Buy new:

$27.31

List Price: $32.95

Save: $5.64 (17%)

& FREE Returns

FREE delivery Wednesday, April 27

Or fastest delivery Tuesday, April 26. Order within 19 hrs 53 mins

In Stock.

[{"displayPrice":"$27.31","priceAmount":27.31,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"27","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"31","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"FyEKwoJoG4czrBAm2gAE4XF%2FxTOTr9juAb%2Fx1HDYIAArQWhXV17nVpeZU2eKkNBvtupA8AVRGD3WG6LIL2ogWUTfA8jWp%2BSnLn0yiB0XMTjsbZaeDwx%2FDf4PFuoPvuiYoLxyHD99%2BH4%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW"}]

$$27.31 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Secure transaction

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Details

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Return policy: Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

Share

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Other Sellers on Amazon

Added

Not added

$32.03
+ $3.99 shipping

Sold by: TheWorldShopUSA

Added

Not added

$39.99
& FREE Shipping

Sold by: Book Depository US

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 3 images

Follow the Author

Kevin B. MacDonald

A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy, with Diaspora Peoples Paperback – June 6, 2002

by Kevin MacDonald (Author)

61 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Paperback

"Please retry"

$27.31

$24.68

$26.67

Paperback
$27.31

8 Used from $26.67 5 New from $24.68

Enhance your purchase

This book attempts to understand an ancient people in terms of modern evolutionary biology. A basic idea is that Judaism is a group evolutionary strategy-what one might term an evolutionarily significant way for a group of people to get on in the world. The book documents several theoretically interesting aspects of group evolutionary strategies using Judaism as a case study. These topics include the theory of group evolutionary strategies, the genetic cohesion of Judaism, how Jews managed to erect and enforce barriers to gene flow between themselves and other peoples, resource competition between Jews and non-Jews, how Jews managed to have a high level of charity within their communities and at the same time prevented free-riding, how some groups of Jews came to have such high IQ's, and how Judaism developed in antiquity. This book was originally published in 1994 by Praeger Publishers. The Writers Club edition contains a new preface, Diaspora Peoples, describing several interesting group evolutionary strategies: The Gypsies, the Hutterites and Amish, the Calvinists and Puritans, and the Overseas Chinese.

Print length

598 pages
Language

English
Publisher

iUniverse
Publication date

June 6, 2002
Dimensions

6 x 1.5 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

0595228380
ISBN-13

978-0595228386
UNSPSC-Code
See all details

Frequently bought together

Kevin MacDonald
108
Paperback
6 offers from $20.71
Maurice 1895-1972 Samuel
173
Paperback
7 offers from $14.95
Julius Evola
532
Hardcover
49 offers from $19.19
Julius Evola
278
Hardcover
51 offers from $12.10
Theodore Kaczynski
885
Paperback
16 offers from $13.64
Guillaume Durocher
20
Paperback
2 offers from $18.00

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Kevin MacDonald received his Ph.D. in Biobehavioral Sciences at the University of Connecticut and is Professor of Psychology at California State University-Long Beach. His research focuses on evolutionary psychology and on ethnicity and ethnic group conflict. His other books include Social and Personality Development: An Evolutionary Synthesis (New York: Plenum, 1988), Separation and Its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998), and The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998/2002).

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ iUniverse; First edition (June 6, 2002)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 598 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0595228380
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0595228386
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.92 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.5 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #82,767 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #78 in History of Judaism
- #315 in Medical Social Psychology & Interactions
- #490 in Popular Social Psychology & Interactions

Customer Reviews:
61 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		81%
4 star		10%
3 star		2%
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star		6%

How are ratings calculated?

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

David Sims

Amazon has censored the other books in this series

Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2019

Verified Purchase

A People That Shall Dwell Alone is the first book in a series by Kevin MacDonald about Jewish history, Jewish culture, and Jewish political and economic power in the light of Judaism being an adaptive strategy and an aid in the survival of the Jewish people.

The subsequent two books — Separation And Its Discontents and Culture Of Critique — were removed from Amazon's offerings in March 2019 for violating Amazon's terms of service in regard to expressions of antisemitism. Which is odd, since the book is partly a scholarly treatment of antisemitism. And which means, of course, that they were really removed for telling too much of the truth about Jewish history and Jewish power.

On the other hand, nobody has ever succeeded in showing why antisemitism necessarily means "false." So far as anyone knows, some of the world's most important truths might be antisemitic statements.

A People That Shall Dwell Alone (subtitle: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy) was originally published in 1994 by Praeger Publishers, a respected academic publishing company that is part of the Greenwood Publishing Group.

Separation And Its Discontents (subtitle: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism) followed in 1998.

The Culture of Critique (subtitle: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Intellectual and Political Movements) completed the trilogy, later in 1998.

I have copies of all three books, having bought them in 2007. These books have been around for 20 years, regarded as worthy academic contributions for most of that time, and, only now, comes a push for their censorship. I suspect that it is part of the more general censorship of the world wide web by the mainstream media and the tech companies of silicon valley.

Censorship creeps, you know. Its targets grow ever wider and farther afield from its original focus, partly because of zealotry, and partly because the focus of censorship never was intended, by the censors, to remain tight.

The Occidental Observer has remarked: "This [banning of MacDonald's books] comes only around two weeks after they banned books by Jared Taylor and Greg Johnson. This is an extension of the de-platforming from financial sites and PayPal, Patreon, Coinbase, and credit card companies that has hit pretty much all sites on the dissident right... Clearly the establishment is terrified that these ideas are gaining traction, and it illustrates once again, that the culturally dominant left cares nothing for free speech as a pillar of American civilization."

175 people found this helpful

Helpful

Vagabond of Letters

SAID and CofC are more enlightening; 'Diaspora Peoples' is the highlight here

Reviewed in the United States on October 9, 2018

Verified Purchase

Originally rated 4: updated to 5 in light of Amazon banning the other two books in this series and attempting to deplatform half a dozen publishers and authors.

cxiv + 448pp

Not as enlightening as Separation and its Discontents or The Culture of Critique (respectively the second and third books in this series, now banned and memory holed by Amazon, along with at least 49 other 'politically incorrect' and anti-Zionist and human biodiversity titles, including Two Centuries Together: A History of the Jews in Russia, by no less a luminary than Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn himself); much of the material presented here is repeated with some alteration between those two other works (SAID has a similar focus; CofC is entirely different but must represent some of this material to frame its own arguments as a standalone work). Nonduplicated information is in the title: the suite of genetic and culture separatist strategies which comprise Judaism. Jewish eugenics is mentioned more in SAID and even 'The Bell Curve' though the theoretical basis for it and speculation as to how it formed is elucidated here.

The 2004 paperback reprint includes an additional 100+ page preface detailing other (mainly diaspora) group evolutionary strategies, such as the Spartan, Gypsy, Overseas Chinese, Amish, Mennonite, and even Puritan (!), comparing and contrasting their genetic closure, level of collectivism and authoritarianism, economic/niche specialization, parenting strategies, and typical relation to their host societies to those of the Jews.

READ THIS BOOK BEFORE AMAZON BANS IT TOO! Buy it and the second two of the trilogy somewhere else. I will add reviews of the other two books here. They are still available from Barnes and Noble. This is the best that you can get now that SAID and CofC are banned.

69 people found this helpful

Helpful

Curious Patti

Scholarly Account of Jewish Life

Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2019

Verified Purchase

A great book to read by a great scholar that details the cohesiveness of the Jewish people for the past 3000+ years. Also describes the cohesiveness of the Roma Peoples (Gypsies), as well as the Chinese in diaspora. Excellent, and vastly well-annotated and footnoted.

20 people found this helpful

Helpful

David J.

I'm amazed this has not been banned yet by Amazon.com

Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2021

Verified Purchase

Let me be clear: Kevin MacDonald, PhD is not a Neo Nazi or some crazy White Nationalist. He writes a very clear headed book dealing with the history of Judaism and how it functions as a whole. Nothing he says would make you believe he hates Jews or thinks they should be eliminated. He is just explaining how as a culture and people they manage to survive with hatred and persecution. And he even explains how anti semitism started and what Jews do to handle it. If you hear people say that MacDonald is a hateful man or out to harm Jews, they have not read this book or they are just lying.

7 people found this helpful

Helpful

Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2018

Verified Purchase

One of the most amazing books I've ever read. Buy the entire set.

23 people found this helpful

Helpful

Ilinois Reader

Technical, Academic, Peer Review Focused

Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2013

Verified Purchase

A People That Shall Dwell Alone is the first in Professor Kevin MacDonald's series on the Jews.

Professor MacDonald is an Evolutionary Psychologist-a person who studies how evolutionary processes effect the mind of individuals and groups. In this book, he lays out how he views Jewish behavior as evolutionary in nature. Judaism, the religion as well as the secular, ethnic folkways is a strategy whereby Jews can gain resources and increase their numbers.

The book is highly technical, highly academic and written with a peer review in mind. As such, it is not easy to read. It is neutral in tone throughout.

26 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

VEL – The Contemporary Heretic

A 'Memetic' Theory of Judaism?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 20, 2018

Verified Purchase

Ethnocentrism is universal . Every ethnic group sees itself as special. Therefore, the Jewish claim to be special – i.e. God’s 'Chosen People' – is, of itself, not so special.

However, Jews have a better claim than most to actually being justified in their assessment.

The impact of Jews on world history is vastly disproportionate. The two largest world religions, Christianity and Islam, both derive primarily from Judaism, and Jews are overrepresented among Nobel Prize winning scientists, leading intellectuals, celebrities, and millionaires.

However, the most remarkable achievement of Jews is their very survival as a people, despite conquest, persecution, banishment and diaspora, not to mention recent trends towards 'secularization'.

“From an evolutionary perspective,” Macdonald writes, “the uniqueness of… Jews lies in their being the only people to successfully remain intact and resist normal assimilative processes after living for very long periods as a minority in other societies” (p86).

Two groups might assert a competing claim to this mantle:

1) The Roma;

2) Upper-caste Hindus.

However, Macdonald characterizes the Brahmins as operating “a genetically fairly open group evolutionary strategy” (p25), because high-caste males could take lower-caste concubines (p31).

In contrast, for Jews, Macdonald claims, all sexual contact with gentiles was proscribed (p58-9).

However, other biblical passages envisage the concubinage of foreign women (e.g. Deuteronomy 20:14; Numbers 31:18).

Cultural Group Selection
In 'A People That Shall Dwell Alone' (PTSDA), Kevin Macdonald explains Jewish survival and success through a theory of cultural group selection.

His theory is not strictly sociobiological. Macdonald has in mind, not biological, but cultural evolution.

We might then characterise it as a 'memetic' theory, in accordance with Richard Dawkins’ concept of 'memes' as units of cultural evolution. PTSDA is a work, not of evolutionary psychology, but of ' Memetics '.

Dawkins famously described religions as ' Viruses of the Mind ' that infect human hosts much like biological viruses (Dawkins 1993).

The success of a religion, then, depends on its 'infectiousness'. This, in turn, depends on the behaviours that the infection induces.

Viruses produce symptoms like coughing and sneezing precisely because these help the parasite infect new hosts via the bodily fluids expelled.

Successful religions similarly produce behaviours that promote their spread. Christians are admonished to 'spread the gospel' among heathens, and Muslims to wage 'holy war' against infidels. These behaviours promote the spread of Christianity and Islam just as surely as sneezing facilitates the spread of flu.

In contrast, Macdonald quotes Richard Alexander as citing the 'Shakers', an eighteenth-century Christian sect, as an example of a religion which, because of its precepts (celibacy), died out (p8).

However, a small Shaker community does survive in America, because, although celibate, they did proselytize.

In contrast, a religion eschewing both reproduction and proselytism would probably never spread beyond its original founders and hence never come to the attention of historians in the first place.

A 'Closed Strategy'
The group evolutionary strategy represented by Judaism differs somewhat from that of Islam and Christianity. Unlike other Abrahamic faiths, Judaism adopted what Macdonald calls a 'closed strategy'.

Whereas Shakers renounced reproduction but practised proselytism, Jews did the opposite.

They are admonished by scripture to 'be fruitful and multiply' (p51-4), marry within the faith (p54-62) and indoctrinate offspring as believers (p326-335). However, Jews do not proselytise and intermarriage is forbidden (e.g. Deuteronomy 7:3; 1 Kings 11:1-13).

It is sometimes claimed that Judaism was once a proselyting religion. However, Macdonald dismisses this as “apologetics”, designed to enable Judaism to compete against the universalism of Hellenism and, later, Christianity (p92).

Macdonald characterizes the Jewish strategy as: “Allow converts and intermarriage at a formal theoretical level, but minimise them in practice” (p97).

Thus, Rabbinic attitudes towards proselytes fluctuated from ambivalent to hostile. Prospective converts are turned away three times, required to devote considerable effort to religious study, and undergo circumcision.

However, Israelites did forcibly convert conquered groups (e.g. Gallileans and Nethinim).

However, converts faced systematic discrimination and were genetically quarantined from the core Jewish population through marriage prohibitions, which remained in force for many generations, until all evidence of alien origins had been forgotten – an especially long time given the Jewish practice of maintaining genealogies (p91-113).

“Racial Purity”
Macdonald repeatedly refers to Judaism as designed to preserve the “racial purity” of the group, this very phrase, or variants, being used by Macdonald on over twenty pages.

Thus, it was, Macdonald claims, perceived racial impurity, not theological differences, that explained the split with the Samaritans (p59).

“Racial Purity” is a phrase more associated with Nazis than Jews. However, according to Macdonald, this is no accident.

“Powerful group strategies,” he writes, “tend to beget opposing group strategies that in many ways provide a mirror image of the group which they combat” ( Separation and Its Discontents : pxxxvii). Thus, “National Socialism is a true mirror-image of Judaism” (Ibid: p133), since both place “great emphasis on racial purity and on the primacy of group ethnic interests” and “were greatly concerned with eugenics” ( Separation and Its Discontents : p194).

Genetics
In PTSDA, Macdonald relies on indirect phenotypic indicators of genetic distance (i.e. blood-groups, fingerprint patterns) to assess how successful the Jews had been in reproductively isolating themselves from host populations (p34-40).

Now, however, a huge amount of genetic data has become available. In general, this has confirmed Macdonald's conclusions regarding:
1) The Middle Eastern origins of Jews; and
2) The affinities among widely dispersed Jewish populations – Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Mizrahi, even Lemba (but not Ethiopian Jews).

Albeit with one major proviso – namely, Ashkenazim trace a substantial part of their ancestry to Southern Europe (Atzmon et al 2010), seemingly from Jewish men taking Gentile wives (Costa et al 2013).

Economic Success
Macdonald identifies various elements of the Jewish 'group evolutionary strategy' that have enabled them to repeatedly economically outcompete host populations.

These include:
1) Collectivism;
2) Emphasis on education and high-investment parenting (e.g. the stereotypical Jewish mother);
3) Intelligence.

Collectivism
Macdonald characterizes Judaism as 'hyper-collectivist', in accordance with the distinction between collectivist and individualist cultures formulated by Harry Triandis .

Partly this reflects their Middle Eastern origins, where, Macdonald contends, all groups are relatively collectivist.

However, Jews were, he claims, long recognised as especially group-oriented even compared to other Middle Eastern groups.

Thus, “Jews alone of all the subject peoples in the Roman Empire engaged in prolonged, even suicidal wars against the government in order to attain national sovereignty” and, therefore, “only… Jews, of all subject peoples were exempt from having to sacrifice to the Empire’s Gods, and… were… allowed its own courts and… ex officio government (p357-8).

This tendency towards ethnocentrism was augmented through endogamous and consanguineous marriage, which increase the level of relatedness among individuals, facilitating cooperation and trust.

As evidence of clannishness, Macdonald cites the 'double-standards' imposed by Judaic law.

The most famous example concerns 'usury'. Whereas Christians were forbidden outright to lend money at interest, Jews interpreted the same biblical passages as forbidding only the lending of money at interest to other Jews. Ironically, this double-standard actually benefited its ostensible victims, since it gave Jews an incentive to lend money to Gentiles in the first place.

Other prohibitions evinced greater economic understanding. Thus, Jews were not permitted to encroach upon the monopolies of other Jews, or undercut Jews, but only if the customers were Gentile – if the customer-base was Jewish, then competition was free to benefit consumers (p227-230).

Although these double-standards were tempered from the Medieval period, this too was done in the interests of Jews themselves, to avoid inciting antisemitism (p229).

Collectivism and Capitalism
Ironically, the Jewish tendency towards collectivism gave them a particular economic advantage in quintessentially individualist Western capitalist economies.

In game theory, a population composed of individualists, with no preference for one trading partner over another, is vulnerable to invasion by a collectivist invader with strong in-group bias.

Thus, Macdonald notes, “Jewish economic activity has historically been characterized by high levels of within-group economic cooperation and patronage”, with “Jewish elites overwhelmingly tend[ing] to employ other Jews in their enterprises”, as well as “the importance of highly placed courtiers in the general fortunes of the entire Jewish community” (p220).

Both kinship ties which crossed international boundaries, and a common language (Yiddish), meant that business links and lines of credit crossed international boundaries, giving Jews an advantage in an already increasingly globalized economy.

Middleman Minority?
Jews are the quintessential middlemen minority, acting, not only as economic middlemen, but also as intermediaries between subjects and rulers.

For Macdonald, “the prototypical Jewish role as an instrument of governmental oppression has been that of the tax farmer”, collecting taxes on behalf of a ruler (p175).

Jews’ status as endogamous aliens preadapted them for this role – “precisely because their interests, as a genetically segregated group, were maximally divergent from those of the exploited population”, they would have “no kinship ties (and thus no loyalty) to the people who were being ruled” and could therefore be entrusted to extract maximum revenue with all necessary ruthlessness (p172).

“The archetype of the well placed courtier who helps other Jews, while oppressing the local population, is”, Macdonald observes, Joseph in the Old Testament, who, by building up stockpiles of grain and selling it back to the Egyptians, ultimately reduced the latter to bondage (p175; Genesis 47:13-21).

Thus, while the masses resented Jews, the ruling class acted as patrons and protectors.

However, protection could only go so far, and Jews also served another function for elites as scapegoats. Macdonald quotes Hubert Blalock as observing “the price the [middleman] minority pays for protection in times of minimal stress is to be placed on the front lines of battle in any showdown between the elite and the peasant groups” (p173).

Jews' IQs?
Macdonald estimates the Ashkenazi IQ at around a standard deviation above the white gentile mean – i.e. 15 IQ points, equal to the difference between white and black Americans.

However, despite the ' the g factor ', he reports a massive difference in the verbal and performance IQs of Jews, with the latter around the European average but the former some two standard deviations higher.

This may explain the lack of famous Jewish engineers and architects, and why “Jewish economic activity… tended not to be characterized by technological innovation related to mechanical abilities”, lending superficial credence to the anti-Semitic charge that “Jews were not innovators, but only appropriated the innovations of others” (p291).

Regarding the cause of Jewish intelligence, Macdonald observes that wealthy Jews generally had more surviving offspring than poor Jews and infers that this would produce an increase in intelligence levels, because wealth is correlated with IQ (p285-6).

However, this was surely true among all ethnic groups prior to recent times. The rich had more surviving offspring simply because they could afford to feed more offspring.

However, wealth may have been especially correlated with IQ among Jews, because most were concentrated in occupations requiring greater intellectual ability (e.g. moneylending).

Poor Jews, meanwhile, were sometimes forbidden from marrying.

They were also victims of substantial discrimination, which, he infers, may have motivated them to abandon Judaism, raising the IQ of the remaining population.

However, he provides no hard data showing that poor Jews did indeed abandon Judaism in greater numbers – and Jewish charity may have disincentivized defection (p312-9).

More plausible is Macdonald's claim that Jews low in the personality factor known as 'conscientiousness' may have been prone to abandon Judaism, because they lacked the self-discipline to comply with the incredible ritual demands Judaism imposed on adherents (p312-9).

Macdonald also attributes the higher average IQ of Jews to "eugenics", citing various Rabbinic quotations regarding the desirability of marrying the daughter of a scholar, or marrying one’s daughter to a scholar (p275-88).

In contrast, celibacy was imposed on many Christian religious scholars (i.e. monks, priests). As Galton surmised, this may have had a dysgenic effect on Christian IQs.

Of course, today, religious studies is not an intellectually respected field. Richard Dawkins even disparaged theology as “not a real subject at all”.

However, in the past, theology may have been the only form of scholarship it was safe for Jews, Christians or even closet atheists to undertake. Anyone investigating more substantial matters (e.g. whether the Earth orbited the Sun or vice versa) was in danger of being burnt at the stake if he reached the wrong conclusion (i.e. the right conclusion).

The theory that the fecundity of Jewish religious scholars, as contrasted with the celibacy demanded of priests/monks, played a role in selecting for increased intelligence in Jewish populations cannot therefore be discounted.

Priestly Privilege
Macdonald describes the special status accorded the Tribe of Levi, and the priestly Kohen line, as "from an evolutionary perspective… a masterstroke because it resulted in the creation of hereditary groups whose interests were bound up with the fate of the entire group" (p385).

He concludes, “the presence of the priesthood among the Babylonian exiles and its absence among the Syrian exiles [the 'lost tribes']… may explain why the latter eventually became assimilated and the former did not" (p394).

However, one could just as plausibly contend that this arrangement, especially the hereditary right of the Kohaním to payment, would produce resentment in other tribes and hence division.

Conscious Design or Random Mutation?
In biological evolution, adaptions emerge without conscious design, through random mutation and selection.

However, Macdonald invokes conscious design to explain the genesis of the Jewish group evolutionary strategy.

Moses, he concedes, like Lycurgus of Sparta, was probably mythical. However, the systems developed in their respective names “have all the appearance of being human contrivances” (p395).

Indeed, rather than a single author, the Jewish strategy was “so successful… precisely because crucial aspects of the strategy were continually changed… to meet current contingencies” (p396).

Thus, he observes, Jewish writings authored in Exile extol very different traits than the martial values celebrated in the Books of Deuteronomy and Joshua, the latter authored when the Jews were, if not independent, at least still resident in Palestine; while the rise of Zionism and Israel presaged the return to martial values (p318).

In proposing that the Jewish evolutionary strategy was consciously designed by its formulators, Macdonald credits the authors of the Biblical texts with remarkable judgement and foresight.

It also casts them in the role of a sort of metaphoric pre-modern 'Elders of Zion'.

This suggests that Macdonald's thesis comes close to a conspiracy theory.

Cultural or Biological Evolution?
Since Judaism represents a 'Closed Group Strategy', it has as its effect, not only the survival of Judaism, but also the survival of Jewish genes, and Macdonald repeatedly refers to the strategy as functioning to do precisely this.

Sometimes, this makes Macdonald’s theory read more like a theory of biological evolution than of cultural evolution and could cause confusion. Indeed, I suspect Macdonald has managed to confuse himself.

In his opening chapter, he writes, “a group strategy does not require a genetic barrier between the strategizing group and the rest of the population” and, “strategizing groups can range from complete genetic segregation from the surrounding population to complete panmixia” (p15; p27).

However, Macdonald later writes, “in order to qualify as an evolutionary strategy, genetic segregation must be actively maintained by the strategizing group” (p85).

This suggests that 'Open Strategies' like Christianity and Islam cannot qualify as 'Group Strategies' and hence reduces the applicability, and usefulness, of the concept.

Culture of Critique
This confusion carries over into The Culture of Critique , a sequel to the present work, where Macdonald envisages secular scholars of Jewish ethnicity, including Marxists, psychoanalysts and cultural anthropologists, as continuing to pursue a Jewish 'group evolutionary strategy' even though they have long previously abandoned the religion in whose teachings this 'group evolutionary strategy’ is ostensibly contained.

But, if this strategy is encoded, not in Jewish genes, but in the teachings of Judaism, how then can secular Jews, some having abandoned the religion of their forefathers, and some, brought up in secular households, never having been exposed to it in the first place, continue to pursue this strategy?

'The Culture of Critique' is, then, fundamentally theoretically flawed at inception.

In contrast, PTSDA represents a tenable and, in some respects persuasive theory in explaining the survival and success of the Jewish people over the centuries, and it is regrettable that its reputation of PTSDA has been overshadowed by Macdonald’s more recent work and political activism

References
Atzmon, Gil et al (2010) Abraham's Children in the Genome Era: Major Jewish Diaspora Populations Comprise Distinct Genetic Clusters with Shared Middle Eastern Ancestry. American Journal of Human Genetics 86(6):850 - 859
Cochran, Hardy and Harpending (2006) Natural history of Ashkenazi intelligence. Journal of Biosocial Science 38(5):659-93.
Costa et al (2013). "A substantial prehistoric European ancestry amongst Ashkenazi maternal lineages". Nature Communications. 4: 2543.
Dawkins (1993) “Viruses of the Mind,” in Bo Dalhbom, ed., 'Dennett and His Critics: Demystifying Mind' (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1993).

7 people found this helpful

Stephen Cowley

A Darwinist philosophy of history

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 12, 2011

Verified Purchase

This is the first of Professor Kevin Macdonald's trilogy interpreting Judaism and Anti-Semitism. The real page turner is the third volume, The Culture of Critique (1998), but this and the second volume, Separation and its Discontents (1994), give his background assumptions in physical anthropology and an only slightly softened social darwinism. As Macdonald says, this latter is not a 'feel good theory'.

Macdonald first explains the theories of recent physical anthropology involving inheritance of specific and general mental characteristics and of groups as instruments of evolution by which genes are shepherded through the generations.

He then interprets The Old Testament , with its genealogies, family histories and laws from a social darwinist standpoint. He next argues against the view of Judaism as a failed universal religion competing with early Christianity for converts, claiming that there are no recorded Jewish missionaries or missionary texts. Christianity draws from Jewish tradition, but its insistence on monogamy and exogamous marriage he attributes to European ethnic characteristics. He claims that Judaism is not internally egalitarian, hence a tendency for those on the lower rungs to defect to out-groups where their identity is more valued. Lastly, he outlines Jewish responses to the 'Enlightenment' which validate Jewish continuance as an ethnic group even independently of religious commitment, e.g. Reform and Orthodox Judaism and Zionism.

He draws mostly on voluminous recent American scholarship, but the result amounts to a novel philosophy of history that challenges the views of American liberals and conservatives like Francis Fukayama and Samuel Huntingdon, but reaches a similar level. Macdonald opposes the multi-ethnic vision of the USA and is nostalgic for the 1950s of his youth.

In terms of production values, I counted six typos in the introduction, the last sentence of which is ungrammatical. All in all, I found it highly readable, well argued and a worthwhile challenge to my own views.

14 people found this helpful

Chris X

Perfect

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 16, 2019

Verified Purchase

A perfect analysis of the deep ethnocentrism among jews and how they've separated themselves in gentile societies; socially, culturally, biologically, religiously etc etc.,

One person found this helpful

The Observer

Read This Book And Learn

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 16, 2014

Verified Purchase

When an acquaintance saw me reading this volume by Kevin MacDonald, he expressed surprise that I should read such an anti-semitic book. I asked if he had read it, which he had not, so I asked how he could judge it as "anti-semitic" if he had not read it. It appears that "They" had told him it is !

It seems this book has developed a reputation which is thoroughly undeserved. Far from being an anti-semitic book, it in fact celebrates how the Jewish people have survived centuries of persecution by maintaining the concepts of the Jewish family and culture. The book also celebrates the superior intellect of the Jewish people in general, and the methods used by Jewish culture to achieve this. Eugenic practices, concentration on pure blood lines, the discouraging of converts to Judaism, strong cultural reinforcement, powerful ingroup identification and a staying apart from the outgroup culture.

The great message of this book is - "Look at how Jews have survived as a race - and learn !" Unless other cultures adopt similar strategies in the future all out cultures will end up in the multiculturalist melting pot and be lost, All the separate races of the world - all equally important and the precious jewellery of the human race - will be lost. The Jewish people and their survival are a beacon to the rest of us showing us how we can avoid this future.

Read this book and learn !

Buy new:

$27.31

Other Sellers on Amazon

Follow the Author

Similar authors to follow

A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy, with Diaspora Peoples Paperback – June 6, 2002

Enhance your purchase

Frequently bought together

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Product details

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries

Buy new: $27.31

Other Sellers on Amazon

Follow the Author

Similar authors to follow

A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy, with Diaspora Peoples Paperback – June 6, 2002

Enhance your purchase

Frequently bought together

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Product details

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries

Buy new:

$27.31