Why does Anti-Semitism exist?

Reviewed by Louis Andrews
pinc, Vol. 2, No. 2, December 1998.

Contents

Can a psychological theory pioneered by a former inmate of a Nazi concentration camp explain the persistent phenomenon of anti-Semitism? Kevin MacDonald thinks so and has written a fascinating book attempting to prove it.

Separation and Its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism is the second volume in MacDonald's trilogy on Judaism and evolution. The first, A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy, was reviewed in the first issue of pinc, while the final volume, The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements, was recently released by Praeger Publishers. All volumes are in the highly recommended Human Evolution, Behavior, and Intelligence series, edited by Seymour W. Itzkoff.

Henri Tajfel (a concentration camp survivor) and John Turner originated social identity theory in the 1970's. It involves three primary principles: 1) categorization - that we automatically assign people to groups, 2) identification - that we identify with specific groups, thus creating ingroups and outgroups, and 3) comparison - that we then compare these groups. This act of comparing, and the resulting judgements of inferior (outgroup) and superior (ingroup), is a significant source of our personal self-concept and self-esteem. Social identity theory claims this is valid for all groups, from those as simple as competing schools, to those as complex as nations or ethnic groups. MacDonald, an evolutionary psychologist, combines Tajfel and Turner's insights with evolutionary theory to develop a comprehensive theory of the causes, complexities, and possible cures of anti-Semitism.

There are many theories of anti-Semitism. Some as simple as that it developed as a result of the early Christians blaming Jews for Jesus’ crucifixion. Others, that it is an innate characteristic of Germanic peoples. In 1891, Bernard Lazare, in his book entitled Anti-Semitism: Its History and Causes, noted that anti-Semitism has existed wherever Judaism has existed - in every country and on every continent. That insight raises the possibility that anti-Semitism is simply a natural phenomenon that predictably occurs whenever a host society is confronted with Diaspora Judaism. MacDonald explains,

As noted above, social identity theory predicts that people will categorize themselves and others, and then identify with a specific group. A pertinent example would be Portnoy's comments in Philip Roth's best seller, Portnoy's Complaint: "the very first distinction I learned from you, I'm sure, was not night and day, or hot and cold, but goyische and Jewish."

Social identity theory suggests a number of further points that appear applicable to Jewish/gentile relations. As a result of this categorization and identification, "similarities between self and ingroup are exaggerated and dissimilarities with outgroup members are also exaggerated. An important result of this self-categorization process is that individuals adopt behaviors and beliefs congruent with the stereotype of the ingroup." MacDonald notes an example from early 20^th century Poland.

Social identity theory explains the ingroup's stereotypes of the ingroup, as well as ingroup's stereotypes of outgroups. For example, a strong tradition in western Gentile anti-Semitism has been the idea of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy, perhaps best exemplified in this century by belief in the 19^th century forgery, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. MacDonald writes,

Like a number of prominent individuals of his era, Henry Ford believed in the authenticity of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Even Winston Churchill, writing in 1920, argued that Jews were involved in a "worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization."

Stereotypic behavior typically involves a negative evaluation of outgroup behaviors and a positive evaluation of ingroup behaviors. In addition, the smaller the ingroup in comparison to the outgroup the more likely they are to have an ingroup bias. Of course the degree of individualism or collectivism inherent in the host society plays an important role as well.

MacDonald notes,

It was not unusual for an East European peasant to say "that’s not a man, it's a Jew." Nor was it unusual for an East European Jew to say "that’s not a man, it's a goy." East European Jews typically felt vastly superior to the gentiles in their host culture. Given the substantially higher mean IQ of the East European Jews [one standard deviation or more, according to MacDonald], it is hard to see how this feeling of superiority could have been avoided in light of the absence of specific Jewish cultural or religious constraints.

The strength or weakness of these ingroup/outgroup feelings is mediated by social and economic conditions. In times of true conflicts of interest feelings can boil over. MacDonald writes,

The author argues even in times when resource competition was minimized or absent historically, the extent of "this self-imposed cultural separatism is a sufficient condition for developing negative attitudes and competition between Jews and gentiles." Social identity theory does not require that gentile beliefs about Jews or Jewish beliefs about gentiles be true. In fact, MacDonald writes, "[t]he false and even contradictory nature of anti-Semitic beliefs has long been apparent to writers on the subject." And further,

Evolutionary theory, as expected from the title, also plays an important role in Macdonald's theory of anti-Semitism. The evolutionary development of the emotions of anxiety and fear are believed to be in response to perceived danger or threat. Occam's razor predicts the value of "a low threshold for perceiving the situation as threatening, because false negatives are potentially far more costly than false positives." Traditionally then, it made sense for gentiles to be more overcautious about Jews than not, because there was little to lose and much to gain.

In addition, if the points posited by social identity theory are correct, then they are a product of our evolutionary development and were probably selected for over millennia. MacDonald notes that,

Looking at anti-Semitism purely in terms of benefit to gentiles, we can find examples where it has been adaptive and ones where it has been maladaptive for specific groups. Since Judaism has, in MacDonald's view, been basically a collectivist ideology it is only natural that, since the Enlightenment, Jews have been particularly involved in collectivist and socialist movements in the West. In defense of their more individualistic society, gentiles have often been able to use this Jewish involvement to political advantage.

In contrast, in terms of maladaptive anti-Semitic behavior, one need only note the intellectual wasteland created in post-Inquisition Spain, largely because of the widespread Spanish Christian concern that creative or new ideas were might be methods of Jewish subversion. The rejection of the theory of relativity by the Nazis (presumably because Einstein was Jewish) is another important example.

As explained in considerable detail in A People That Shall Dwell Alone, Judaism as a collectivist ideology is key to MacDonald's theories. In fact, he argues that this collectivist nature has a genetic basis and has grown stronger since the Diaspora due to natural evolutionary development. Because individual Jews low on collectivist and conformity traits would be more likely to leave the community and successful Jews high on these traits more likely to stay over time, the evolutionary result would be enhanced group solidarity. MacDonald notes,

As evidence, he provides information about religious cults that indicate extremely high Jewish involvement. Researchers have found that Jewish cult members tend to come from families with more highly religious relatives than Jewish non-cult members do. These families of cult members nevertheless are less observant. MacDonald writes,

Excessive cult involvement is then seen merely as a logical psychological response resulting from a genetic propensity toward collectivism confronted by the contemporary Jewish movement toward individualistic secularism.

While all societies involved with Diaspora Judaism have exhibited anti-Semitic behaviors, the response has generally been quite different in collectivist as opposed to individualistic societies. For example in Muslim societies, "Anti-Semitism tended not to be characterized by fear and hatred of Jews (except during periods when Jews were allowed to compete economically), [but] the long term effect of Muslim anti-Semitism was far more devastating than Western anti-Semitism." MacDonald hypothesizes that such collectivist societies are far more "efficient than Western individualistic societies at keeping Jews in a powerless position where they do not pose a competitive threat."

As noted earlier, anti-Semitism has been a worldwide phenomenon. Its form in countries of the Middle East was nevertheless generally quite different from that in the West. During some periods Jews were able to act as intermediaries between rulers and the populace and thus gain power, but overall their lot was far worse in the eastern collectivist societies than in the West. MacDonald writes "the Muslim attitude toward Jews as one of contempt, rather than hatred, fear, or envy, presumably because the Muslim anti-Jewish customs generally prevented Jews from attaining a position that would result in envy, fear, or hatred." As a result the great advancements for Jews generally occurred in the more individualistic countries of the West.

A variety of themes have accompanied anti-Semitism down through the ages. The primary theme is that of separateness from the rest of mankind that is so evident in the Jewish writings of the Old Testament and also in Greek and Roman writings. Tacitus wrote "[a]mong themselves they are inflexibly honest and every ready to show compassion, though they regard the rest of mankind with all the hatred of enemies. They sit apart at meals, they sleep apart..."

This clannishness has an important corollary, that of the creation of a wide network that has contributed to the outstanding success of Jews in economic endeavors whenever gentile oppression was somewhat loosened. Further, this very success and the resulting perceived economic domination is another such theme.

Two other recurring themes are disloyalty (such as in the Pollard spy case) and cultural domination. Besides Jews, both German-Americans and Japanese-Americans have had to contend with the disloyalty issue in this century as well. While the Germans have assimilated so well that the issue probably would not arise again, for the Japanese it might in the event of another US/Japanese conflict. In the US, the large Hollywood involvement by Jews has been of special interest to anti-Semites and others. The very conservative Jewish social critic Michael Medved notes "it makes no sense at all to try to deny the reality of Jewish power and prominence in popular culture. Any list of the most influential production executives at each of the major movie studios will produce a heavy majority of recognizably Jewish names. This prominent Jewish role is obvious to anyone. . .." It seems rather foolish for the Jewish watchdog groups to go ballistic when someone mentions it, as Marlon Brando did several years ago. Medved says, quite logically in my opinion, "it's possible that industry leaders instinctively feel more comfortable working with people who share their own outlook, values, and background." Why should we expect it to be otherwise? Talented people succeed and help others "who share their own outlook, values, and background" to succeed with them. Of course, those who prefer suppression of information or conspiracies don't need logic.

The idea of a differing response to Judaism by collectivist vs. individualistic societies is key for much of the argument in the balance of the book. The resource and reproductive success of a collectivist sojourner group may be, to a large extent, dictated by the degree of individualism in a society. MacDonald's position is that the most effective (and virulent) European gentile responses to the perceived threat of Judaism (early Christianity, the late Medieval response including the Inquisition, and the Nazi era) were all collectivist and authoritarian, and in many ways mirror-images of Judaism itself. Indeed, he argues, as long as the gentile/Jew division has existed, such groups seem to have provided the only effective competition against superior Jewish resource acquisition and control.

While today we find the Pope issuing a recent statement in support of Jews and Judaism it has not always been so. Many of the saints of the early church were highly anti-Semitic. For example, St. Jerome wrote "If you call [the synagogue] a brothel, a den of vice, the devils refuge, Satan’s fortress , a place to deprave the soul, an abyss of every conceivable disaster or whatever else you will, you are still saying less that it deserves." Some such as St. John Chrysostom, put even Hitler to shame in their anti-Semitic virulence. "Although such beasts [Jews] are unfit for work, they are fit for killing. . .fit for slaughter." Clearly conversion to Christianity was not the goal of these early Christian anti-Semites. MacDonald argues that the Jews were instead merely used as a weapon in building the early Church, which was authoritarian and collectivist - as he says - a mirror image of the hated enemy. When such group strategies have been used against Jews the impact has typically been devastating for them.

MacDonald admits his early Church argument is somewhat problematic, still he writes "[t]he Christian church and late antiquity was in its very essence the embodiment of a powerful anti-Semitic movement that arose because of Gentile concern with resource and reproductive competition with Jews."

For example, both the Council of Elvira and the Council of Nicia "[p]rohibited marriages between Jewish men and Christian women." The more anti-Semitic leaders of the early church such as St. John Chrysostom conceptualized Jews "Not as harmless practitioners of exotic, entertaining religious practices. . .but as the very embodiment of evil." While some of the anti-Semitic writing of the period clearly indicates a Gentile concern with Jewish economic and reproductive success, anti-Semitic response was invariably expressed in religious terms. MacDonald notes that, "Intellectuals of the period had not developed a language in which issues related to economic (or ethnic) conflict could be articulated in an intellectually respectable manner. Perhaps in the absence of such a rhetoric, group conflict was conceptualized largely in religious terms. . ." Anti-Semitic pogroms by Christians were a regular feature of 5th & 6th central Europe and the Mid-East. Synagogues were often burned with the approval of the church. MacDonald writes, "[m]oreover, the Jews themselves were quite aware of the role of the church as an instrument of anti-Semitism. When the Persians invaded the Eastern Empire, Jews burned churches and threatened Christians with massacres if the did not renounce their faith."

Certainly MacDonald's argument is controversial and the response from Catholic and Jewish religious scholars will be most interesting.

Although anti-Semitism retained a role in the development of Christianity it somewhat receded in importance until the 12th and 13th century in Medieval Europe. In many areas by then, the Jewish population had grown considerably and resource competition had greatly increased. The church had changed as well. "The friars, who spearheaded the 13th century Christian reform movement as well as the anti-Semitism of the period, came manly from the newly created urban-middle and upper-middle classes. These classes viewed the Jews as a competitive threat...." Jeremy Cohen, in The Friars and the Jews, wrote "By the 13th century, the Jews of Europe were engaged almost exclusively in commercial activities, especially the lending of money; the success and influence in the marketplace set them among the chief competitors of the new Christian bourgeoisie."

The medieval Christian anti-Semitic response to this perceived Jewish threat differed from nation to nation. When King Louis IX (St. Louis) expelled the Jews from Paris and confiscated their property, it is said that half the buildings in Paris became the property of the King. Jews were also accused of economic exploitation in England. In 1290, Edward I expelled the Jews and no Jews were allowed to live in England for over 350 years. Instead of expelling the Jews (who controlled much of the wealth) the Spanish tried forced conversions beginning in 1391 and when this failed to stop the rise of Jewish (or New Christian) power instituted the Inquisition which persisted into the 1600's.

Despite these events, Individualism has been a strong tradition throughout most of European history and has been a mitigating factor against anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, when confronted with the perception of a serious Jewish threat (real or imagined), MacDonald's theory suggests that an authoritarian-collectivist gentile response is expected. Certainly the most serious ever faced by Judaism was the rise of Nazism. MacDonald notes that it "is a true mirror-image of Judaism...it was also the most dangerous enemy that Judaism has confronted in its entire history."

By the National Socialist era, there was a long tradition of Jewish-gentile group conflict in Germany. The expected assimilation after emancipation hadn't occurred, yet it was seen as an unspoken contingency of the process by gentiles. "Jews constituted a nation...[and] Jews would have to give up this condition in order to be Germans." The Jewish reaction was twofold: increasing involvement in anti-nationalist movements as well as in their own nationalist movement - Zionism. "A Volk is held together by primary elements: blood, fate - insofar, as it rests upon the development of blood - and cultural creative power - insofar as it is conditioned by the individuality which arises from the blood." This was not, as one might expect, the scribblings of a National Socialist, but the words of Rabbi Martin Buber.

Joachim Prinz, a Berlin Rabbi, applauded Hitler's rise since it signaled a rejection of modernity and Jewish assimilation. "We want assimilation to be replaced by a new law: the declaration of belonging to the Jewish nation and the Jewish race. A State built upon the principle of the purity of nation and race can only be honoured and respected by a Jew who declares his belonging to his own kind...." [Italics in original] Incidentally, Rabbi Prinz escaped the slaughter of the European Jews and would eventually lead the American Jewish Congress. He immediately preceded the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. at the podium before the historic "I have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC in 1963, where Prinz's remarks were not exactly congruent with his earlier words quoted above.

MacDonald notes that European style anti-Semitism has had several common threads. First there is the mirror-image response that mimics "in critical ways the features of Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy. A related common thread has been that there is a tendency to shift away from attempts at compete cultural and genetic assimilation of Jews in the early stages of group conflict, followed eventually by the rise of collectivist, authoritarian anti-Semitic group strategies aimed at exclusion, expulsion, or genocide when it is clear that efforts at assimilation have failed." An additional thread, that of attempts to limit the "gene flow from the Jewish to the gentile population" seems to have been common in some non-Western countries as well.

The author argues that Western "final stage" anti-Semitic movements, especially National Socialism, are anti-Western in that they reject both universalism and individualism, thus he views the concern with "racial purity" evidenced in the Nazi movement (and at times in the other anti-Semitic movements) as an anomaly.

It is possible that Jewish-gentile conflict, or any other group-based conflict, might even prevent the flowering of traditional Western post-Enlightenment individualism in some countries. MacDonald notes that "the reemergence of individualism in Western Europe occurred most prominently in England and France, from which Jews had been almost completely excluded," while such was not the case in Germany or Spain.

While MacDonald sees individualism as profoundly Western, libertarians will notice that he does not agree that radical individualism fits with the Western tradition.

MacDonald's views on Jewish strategies for combating anti-Semitism will generate much controversy. He writes

Since the process is contingent only on the group being a group, one could compare this with the various strategies devised by American blacks since the end of slavery. In fact, it would be easy to show that specific black leaders (e.g., W. E. B. Du Bois, Malcom X, and Martin Luther King, Jr.) adopted different strategies at different points in time. The same could be said for Chinese immigrants in the United States.

According to MacDonald, while Anti-Semitism (in small doses) is a valuable or even necessary societal feature for Jewish group survival, when it is very low (as in the current United States), it sometimes becomes necessary to exaggerate its extent. He quotes the "Politics of Meaning" Tikhun Editor, Michael Lerner:

Other strategies that Professor MacDonald discusses include crypsis, various political strategies, image management, and scholarship. Much of the discussion of crypsis concerns the late medieval period in Spain where he discusses the scholarship of Amerigo Castro and Benzion Netanyahu (the esteemed historian and father of the current leader of Israel). Netanyahu's popular apologetic Magnum Opus, The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain, was published in 1995 and argues that the traditional view of the New Christians as secret Jews was incorrect, that they were, for the most part, indeed sincere converts. MacDonald points out that even if the New Christians were sincere in conversion, they were perceived as a cohesive group by both Old and New Christians alike. Ethnic ties rather than religious beliefs served to mark off distinct groups of Jews and gentiles. The whole issue of the inquisition is an especially difficult one because of the influence of strongly anti-Catholic historians and publicists, both Jewish and Protestant and MacDonald's treatment seems fair and balanced.

Some political strategies discussed by Macdonald include immigration control issues, pressure on publishers and on scholarly organizations, such as the recent pressuring by the ADL of the American Psychological Society to withdraw the lifetime achievement award for Dr. Raymond Cattell.

Image management, really a form of tactical deception, usually involves presenting non-Jews as spokesmen for various causes and diluting membership when too many Jews are present. A recent example (as reported in the Wall Street Journal and too recent for the book) was the decision by the Harvard Crimson staff to bring in more gentiles to avoid the appearance of pro-Jewish bias since all reporters and almost all management was Jewish. As another, MacDonald notes that the case challenging the "constitutionality of a non-denominational prayer in the New York public schools" was argued by the sole gentile lawyer on the New York Civil Liberties Union staff. Earlier corollaries to this "image management" were the medieval Jewish laws and rules designed to "regulate the personal behavior of Jews so as not to offend gentile sensibilities."

Again as noted above, such tactical deception is to be expected based on MacDonald's theory. Recall when token school integration first occurred in the United States that the smart and squeaky-"token blacks" chosen were perfect examples of such "image management" by another minority group.

MacDonald closes with a look at whether contemporary Judaism remains primarily a group evolutionary strategy and if there is hope for an end to anti-Semitism. His insights here are not encouraging and, given our past, MacDonald is clearly concerned about the future of gentile/Jewish relations in the Western World. Interestingly (though not surprising) he finds little problem with Israel and Zionism. "Zionism, at least to the extent that it becomes cut off from the rest of world Jewry, raises no special evolutionary questions. From an evolutionary perspective, Zionism is tribal politics as usual."

Understanding a difficult problem is a good (and often necessary) first step toward a solution. Unfortunately, in this as with so many critical issues, there are powerful forces on all sides that see political and social advantages in blame and name-calling. If widely read, Separation and Its Discontents could provide a framework for such understanding.

Edward O. Wilson, in his new book Consilience: The Unity of knowledge notes how far removed much of sociology is from the natural sciences. He writes that most sociologists are "fearful of biology and determined to avoid it. Even psychology is treated gingerly." Wilson argues that four factors (parsimony, generality, consilience, and predictiveness) are key to a good theory in any field. By these measures MacDonald has not only developed a good theory, but one to which non-biophobic sociologists should lend a willing ear.

Given the volatility of most discussions of ingroup-outgroup relations, it is important to note that Professor MacDonald nevertheless maintains a generally emotionally uninvolved and at times even clinically detached approach. Still, professional Jews, Christians, and Anti-Semites (i.e., those with a strong emotional involvement in their specific group identities) will all find much here with which to take offense.

Like the first volume, this book is well footnoted and indexed, and MacDonald provides many references (primarily from Jewish sources) on each page. The bibliography alone is over thirty pages. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in gentile/Jewish relations or merely issues of persistent group conflict and social/evolutionary theory.