Joey Kurtzman responds to…an attack on his Kevin Macdonald articles!
In the dialog about the ADL versus Jewcy over the Armenian genocide, TM of Jewlicious attacked Joey Kurtzman over his dialog with John Derbyshire from the National Review in a mostly serious consideration of Dr. Kevin MacDonald’s inflammatory research on Jews, including Jewish “group evolutionary strategies.� This series of exchanges between Kurtzman and Derbyshire on Jewcy created quite a commotion, not just in Jewish circles, but in race realist and white nationalist circles, some of whom pointed to this series in a popular Jewish publication in order to legitimize MacDonald’s theories.
Anyway, I found out from his comment on Jewcy (responding to my response to his response about the ADL/Aremnian genocide/Luftmentshen posts) that this was apparently his first comment about the MacDonald series since it was posted. Needless to say, this is quite an honor for The Kvetcher to host his first defense of that most controversial series.
Kurtzman hoped no one would respond to his comment about the MacDonald series, as he is about to go away for a couple weeks. But I hope he understands that there is no way in hell I’m not going to publish his comment on the MacDonald series in a separate post. Forgive me, Joey, I’ve been in the media business far too long to let this one slip through the cracks.
TM accused Kurtzman of supporting Kevin MacDonald in that series.
Joey Kurtzman responded,
Supporting, no. I never denied that MacDonald is an antisemite, I said that that’s not an adequate critique of his work. And I said that I couldn’t say where MacDonald was right and where he was wrong, because no one had delivered the academic critique of his work that John Tooby years ago promised to deliver. Meanwhile, prominent evolutionary psychologists have weighed in in support of some of his theories about group selection (e.g., David Sloan Wilson). And yes, despite plenty of honkingly dubious parts, I found his books very interesting, as have other marginal cranks like, say, Andrew Sullivan.
MacDonald’s trilogy has generated too much interest to hope he’ll just go away. If the books are pure antisemitism then we’re still waiting for the sunshine that will disinfect. That’s not a statement of support for MacDonald, it’s just reality.
Update: More from Kurtzman on the MacDonald controversy here.
2 comments
Oh, you SOB.
Heh, all right, well let’s see where this is when I come back. Bye.
Sorry to repost…
http://www.ideajournal.com/articles.php?id=18
“Professor MacDonald seems to think that if a people, whatever successes enjoyed by some, nonetheless confronted traumas imposed by persecution, expulsion and exile on a fairly regular basis, learned to live by its wits, it amounted to a kind of cheating. Indeed, it would seem that Jewish interest, at least those acceptable to MacDonald, would best have been served if Jews had remained kind of witless. But then, of course, they wouldn’t have been Jews.�
Joey, I’m interested in how you came to the conclusion that MacDonald’s ideas are taken seriously. I did a search on JSTOR and did not find this to be the case. The above review is one example but there are plenty of others (see below).
Can you point to any other legit. scholars in their fields who who cite Macdonald as a factual source? To the best of my knowledge, David Sloan Wilson is the only one.
“[T]he book is controversial, not only because of its theoretical approach, but also, and perhaps primarily, because of sloppy scholarship.�
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion > Vol. 34, No. 3
Eugen Schoenfeld
Georgia State University
“Though MacDonald may be seen as a scholar provocateur…his point is that criticism of Jews and their ways might be harsh or not polite but it is within the protected sphere of legitimate research and speech. Nonetheless, a rambling who-is-who-isn’t roundup of Jews responsible for the “Jewish Problem� borders on the irrational and is conducive to misrepresentation.�
American Jewish Society Review Vol. 25 No. 1 (2000)
Zev Garber
Los Angeles Valley College
http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/000545.html
Gene Expression:
Two short and sweet questions about KMD.
Central to his illustration about the malign influence of Jews, and to their supposedly invidious tribal profile, is
(a) Jewish control of pro-immigration (that is, ruinous) lobby of the US and
(b) Jewish racial purity laws.
(a) I’d like to point out that he’s all wrong about Jews controlling the pro-immigration lobby. Quite apart from the whole issue of whether immigration is good or bad (we can discuss that at length somewhere else, and we should) I would say that the Catholic Church has been much more decisive an influence in promoting massive immigration to the US. And what kind of immigration? Need I say. The major Jewish orgs have been reliably pro-immigration, yes, but they’ve only reacted to an environment that waxes and wanes on the subject of immigration depending on the economic environment. In short: KMD is engaging in what he would call crypsis, a subterranean effort to introduce his own agenda into a discussion. What’s his agenda? That of the lapsed and bitter Catholic, who is angry at Protestant/Jewish usurpation.
b. I e-mailed KMD a citation of the Goldberg study which proved that Jewish maternal lineages are local. To his credit he responded that the study surprised him, he was not a geneticist, and he would have to study it further. In his response was a quotation from somewhere in the OT warning Jews against the evils of foreign women. I wrote to him that the rabbis wouldn’t have had to warn so much if the Jews hadn’t been outmarrying so much…he never wrote back.
At least he wrote me back, Jared Diamond never did.
In short, KMD is a scientist in drag.
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