A People Who Shall Dwell Alone, Some thoughts of Kevin MacDonald’s 1994 book

One of the best things in the Internet is that many books, which were very difficult or impossible to access, can today be found in a free web-version. Especially this is a great advantage concerning banned or suppressed books. The books of Kevin MacDonald are not exactly suppressed or banned, but they are also not presented as especially recommended reading, so I though of reading three of them and writing some comments. My comments will not be complete reviews of the books: I will only consider the validity of the claims.

The book “A People Who Shall Dwell Alone” is the first of the three, the others I have not yet read. In the beginning the author states that the book is no sense Anti-Semitic, and it is indeed too Philo-Semitic accepting many incorrect claims that were created to support the case of the Jews as a genetically uniform people and the Jewish IQ as being the result of evolutionary forces of natural and eugenic selection. MacDonald also accepts the Old Testament as more historical than it most probably is.

The thesis of the book is that the Jews are an example of an evolutionary group strategy where a collectivistic and highly endogamous group with superior intelligence is competing over resources with the individualistic population of Europeans. This situation leads to tensions between these populations and is the explanation of Anti-Semitism. This thesis presents Anti-Semitism as a natural side-effect of economic competition. It does not blame the Jews for following their strategy and it gives a rational explanation to Anti-Semitism as not motivated by racism but by natural self-defense. MacDonald suggests that following this strategy for thousands of years has

As a result of this, in my opinion politically very acceptable explanation, Kevin MacDonald got the reputation of an arch-Anti-Semitist. The problem is probably the same as was with the Polish government’s new law forbidding the historically false term “Polish concentration camps”, so often used by Jews. It is important for the Jews to feel that Anti-Semitism is irrational and unjust hatred of non-Jews against Jews. Giving a rational reason for it is white-washing the non-Jews of their crimes.

Nevertheless, however reasonable the theory presented in MacDonald’s book might sound, it is historically incorrect. The Jews in Europe did not face persecutions and they were not expelled because of competing over resources. The two main reasons were usury and ritual murders. Poisoning wells for spreading the plague was also one of the charges. Of these charges the practice of usury is not denied. Charging interest between 20% and 40% is usury and its goal is destruction of the victim. Usury against Jews is forbidden in Torah and Talmud, but it is accepted and recommended against non-Jews. Usury was the reason the Jews of England were expelled, and opposition of usury by the people and the clergy, in addition to the king’s economic problems, was the reason why Philip IV the Fair expelled the Jews of France. Philip also confiscated the property of the Templars and as the Templars were the only other money loaners in addition to the Jews, Philip did not protect the gentile business against Jewish competition. There were very many other cases when the Jews were expelled because of usury, but mostly they managed to return and the loans were restored.

The charges of ritual murders and spreading the plague are usually dismissed as so called vile canards, but Ariel Toaff showed in his book that Jews did commit ritual murders, the case is clear for the murder of Simon of Trent. Concerning spreading the plague, there is the story Jacob Frank tells in his Sayings of the Lord where Frank and his men were intentionally spreading plague in the 18^th century. They did not poison wells: they sold to gentiles items they had stolen from people infected with plague.

Economic competition did occasionally occur, but mostly the Jews held monopoles given by the king. They were king’s people and allowed to exploit the population by usury from which they paid a part to the king’s coffers and were protected by the king. In some places the Jews did engage in occupations where they competed with locals, but for instance in Eastern Europe there was no native middle class they could compete with. During Czar’s time the Jews of the Pale competed economically with Germans, but that was not the reason for Anti-Semitism in those areas. The reasons were usury targeting the local people, ritual murders, disrespect of the local religion, and Jewish privileges. During the Cossack rebel the Jews were blamed for exploiting the natives as lease farmers on state estates. The Jews were also tax collectors and they controlled the alcohol trade, which did not increase their popularity, but these were not the main reasons for persecutions. In general, economic competition by different groups is fairly common everywhere. It creates tensions, but hardly alone results to persecutions and expulsions. The Jews tried to exploit the population, to gain power, and finally to destroy or enslave all others. That is what most other collective, endogamous groups do not try to do and that is what was opposed by the locals.

One part of MacDonald’s thesis is obvious and needs not proof: a group will win over an individual. The Jews could use their wealth and in-group connections to their advantage. They could get cheap loans from their co-religionists and they could use their wide contacts to co-religionists. They were city people and wanted and could afford educating their youth. No other reasons are needed for understanding the very real Jewish advantage.

However, Kevin MacDonald prefers to explain this advantage by a higher IQ, and suggests that the higher IQ is a result of long time selective pressures on Jews. It is well demonstrated that the Jews of the USA and UK get a better score in IQ tests than Europeans and that this better score is a result of considerably higher scores in verbal IQ, notably in verbal vocabulary, while in English grammar they are slightly worse that Europeans. The verbal IQ of American Jews is 107-111 according to the most reliable tests and recent tests. The total IQ is lower than that, about 103-104. There is little doubt that these are the results of IQ tests, but the claim that the reason is genetic higher IQ, is not shown.

When we look at the vocabulary subtests in English IQ tests, what is clear is that they test two vocabularies: the common vocabulary and the extended vocabulary. This is very clear in the 10 word Wordsum test: there are 6 words from the first and 4 from the second vocabulary. Assuming that English is your second, third or fourth language, it is unlikely that you have ever heard or read the words from the extended vocabulary. Therefore you cannot know them. This is not only the case for people, who speak a different mother tongue. In many cultures, like the USA, UK and France, there is the elite language and the common people language. Sometimes the elite language is a totally different language, like at one time European nobility spoke French (in Finland the elite spoke Swedish), while the common people had their languages. When the elite speaks the same language as the common people, it still tries to separate by the common people by creating a sublanguage, the elite language, which uses “fancier” words. This is the origin of the extended vocabulary in English, and for that reason many subcultures in the USA do not and cannot know the words of the extended vocabulary. Consequently, they get a lower verbal IQ score.

The elite using the elite language is not the only group that has created a group language: all groups that wish to separate develop a group language. Jews separate for religious reasons. In Eastern Europe they spoke Yiddish and in Spain Ladino. We should expect that, as they still want to separate in the USA, they have a group language. This group language is similar to the USA elite language, but the words asked in verbal vocabulary tests may actually be better known in the Jewish group language than in the WASP elite language.

For this reason high scores in verbal IQ tests do not imply a higher genetic verbal IQ. Indeed, assuming that Eastern European Jews have a higher genetic IQ, Ashkenazi Jews in Israel should also have higher IQ, but their average for full IQ seems to be 103.5. This is higher than 100, the UK average, but the difference can be fully explained by environmental factors. As the second indication that the Jewish IQ is not genetically higher than European, is the case of Sephardim Jews. Before expulsion from Spain these Jews had high achievements, but when they much later immigrated to the USA, their IQ was not especially high. Obviously, the high achievements were not a result of higher genetic IQ.

As I do not see sufficient proofs that the Jews, or the subgroup of Ashkenazi Jews, have significantly higher genetic IQ than (other) Europeans, I doubt the efficacy of the eugenic and natural selection that according to MacDonald has lead to this higher IQ.

I have more reasons to doubt the efficacy. It is possible to estimate the effect of genetics to IQ in the Ashkenazi case. The mutation rate of humans has been quite well measured and in the last 3000 years there should have been about 5000 mutations. The number of IQ genes is not yet known (54 have been found), but it is estimated to be 3000-5000 genes or 26,000 genes that we all have. Assuming there are 3000 IQ genes and that random mutations split randomly between all genes (some are long genes, some short, but 3000 is large enough to be a good sample), then in the last 1000 years where were some 200 mutations in IQ related genes for each line leading to a modern person. The Ashkenazi community was born about 1000 years ago and the current claim is that only Ashkenazi Jews have the elevated IQ. Let us estimate how many IQ increasing mutations there should have been in the Ashkenazi population in the last 1000 years?

Nominally there could have been very many mutations. The Ashkenazi Jewish population rose to about 10 million. If each individual had different 200 mutations, we get 2 billion mutations, but this is obviously not correct. The population grew from a small population exponentially, so it was not 10 million in average. Let us for fun say it was 1 million in average. That gives 200 million mutations, but this is also quite wrong because that would imply that Ashkenazi have 200 million divided by 26,000 alleles per gene. That is 7,700 alleles. Actually Ashkenazi as a bottlenecked population have about 10 alleles per gene.

The difference comes from the fact that most mutations are lost: they start in one person and may never spread to many people, and are lots by random drift. Let us assume that only one in a thousand mutations is not lost. Using this as a measure we get 200 million divided by 1000, some 200,000 mutations. That is still quite much, but is it enough?

Fortunately we can estimate it. So far genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have found 52 SNPs related to IQ from the European population. These SNPs are some increasing and some decreasing IQ. They must cover some time span of 150,000 years of evolution. We expect that advantageous and some neutral mutations stay in the population, very advantageous should make a sweep, while deleterious mutations are purged off in some time. Let us assume all these 52 mutations are advantageous in order to get an upper bound. It means that in 3,000 years there was one advantageous mutation.

How many mutations there were? In 3,000 years there were 5,000 mutations in each lineage. Thus, in 150,000 years there were 250,000 mutations. The effective population size was maybe 14,000 and the population almost did not grow at all, except for very recent times. We if each of the 14,000 individuals developed different mutations, there were 14,000 times 250,000 mutations, but using the argument that this overestimates the mutations by a factor 1000, there were some 14 times 250,000 mutations. That is 3.5 million mutations. Out of them 52 were advantageous, about one in 670,000.

If the Ashkenazi Jews had 200,000 mutations and in average one in 670,000 is advantageous, they should have one or maximum very few mutations. This is a contradiction for a genetic explanation of the high Ashkenazi Jewish IQ because if one or very few mutations raise IQ by 3-10 points, these mutations would certainly have been found in GWAS. The result does not change if we assume that there are 3,000 IQ increasing mutations, that is, 60 times more than the 52 that earlier was used. These additional IQ genes must have so small effect that GWAS could not find them. Let us assume they have one tenth of the effect. Thus, rather than an increase by 60, it is an increase by 6. Instead of 1 in 670,000, we get 1 in 100,000. If the Ashkenazi Jews have 200,000 IQ related mutations, then they may have 2 IQ increasing mutations and the rest were decreasing and mostly purged off. These two good mutations cannot rise IQ by 3-10 points, as then they would have been found.

There may well be some 2 or so IQ increasing mutations in the Ashkenazi Jews, but they have a minor effect and the explanation for the higher Ashkenazi Jewish IQ cannot be genetic. No Ashkenazi Jew specific IQ increasing genes have been found and the associations with certain Ashkenazi Jewish genetic diseases to a recessive advantage in IQ have not been confirmed. In fact, by calculating the relation of the disease prevalence to the carrier frequency for these diseases, it can be shown that they do not have recessive advantage of any kind.

Another mistake that Kevin MacDonald makes is that he believes the results of Jewish researchers of that time, who tried to show that Jews have not mixed with other people and the phenomenological differences must be caused by parallel evolution. It has later been established that all Jewish populations have admixture from non-Jewish peoples. The Ashkenazi Jews are about 60% admixed with Europeans in autosomal DNA. Their Y-DNA is Levantine, but the Y chromosome has mainly genes for making sperm. Finns have 59% or East-Asian/Siberian Y-DNA haplogroup N, but only 10-15% autosomal genes from Siberia. The Y-DNA is relatively unimportant.

The Jewish Y-DNA haplogroup mixture with three common haplogroups (J2, J1, E1b1b) and several less common shows clearly that the Jews are not descendants of Patriarch Abraham, as the Bible tells, but that the population, which started endogamous marriage practices was already admixed from three original populations: J1=Arabs, J2=Greeks/Syrians, E1b1B=Old Levantine/Egypt. In a patriarchic society, if Abraham had the Y-DNA haplogroup of, say, J1, then his male descendants had the same while females were married to the out-group and their spouses did not join Abraham’s tribe and contribute new Y-DNA haplogroups. After some time new Y-DNA haplogroups were added for various reasons, but J1 would stay dominant. Three strong haplogroups shows the biblical story is invented.

Kevin MacDonald uses the Old Testament as if he believed in its correctness and concerning the Exodus he explicitly states that the historicity of the sojourn of Israelites in Egypt is unquestioned. I think it is very much questioned and the historicity of the Exodus itself is discarded.

I have in an earlier post stated that the Bible should be taken literally, but by that I mean the most fantastic myths in the beginning of the Bible. They are to be taken literally (but not literally in the naïve sense): the Paradise was indeed lost in 9,500 BC, the patriarch lists in the Bible are directly taken from the king lists of Sumer (where else?), there was a comet that destroyed Sodom and Gomorra in 3,123 BC, there was Noah’s flood in Shurupakk in 2,900 BC. All of these events Jewish priests learned from the Babylonian royal archives during the Babylonian Exile and in the Persian time. All these events were real, but they have to be  correctly understood. The Bible does not say that the world was created in 16,000 BC, but the length of the world (6,000 years) implies it. What does it mean that the world was created 16,000 BC? It does not mean that the Earth did not exist before 16,000 BC. In fact, the Earth was the mother goddess and as old as the time, that is the father in the heaven, the god of the sky and times. Even according to the Bible, there had been two words before this one, and the Revelation promises a world after our world. The world that was created after the last Ice Age maximum in 16,000 BC was just that almost everybody had died, ice started melting, a new time was starting, no more, a new world was starting.

But though I think that the Bible is to be taken literally in those old myths, it does not mean that the Jewish priests did not invent stories and modify history. The Exodus story seems to be a modification from the expulsion of Hyksos. This event was known to Egyptian priests and Jews could learn it from them. Hyksos were not Israelites and the god of Hyksos was Baal Hadad, just the god the priests of Yahweh hated. It is of course rather irrelevant if MacDonald writes that for him the Egypt sojourn is unquestioned fact, since in fact he has a very instrumental view of Judaism, as this quote shows:

“In Chapter 3, it was suggested that monotheism for the Israelites was nothing more or less than an expression of the common interests of the Jewish people viewed as a unified kinship group. In a sense, therefore, one can equate the monotheistic God, the interests of a unified Israel, and the interests of the Levites and particularly the priestly descendents of Aaron.”

I think MacDonald has been too much taken by his theory of Judaism as an evolutionary group strategy. The idea of God does not derive from anything like this. The concept of God is extremely conservative, high gods are not invented out of nothing. There was the old God, indeed, three main gods with their consorts: El (An), Baal Hadad (Enki) and something that corresponded to Enlil. I think Enlil was Yam, though Yam is the dracon (Draco) and actually Tiamit. The role of Tiamit was taken by the adversary of God, the snake, later the Devil. Yam become Enlil and therefore Yam/Yaw become Yahwe, the storm god as Enlil was the storm god, no the sea dragon. Israelite God was Yahweh, but Baal Hadad and El were also worshiped.

There were a few new facts that I learned by reading this book. One was that when Ezra came with the refugees from Persian they called the Israelite peasants with the name ‘am ha-ares and they were second rate citizens for a long time. (It is clear from the book of Ezra that there were tensions in the beginning). This made me reconsider the old theory that the name Pharisee does come from Farsi in Aramean, instead of from “separated” (which incidentally MacDonald seems to accept). If the Pharisees were Persians with the new Old Testament, the priestly class in Judea (as there had to be one, before the Samaritans were forced to accept the Torah as the holy book by Alexander Janneus) could have still followed the old form of the religion with Baal as the Son of God El. This does give me some ideas and well motivates the time spent on reading MacDonald’s book.

As a conclusion, the main thesis MacDonald puts forth does not surprise much. There is the group strategy and it is against all outsiders. It is only too well known. I do not think it is imprinted in the genes.

One can ask how to fight this group. Two alternatives for an individual against a group are: either to have a very powerful individual who protects his right (like a righteous king) or forming a group to have greater group force (e.g. for a pogrom/expulsion). The problem with the latter alternative is that the group is by nature temporary in individualistic culture and the action is only temporary and will be rolled back.

But I do not think these are the only strategies. People grow up. The group may break down. What one should do mean while is stop believing in their science. They cheat a lot. Many fields are infiltrated. Kevin MacDonald had to disguise his theory into something much kinder than the reality to have any chance of getting it published in the academia. But again, it did not work. The way to go around is to ignore efforts to publish in controlled academia and media, while reading publications and writing to a blog. Times will change.