explanatory principles such as kin recognition, group selection, altruism, culturally and genetically based nepotism, reproductive and somatic competition, deception and self-deception, moralistic aggression, and other principles familiar to neo-Darwinian scientists and scholars. Part of his explanation hinges on his belief that Jews excel in social, cultural, economic, and political competition with gentiles because of an asymmetry in resource holding potential (RHP) between Jews and gentiles. MacDonald argues that mating rules prescribed by Jewish culture have functioned effectively as a "eugenic policy" that has bestowed higher intelligence and resource acquisition capabilities on Jewish populations than those of their non-Jewish competitors. In MacDonald's view, genes and culture co-evolved to give Jewish populations a competitive edge in situations involving real conflicts of interest. Thus, MacDonald argues that the competitive success of Judaism as a "group evolutionary strategy" inadvertently helps generate "mirror image" gentile strategies that oppose it.
The bulk of Macdonald's book, especially chapters 2-6, is devoted to a comprehensive and detailed description of specific features of anti-Semitism (key themes) in different societies and historical periods (the late Roman empire; the medieval Western world, especially the Spanish Inquisition; and Nazi Germany). Common themes expressed by anti-Semites include criticisms that (1) Jews resist assimilation into their host societies and persist in being separatist and "clannish," (2) Jews see themselves as "racially" superior to non-Jews, (3) Jews take unfair advantage of non-Jews in business transactions and are disproportionately influential in economic institutions, (4) Jews serve the interests of elites who exploit non-Jews in the lower strata of society, (5) Jews are misanthropic, (6) Jews often come to dominate the cultures of their host societies, (7) Jews are disloyal to their host societies, and (8) Jews wield excessive political power. MacDonald's review of these themes is exhaustive, detailed, and historically comprehensive. He contends that social identity theory explains the social psychological processes that generate these themes and make them plausible to anti-Semites. And in MacDonald's view, the characteristics of Judaism as a "group evolutionary strategy," especially its mechanisms of cultural and genetic separatism, are themselves precipitants of these and related themes.
In his three case studies of anti-Semitism (the late Roman empire, the medieval West, and Nazi Germany), MacDonald emphasizes several themes. First, anti-Semitism is a response to competition over economic (and occasionally reproductive) resources. As such, MacDonald sees it as a response to real conflicts of interest (although according to social identity theory, real conflicts of interest are not necessary to generate anti-Semitism). And in all three cases, the gentiles' response to the perceived threats posed by Judaism resulted in a crystallization of "reactive" gentile groups strategies: corporate Catholicism in the Roman empire, the reactive racism of the Iberian Inquisition, and National Socialism in German between 1933-1945. In all three cases, MacDonald argues, these reactive "group evolutionary strategies" represent "mirror images" of Judaism in terms of features such as their cohesiveness, their subordination of the individual to the group, their propagation of negative stereotypes of out-group members, and their ideologies of in-group superiority.
Chapters 6-8 are devoted to explaining how Jews have coped with the threats posed by anti-Semitism, and MacDonald's explanation of these coping efforts is framed in terms of ideas drawn from evolutionary theory. In his view, evolutionary thinking about strategy and counter-strategy dynamics, the adaptive benefits conferred by flexible ideologies, and the psychology of deception and self-deception all help explain Jewish strategic responses to the threats posed by anti-Semitism. In chapter 6, MacDonald attributes the success with which Jews have coped with varying forms of anti-Semitism under diverse social circumstances to the flexibility of their strategies. Among these strategies, "crypsis" looms large. An example is the crypto-Judaism of the "New Christians" in Spain and Portugal during the Inquisition. MacDonald sees Reform Judaism as a form of "semi-cryptic" Judaism, an expression that minimized the emphasis on group structure and cohesion and represented itself as primarily a matter of belief and faith, thereby helping to neutralize the perceived threat of Judaism as an alien nation within its host societies. MacDonald also points to the effectiveness with which Jews have been able to influence political processes such as immigration policy, which he attributes to the "highly organized, highly intelligent, and politically astute" nature of Jews "as a group" and their ability "to command a high level of financial, political, and intellectual resources in pursuing their group goals" (p. 189). Another strategy MacDonald identifies involves the advocacy by Jews of universal human rights and a tendency to emphasize the coincidence of their rights with those of non-Jews. Finally, MacDonald observes that members of Jewish communities have long been careful to try to suppress behaviors of their members that gentiles might find offensive. He cites the Kehilla organization as an example of this strategy.
In chapter 7, MacDonald documents the adaptive advantages conferred by Jewish ideologies in promoting the interests of the Jewish community. All ideologies promote favorable images of their groups to outsiders and help persuade in-group members of the righteousness of their cause, and Judaism is no exception. In MacDonald's view, much Jewish history functions in just such an ideological fashion. A key theme in such ideological constructions is the "light of the nations" motif, a theme that identifies Judaism as the moral and ethical exemplar for humanity. While MacDonald is emphatic to identify the distorting and self-serving nature of such Jewish ideologies, it hardly seems necessary to note that this is a species-typical trait that can be illustrated by almost any human group. Many human groups exhibit spectacular cultural and ideological resourcefulness in this regard, and there is no reason to expect the Jewish community to be any less ideologically imaginative than any other human group.
In that MacDonald believes that Jews are gifted with exceptional intelligence, it is not surprising to see him raise the question of how they could believe what he describes as the distortions inherent in their own ideologies. His answer to this quandary is that Jews, like humans everywhere, are saved from dissonance by the evolved psychology of self-deception, the theme of chapter 8. Drawing upon the thinking of evolutionists such as Robert Trivers, MacDonald suggests that the evolved capacity of self-deception enables Jews to deceive themselves in a manner that protects them from evidence about the objective realities of their of their position in societies, thereby enabling them to support ideologies that advance their interests by distorting reality. Only because of their capacity for self-deception, says MacDonald, can Jews believe their own rhetoric about the "light of the world" thesis, deny their economic and general social success, and fail to acknowledge their political efficacy.
Finally, MacDonald concludes his book with chapter 9 in which he claims that Judaism, as both a cultural and genetic system, is continuing to succeed as a "group evolutionary strategy." Even solvents like intermarriage cannot destroy Judaism by the threat of assimilation. Rather, MacDonald argues that Judaism, as a "group evolutionary strategy," is quite adaptable to varying societal conditions, thereby enabling it to withstand threats and seize opportunities.
MacDonald's book provides a detailed and comprehensive account of the long and complex history of anti-Semitism and the dramatic social and cultural dynamics expressed in this history. His use of social identity theory and research to explain the ironies and tragedies of interaction between Jews and gentiles offers interesting insights into the proximate causes that may help to generate and sustain anti-Semitism, whenever and wherever it is found. Many of the ideas MacDonald derives from social identity theory will be familiar to sociologists knowledgeable with the theoretical thinking of Georg Simmel and, more recently, Lewis Coser. Both Simmel and Coser offered numerous propositions about the nature, causes and "functions" of social conflict that bear directly on the sorts of Jewish-gentile social dynamics that MacDonald reports, and his analysis of these dynamics could profit from a review of this tradition of sociological analysis. While MacDonald put social identity theory to good use in his effort to identify the proximate social causes and consequences of anti-Semitism, the theoretical tradition of "conflict functionalism" in sociology might provide additional analytical insights relevant to this project.
I was more disappointed with the strictly evolutionary analysis that MacDonald offered. For example, the complex and subtle topic of group selection gets a half-dozen or so pages of discussion toward the end of the first chapter, but I think more is needed on this topic given the centrality of the idea of a "group evolutionary strategy" to MacDonald's analysis and the lack of sophistication of most "standard social science model" researchers on the levels of selection issue. In fact, it never became clear to me if MacDonald's notion of a "group evolutionary strategy" requires group selection logic or if such a strategy could be attributed to individual (or gene) level selection. While his earlier book (A People That Shall Dwell Alone, 1994) devotes more attention to this topic, if Separation and Its Discontents is designed to stand alone, then the issue needed further discussion and clarification in this volume as well.
A good deal of MacDonald's evolutionary analysis involves describing various empirical patterns associated with anti-Semitism and then explaining how these patterns are "consistent with" this or that principle drawn from evolutionary theory. Although MacDonald does a good job of showing how social identity theory and evolutionary theory are in many ways "compatible," this sort of approach does not yield the satisfaction that comes with the deduction and statement of formal hypotheses that are at least testable in principle. While MacDonald routinely frames his interpretation of historical patterns and cultural data in terms of various evolutionary principles or mechanisms (e.g., Jewish ideologies express the adaptive human capacity for self-deception), this is not the same as deriving formal hypotheses that can be pitted against alternative hypotheses, even if data for adjudicating the competition are not currently available. While I do not fault MacDonald for failing to execute an analysis he never intended to conduct, analyses that "explain" phenomena only by showing their compatibility with a given principle come perilously close to leaving us with little more than "just so stories."
MacDonald develops a theory from which could be derived formal explanatory principles (propositions) that could be applied to other separatist groups such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) or perhaps Hutterites, the Amish, or even Native Americans who live on reservations. A comparative analysis of this sort could give us greater confidence in the explanatory power of the proximate mechanisms that MacDonald has identified in relation to the case of anti-Semitism. It would enable us to make predictions and test them, thereby carrying us appreciably beyond the type of analysis that can only claim the consistency between an empirical pattern and an explanatory principle.
Finally, it is worth devoting a bit of attention to some of the ideological perils and pitfalls associated with explanations that try to explain how the traits and behaviors of victims can contribute to their own victimization, an issue that is by no means unique to the phenomenon of anti-Semitism. As MacDonald sees it, Judaism as a "group evolutionary strategy" has bestowed rich somatic and reproductive benefits on Jewish populations while, simultaneously, earning them opprobrium, hostility, and persecution. To some critics, MacDonald's analysis will appear to be a classic example of "blaming the victim," an expression popularized by William Ryan's book (1976) by the same title. To "blame the victim," of course, is to misattribute the causes of a victim's human-inflicted suffering to the victim him/herself rather than to pin the blame on the perpetrator of the crime, "where it belongs." MacDonald himself is keenly aware of his vulnerability to this sort of criticism, and, in fact, he attempts to defend himself in the preface (p. viii) by disavowing that he is launching either "personal or ethnic attacks" in his book.
The charge of "blaming the victim," however, suggests a related idea that has a fairly old pedigree in contemporary criminology: the idea of a "victim precipitated crime" (von Hentig 1948, Wolfgang 1958). The notion of a victim precipitated crime was developed to explain certain types of homicide wherein the victim behaved in manner so as to elicit an assault by his/her murderer. Often, the murder is a product of retaliation. No "blame" is assigned in this type of explanation. Rather, a sequence of behaviors and counter-behaviors that result in a homicide is identified. Such crimes are not uncommon, and criminologists estimate that from 25% to 50% of homicides in the U.S. may be of this variety.
The notion of victim precipitated crime could be interpreted by critics as simply another form of "victim blaming." However, this does not give criminologists license to ignore the empirical possibility that the traits or behaviors of victims themselves may, in certain circumstances, contribute to the causation of the very crimes from which they suffer. Another example of this dynamic has been identified by the evolutionary scientists Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer in their recent book A Natural History of Rape (1999). Thornhill and Palmer explain that a woman's risk of being raped is influenced by a constellation of factors that determine her "attractiveness' (pp. 179-183), and they argue that it is a disservice to potential rape victims to pretend that attributes and behaviors of a woman are not potential causal contributors to her victimization. It is clear that Thornhill and Palmer are interested in identifying causes of rape so that policies for preventing this crime, including educational programs, can be inaugurated to reduce the incidence of this horrendous crime. Yet, they have already been accused of "blaming the victim."
MacDonald's explanatory approach, like that of Thornhill and Palmer, makes him vulnerable to the charge that he is "blaming the victim," a possibility to which we must remain ever vigilant. Yet, although many of his critics will dismiss his explanation as but another example of victim blaming, the logic of his analysis of anti-Semitism, however fraught with dangerous ideological, political and moral pitfalls, deserves serious and careful consideration. One does not condone rape by identifying traits and behaviors that can place a woman at risk of victimization. If one identifies traits and behaviors that put the members of any separatist group at risk of harm inflicted by another group, does one thereby condone ethnic prejudice, discrimination, and persecution?

References:

Ryan, W. (1976). Blaming the Victim. New York: Vintage.
Thornhill, R. and Palmer, C.T. A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
von Hentig, H. (1948). The Criminal and His Victim. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Wolfgang, M. E. (1958). Patterns in Criminal Homicide. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.