AAARGH
Nor do I have any reason to deny the reality of the Holocaust...
Kevin MacDonald here: The dialogue between Judith Shulevitz and
John Tooby over anti-Semitism and the Human Behavior and Evolution
Society has ended. This is my final comment as well. In the following
I discuss the charge of anti-Semitism, Tooby's charge that I am
not an evolutionary psychologist, and the issue of enthusiasm
for my books by white nationalist groups. I then describe in detail
why I agreed to testify for Irving.
The Charge of Anti-Semitism.
Shulevitz claims that I am "evolutionary psychology's anti-Semite"
and Tooby demurs only because he claims I am not an evolutionary
psychologist. Both of these points raise troubling issues. The
charge of anti-Semitism is a serious one because of the long and
tragic history of the Jews and because the reverberations of that
history permeate contemporary life. I consider myself a student
of Judaism and anti-Semitism and would like to think that I have
attempted a fair-minded and accurate account of these phenomena.
Nor do I have any reason to deny the reality of the Holocaust.
In Separation and Its Discontents I define anti-Semitism
as "negative attitudes or behavior directed at Jews because
of their group membership" (p. 1). By this definition I am
not an anti-Semite. I do not think ill of Jews simply because
their group membership. I am unequivocally not an anti-Semite.
Unfortunately, some who may disagree with my scientific work evidently
interpret my findings as indicative of personal prejudice. My
science may be proven wrong. I welcome the standard scientific
gauntlet. I reject the accusation of personal prejudice. By the
same logic, I testified in the trial that I had no reason to suppose
that David Irving is an anti-Semite, and it was this definition
that I had in mind. At the same time, Irving is clearly quite
hostile toward the Jewish organizations that have attempted to
ruin his career, and I would be disingenuous if I denied that
I am also deeply troubled by the tactics of some of these organizations.
My testimony in the trial largely involved going over passages
in a lengthy document provided by Irving that was filled with
newspaper accounts and internal documents of Jewish organizations
detailing this campaign against him. This testimony was not contested
by the defense.
However, I am quite aware that subtle and unconscious biases may
color anyone's work and I do not exempt myself from this problem.
Issues related to deception and self-deception and issues related
to attributional biases in favor of self, relatives, and ingroup
should certainly not surprise an evolutionist. As a result, my
strongly held view is that we must always err on the side of not
censoring people.
I should also say that I would gladly testify on behalf of Jewish
interests where appropriate. The main issue for me has been Irving's
suit is in response to unfair persecution. I believe that in testifying
for David Irving I am defending rights that are important for
understanding and preventing future ethnic conflicts. Although
my book deals with Judaism, I touch on a variety of other groups
in different places and I believe that my books as a whole offer
a general theory of ethnic conflict. My emphasis on Judaism and
on Jewish-gentile conflict is not intended to be anti-Semitic
in any way. I make these points in the Introduction and first
chapter of A People That Shall Dwell Alone:
I believe that there is no sense in which this book may be considered
anti-Semitic. This book and its companion volume are intended
to stand or fall on their merits as scientific works. This implies
an attempt on my part at developing a scientifically valid account
of Judaism. Nevertheless, one cannot read very far in Jewish history
without being aware that historical data do not exist in a theoretically
pristine state in which they lend themselves to only one interpretation.
While by no means always the case, the historiography of Jewish
history has to an extraordinary degree been characterized by apologia
and a clear sense of personal involvement by both Jews and gentiles,
and this has been the case from the very earliest periods in classical
antiquity. There is therefore considerable controversy about key
issues in the history of Judaism which are of great importance
to an evolutionary perspective. Jewish history, more so than any
other area I am familiar with, has been to a considerable extent
a social construction performed by highly interested parties intent
on vindicating very basic moral and philosophical beliefs about
the nature of Judaism, Christianity, and gentile society generally...
(MacDonald 1994, vii-viii)
This book is likely to be highly controversial and troubling to
many, since it depicts Judaism as a fundamentally self-interested
group strategy which has often been in competition with at least
some sections of gentile society. Bear in mind, however, that
evolutionary theory is not a "feel good" theory. The
theory of Judaism presented here implies that Judaism must be
understood as exhibiting universal human tendencies for self-interest,
ethnocentrism, and competition for resources and reproductive
success. But an evolutionary theory must also suppose that these
tendencies are in no way exclusive to Judaism. Indeed, the theory
of anti-Semitism proposed in a companion volume, Separation
and Its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism...
essentially states that gentiles also are self-interested, are
ethnocentric, and engage in competition for resources and reproductive
success.
The evolutionist is regarded in many circles as a nasty and unwelcome
interpreter of ethnicity and ethnic conflict. But the evolutionist
is also keenly aware of the ways in which our ideologies can rationalize
our self-serving behavior. And, in a very real sense, we cannot
afford to continue to hide our heads in the sand while ethnic
conflict continues to escalate. A basic thesis of these volumes
is that ethnic conflict can be greatly illuminated by evolutionary
theory. But evolutionary and psychological theory also provides
some strong suggestions regarding the mechanisms for ameliorating
this conflict. Only by understanding the past can we attempt to
change the future in an intelligent manner. (MacDonald, 1994,
1-2).
It was probably a naive thing to write "I believe that there
is no sense in which this book may be considered anti-Semitic."
In hindsight, it might have been much more productive and useful
if the books had focused more on other cases of ethnic conflict.
Who can be an Evolutionary Psychologist? Tooby states that I am
not an evolutionary psychologist and that I am a fringe scientist.
These are very troubling statements -- highly reminiscent of typical
behavior in political organizations, not scientific ones. They
remind me of the tactics used in psychoanalysis where dissidents
from important doctrines were expelled in highly publicized "show
trials" accompanied by personal vilification and intimations
of psychiatric dysfunction. Ironically, they remind me of the
atmosphere within anthropology which resulted in the expulsion
of the Darwinians early in the last century. These tendencies
are apparent to outsiders and they give the field a bad reputation.
Steve Sailer, a prominent journalist and moderator of the Human
Biodiversity email discussion list -- a high-profile list that
includes a large number of public intellectuals, stated on the
list that "it looks like Tooby has rendered Evolutionary
Psychology's claim to be a legitimate branch of science kaput.
Tooby appears to believe that it is his personal intellectual
property. If so, he should not have given it the generic scientific
name "evolutionary psychology", but instead should have
given it a personal or ideologically-descriptive name like "Toobyism"
or "Politically Correct Darwinism." Anyway, it was always
excessively limiting to focus just on psychology, since the rest
of the body is also molded by evolution and interacts in all sorts
of ways with the mind. So, what should replace it? Should we go
back to "scociobiology?" That term certainly has a more
honorable history to it than evo psych." (Feb. 4, 2000)
The comments of another outsider, Judith Shulevitz, also show
that these exclusionary tactics give the impression that evolutionary
psychology is less a science than a cult: "First, I think
you're being even more devious than you say. You're trying to
define the MacDonald problem away. Your syllogism is: It is I
who gets to say what an evolutionary psychologist is; I say Kevin
MacDonald is not an evolutionary psychologist; therefore I am
not responsible for Kevin MacDonald. This just doesn't work. Even
if you invented the term, John, that does not make your definition
the only one, or even the right one. Definition is not something
that occurs by fiat, particularly in a community of intellectuals.
Even Freud didn't get to say what Freudianism is, nor Darwin Darwinism
-- though God knows they tried" (Slate, Feb. 4, 2000).
This, of course, is a libel of Darwin, but it is a quite accurate
comment on Freud. I think the comparison of Freud and Tooby is
quite accurate. (I discuss Freud and psychoanalysis extensively
in The Culture of Critique.)
There are indeed deep intellectual issues dividing my perspective
from theirs. Our differences long predate my study of Judaism
(see, e.g., MacDonald, 1991) and go to the heart of how to conceptualize
evolutionary psychology. While Tooby and Cosmides focus exclusively
on domain-specific psychological adaptations designed to solve
recurrent problems in our evolutionary past, I emphasize in addition
the importance of domain-general mechanisms, especially the g-factor
of IQ tests, that facilitate the achievement of biological goals
in complex, non-recurrent environments. While they concern themselves
exclusively with a universal set of human psychological adaptations,
I emphasize in addition the important role for genetic variation
in adaptive systems, both as an adaptive response to niche diversity
and as a resource environment in which humans make social evaluations.
I do not deny the importance of human universality or of domain-specific
psychological mechanisms. However, my view is that we must go
well beyond this very narrow perspective in order to account for
the data. (See references below.) I am far from the only person
in HBES to subscribe to these notions, especially the notion that
genetic variation is more than mere noise. HBES members with training
in behavior genetics or personality psychology routinely make
similar points.
So what are we dissenters from these core doctrines to do? Am
I required to wear a "non-EP" badge of the fringe scientist?
If I am a fringe scientist, where does it stop? Are all HBES scientists
that have been abused by the media conventiently dismissed as
"fringe"? Is Randy Thornhill a fringe scientist? Bill
Irons? David Rowe? Nancy Segal? I have published my work in a
variety of mainstream psychology journals, including journals
published by the American Psychological Association and by the
Society for Research in Child Development -- the main professional
society for child developmentalists, and in evolutionarily oriented
journals, including Ethology and Sociobiology, the forerunner
of the society's journal Evolution and Human Behavior.
I have also published in Human Nature which is a semi-official
journal of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society. (HBES members
receive a special discount on Human Nature and subscription forms
for the journal are regularly included in the society's newsletter.
The editor of the journal, Jane Lancaster, is a prominent member
of HBES.) In my Human Nature paper (MacDonald, 1997) I
discuss Jewish life history data presented originally in A
People That Shall Dwell Alone. The paper appeared some three
years after A People That Shall Dwell Alone.)
My papers almost always have an evolutionary slant, but apparently
using the term "evolutionary psychology" is tantamount
to copyright infringement. Do I have to invent my own term to
describe a generic field that encompasses evolution and psychology?
I titled one of my papers "A Perspective in Darwinian Psychology",
but apparently there can be no papers titled "A Perspective
in Evolutionary Psychology."
In several of his comments Tooby attempts to link me with Richard
Lewontin and S. J. Gould because we allegedly attempt to legitimize
the idea that large groups of organisms function as biological
competitors. There is massive irony in linking me with Lewontin
and Gould that will be apparent to anyone who has read my book,
The Culture of Critique. Lewontin and Gould have contributed
nothing to the theory of groups; their position is little more
than a vague sort of Marxism that characterizes their work generally.
My views have much more in common with those of David S. Wilson,
the cultural selection models of Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson,
and the empirical work of Christopher Boehm. Tooby will have to
do a lot more than simply issue ex cathedra pronouncements that
between-group competition has not been an important aspect of
human evolution and that historically between-group competition
is irrelevant to understanding some examples of Jewish/gentile
relations.
White Nationalist Support for My Books
Shulevitz correctly points out that my work has been enthusiastically
embraced by white nationalist organizations. I have no control
over who reads my books or who is attracted to them, and I certainly
have no control over misinterpretations of my work. As indicated
above, I have attempted a scientific account of Judaism and anti-Semitism
that will stand or fall on its own merits. I think that part of
the problem is that, apart from the first book, A People That
Shall Dwell Alone (1994) and apart from several heated discussions
on internet email discussion lists, my books have been effectively
ignored by the wider intellectual community and to a considerable
extent even within the evolutionary community. At this writing
there have been only four reviews of Separation and Its Discontents
in mainstream intellectual media (Human Ethology Bulletin,
Patterns of Prejudice, Personality and Individual Differences,
and the internet journal Idea) despite the fact that it
appeared in early 1998. There have been no reviews of The Culture
of Critique apart from those in white nationalist publications
despite the fact that it was published in late 1998. (Martin Daly
and Margo Wilson, the editors of Evolution and Human Behavior
declined to review Separation and Its Discontents because
of its narrow focus on only one ethnic group; presumably this
reason also applies to The Culture of Critique. My response
is that my books, if they have any substance at all, are highly
relevant to understanding ethnic relations generally. Moreover,
they touch on the intersection of evolutionary studies with psychology
and history as well as attempt to develop an evolutionary analysis
of ethnic influences on culture, including a wide range of social
sciences [psychology, anthropology, history, sociology, literature,
art, and politics.]) For over two years I have defended my work
on a prominent, federally funded and professionally moderated
internet discussion list, H-ANTISEMITISM consisting of over 500
people, the vast majority of whom are Jewish historians. It is
not that my books are not well known. They are well known, but
they are simply not discussed in the above-ground intellectual
media. It seems to me that when political extremists embrace a
certain set of ideas it is irresponsible to continue to ignore
the ideas. Failure to do so contributes to the feeling among many
of these people that my books are being actively suppressed by
an intellectual establishment intent on maintaining its own hegemony.
My Decision to Testify for Irving.
The decision to testify for David Irving was an agonizing one
for me and I want to make clear exactly why I did so. Irving approached
me to testify in the trial because I had included the suppression
of his book on Goebbels as an example of Jewish tactics for combating
anti-Semitism in Separation and Its Discontents. Actually
the suppression of Irving goes far beyond what I included in my
book. Irving has been prevented from publishing his original archival
research, from traveling to several countries, and even from giving
lectures. The second defendant in the case, Deborah Lipstadt,
has contributed to this effort at censorship. My statement to
the court and my entire testimony in court involved this issue,
not the Holocaust or the culpability of Hitler. Irving's book
on Goebbels was rescinded by St. Martin's Press not because of
its scientific merit. (It had passed their review process.) The
effort to pressure St. Martin's press was spearheaded by certain
Jewish ethnic activist organizations, especially the Anti-Defamation
League and by newspaper columnists, such as Frank Rich of the
New York Times, who are not professional historians, and
by people like Deborah Lipstadt who do not have the expertise
to evaluate a manuscript on Goebbels. In other words, the effort
occurred independently of the analytic content of the manuscript
and was therefore an illegitimate intrusion on free speech. This
is part of a pattern in which certain Jewish activist organizations
have attempted to prevent the publication of writings conflicting
with their constructions of reality, including books critical
of Israel (see Wilcox, 1996; Separation and Its Discontents,
Ch. 2 and 6), and they have condemned books, such as those by
Hannah Arendt, Arno Mayer, and even Raul Hilberg that take disapproved
positions on certain aspects of the Holocaust (Guttenplan, 2000).
I am completely unpersuaded by the argument that free speech issues
only relate to government actions, not private corporations like
St. Martin's Press. Killing books by private organizations, while
not government censorship, is blacklisting. This is exactly what
McCarthyite groups did during the anti-Communist hysteria following
W.W.II.
Despite the fact that David Irving contacted me because I had
discussed the suppression of his book, I continued to be concerned
that this issue was not really central to Irving's case and that
my purported expertise on Judaism was irrelevant. The link to
the case was that Deborah Lipstadt had joined the effort at suppression
despite her lack of scholarly expertise on Goebbels. The Washington
Post of April 3, 1996 quoted Lipstadt as stating that "In
the Passover Hagadah, it says in every generation there are those
who rise up to destroy us. David Irving is not physically destroying
us, but is trying to destroy the memory of those who have already
perished at the hands of tyrants." "They say they don't
publish reputations, they publish books... But would they publish
a book by Jeffrey Dahmer on man-boy relationships? Of course the
reputation of the author counts. And no legitimate historian takes
David Irving's work seriously." These comments were made
in reaction to the St. Martin's Press rescinding publication of
Irving's book, Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich,
and were clearly intended to support that decision. The decision
to sue Lipstadt came only after St. Martin's Press had rescinded
publication of the book, and only after Lipstadt's public support
for that decision (David Irving, personal communication; see also
Guttenplan 2000, 53).
In the trial, the defense argued that my testimony was irrelevant
and the judge seemed to agree but then changed his mind when the
link with Lipstadt was made clear. Irving's complaint goes beyond
simple libel against him to the assertion of an organized campaign
of suppression. Evolutionary theory did not enter into my testimony,
and it only entered my written statement to the court in a general
way -- that I saw Jewish gentile relations as being examples of
competition between ethnic groups.
David Irving is in many ways not an ideal person. There is no
doubt in my mind that he has strongly held political views --
although the extent to which this is a reaction to his demonization
by Jewish activist organizations is at least open to conjecture.
Whenever a person has strong political views, it is reasonable
to assume that these views may color one's perception of reality.
Since I am not a professional historian, I am in no position to
judge the validity of his archival research. I am very impressed
by the fact that Irving is a recognized expert on certain aspects
of W.W.II -- recognized by several noted authorities for having
made original contributions to knowledge in the field -- none
of whom are Holocaust deniers or revisionists. These include Gordon
Craig, A.J.P. Taylor, Hugh Trevor-Roper, and John Keegan. I also
felt that Lipstadt exaggerated the extent to which Irving denied
the Holocaust, since there are many places in his writings where
Irving describes Nazis engaged in organized killing of Jews. I
was also swayed by my knowledge that Irving's Goebbels: Mastermind
of the Third Reich received a positive but critical review
in The New York Review of Books (Sept. 19, 1996) by Stanford
historian Gordon Craig who cautioned against censoring people
like Irving. And finally, I had finished reading Goebbels
myself and decided that, whatever faults a close analysis might
reveal, it was highly informative on many points -- an indispensable
source of information on the man and the period. Obviously I would
not trust only my own feelings on this issue; but in fact I had
satisfied myself that indeed it was a major contribution to the
field.
I was also swayed by finding that Lipstadt is a Jewish ethnic
activist whose own writings have been criticized by a well-recognized
historian as exaggerating the role of anti-Semitism in the Western
response to the Holocaust during World War II. Lipstadt is thus
part of a pattern discussed extensively in Separation and Its
Discontents in which Jewish historians engage in ethnocentric
interpretations of history. It is highly significant that Lipstadt's
book Denying the Holocaust was written with extensive aid
from various Jewish activist organizations, including the ADL.
Lipstadt's book was commissioned and published by The Vidal Sassoon
International Center for the Study of Antisemitism of the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem. In her acknowledgements, she credits
the research department of the Anti-Defamation league, the Simon
Wiesenthal Center, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Institute
for Jewish Affairs (London), the Canadian Jewish Congress, and
the American Jewish Committee -- all activist organizations.
Lipstadt is the Chair of the Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory
University. Historian Jacob Katz finds that academic departments
of Jewish studies are often linked to Jewish nationalism: "The
inhibitions of traditionalism, on the one hand, and a tendency
toward apologetics, on the other, can function as deterrents to
scholarly objectivity" (p. 84). The work of Jewish historians
exhibits "a defensiveness that continues to haunt so much
of contemporary Jewish activity" (1986, 85). Similarly the
preeminent scholar of the Jewish religion, Jacob Neusner, notes
that "scholars drawn to the subject by ethnic affiliation
-- Jews studying and teaching Jewish things to Jews -- turn themselves
into ethnic cheer-leaders. The Jewish Studies classroom is a place
where Jews tell Jews why they should be Jewish (stressing "the
Holocaust" as a powerful reason) or rehearse the self-evident
virtue of being Jewish." (Times Literary Supplement,
March 5, 1999).
Perhaps the best indication of Lipstadt's Jewish activism is that
she serves as Senior Editorial Contributor at the Jewish Spectator,
a Jewish publication for conservative, religiously observant Jews.
Her column, Tomer Devorah (Hebrew: Under Deborah's Palm Tree),
appears in every issue and touches on a wide range of Jewish issues,
including anti-Semitism, relations among Jews, and interpreting
religious holidays. In her column she has advocated greater understanding
and usage of Hebrew to promote Jewish identification, and, like
many Jewish ethnic activists, she is strongly opposed to intermarriage.
"We must say to young people 'intermarriage is something
that poses a dire threat to the future of the Jewish community.'
" Lipstadt writes that Conservative Rabbi Jack Moline was
"very brave" for saying that number one on a list of
ten things Jewish parents should say to their children is "I
expect you to marry a Jew." She suggests a number of strategies
to prevent intermarriage, including trips to Israel for teenagers
and subsidizing tuition at Jewish day schools (Jewish Spectator,
[Fall, 1991], 63).
In his recent book, The Holocaust in American Life, Peter
Novick clearly thinks of Lipstadt as an activist, although not
as extreme as some. He repeatedly cites her as an example of a
Holocaust propagandizer. He notes that in her book Beyond Belief:
The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust 1933-1945,
Lipstadt says Allied Policy "bordered on complicity"
motivated by "deep antipathy" toward "contemptible
Jews." Novick says that while there is no scholarly consensus
on the subject, "most professional historians agree that
"the comfortable morality tale... is simply bad history:
estimates of the number of those who might have been saved have
been greatly inflated, and the moralistic version ignores real
constraints at the time" (Novick, 1999, 48). Novick characterizes
Lipstadt as attributing the failure of the press to emphasize
Jewish suffering as motivated by "willful blindness, the
result of inexcusable ignorance -- or malice" (p. 65) despite
the fact that the concentration camp survivors encountered by
Western journalists (Dachau, Buchenwald) were 80% non-Jewish.
Lipstadt is described as an implacable pursuer of Nazi war criminals,
stating that she would "prosecute them if they had to be
wheeled into the courtroom on a stretcher" (p. 229). In a
discussion of the well-recognized unreliability of eye-witness
testimony, Novick writes: "When evidence emerged that one
Holocaust memoir, highly praised for its authenticity, might have
been completely invented, Deborah Lipstadt, who used the memoir
in her teaching of the Holocaust, acknowledged that if this turned
out to be the case, it 'might complicate matters somewhat,' but
insisted that it would still be 'powerful as a novel.' "
Truth is less important than the effectiveness of the message.
The intrusion of ethnocentrism into historical scholarship is
a well-recognized problem in Jewish historiography, discussed
at length in Separation and Its Discontents. Historians
such as Jacob Katz (1986) and Albert Lindemann (1997) have noted
that this type of behavior is commonplace in Jewish historiography.
A central theme of Katz's analysis -- massively corroborated by
Albert Lindemann's recent work, Esau's Tears -- is that
historians of Judaism have often falsely portrayed the beliefs
of gentiles as irrational fantasies while portraying the behavior
of Jews as irrelevant to anti-Semitism. To quote the well-known
political scientist, Michael Walzer: "Living so long in exile
and so often in danger, we have cultivated a defensive and apologetic
account, a censored story, of Jewish religion and culture"
(Walzer 1994, 6).
The salient point for me is that Jewish historians who have been
reasonably accused of bringing an ethnocentric bias to their writing
nevertheless are able to publish their work with prestigious mainstream
academic and commercial publishers, and they often obtain jobs
at prestigious academic institutions. A good example is Daniel
Goldhagen. In his written submission to the court on behalf of
Deborah Lipstadt, historian Richard Evans, describes Goldhagen's
Hitler's Willing Executioners, as a book which argues "in
a crude and dogmatic fashion that virtually all Germans had been
murderous antisemites since the Middle Ages, had been longing
to exterminate the Jews for decades before Hitler came to power,
and actively enjoyed participating in the extermination when it
began. The book has since been exposed as a tissue of misrepresentation
and misinterpretation, written in shocking ignorance of the huge
historical literature on the topic and making numerous elementary
mistakes in its interpretation of the documents."
These are exactly the types of accusations leveled by Lipstadt
at Irving. Yet Goldhagen maintains a position at Harvard University;
he is lionized in many quarters and his work has been massively
promoted in the media while his critics have come under pressure
from Jewish activist organizations (Guttenplan, 2000).
I should say, however, that after I agreed to testify on behalf
of Irving, I was horrified to read the report written by Cambridge
University historian Richard Evans and several research associates
on Irving. This massive report, written on behalf of the defense,
is a scathing summary of alleged misrepresentations and misinterpretations
by Irving spanning over his entire career. I expressed my reservations
to Irving and he assured me that he would be able to defend himself
against these allegations (see Appendix). He stated that "I
have a clean conscience, but I am not sure how to bring that across"
and then provided me with several detailed examples where the
Evans report misrepresented his writings. As a result, I felt
that he was playing by the rules of scholarly discourse.
Moreover, as indicated above, I was also aware of many examples
in which the historiography of Jewish history has been influenced
by the ethnic agendas of Jewish writers -- I devoted an entire
chapter to this sort of thing. Goldhagen is only the tip of a
very large iceberg. I reasoned that even if the Evans report was
correct, these facts could not have been known by Lipstadt when
she made her claims against Irving, and in any case she went way
too far when she asserted that "no legitimate historian takes
David Irving seriously" and when she claimed that he was
not a historian at all. Finally, I developed a reason to distrust
Richard Evans after reading sections of his book, In Hitler's
Shadow. In her book, Denying the Holocaust, Lipstadt
cites Evans' claim that Nazi anti-Semitism was gratuitous. The
appropriate quote, from Evans' In Hitler's Shadow: West German
Historians and the Attempt to Escape the Nazi Past (NY: Pantheon,
1989, p. 40) is:
Nazi anti-Semitism was gratuitous: It was not provoked by anything,
it was not a response to anything. It was born out of a political
fantasy, in which the Jews, without a shred of justification,
were held responsible for all that the Nazis believed was wrong
with the modern world.
This is not the sort of nuanced treatment of anti-Semitism that
one would expect from a prominent historian but rather a dogmatic
statement that takes the behavior of Jews completely outside of
their own history. There is no attempt to determine the factual
basis -- the truths, the half-truths and the pure fantasies --
that have always been characteristic of anti-Semitism over the
ages. Seeing passages such as this in Evans and seeing Lipstadt
cite Evans reinforced my decision to testify for Irving.
During the same period I received the following message from a
prominent mainstream historian regarding the Goebbels book.
I just re-read my own notes to Irving's Goebbels, which
strongly confirmed my memory that there is much more richness
and less partisanship in that book than many would be willing
to believe -- and that few of his detractors seem to recognize.
I'll also have to say that Evans seems to be taking a strongly
polemical position, whereas I would have preferred to see him
recognize at least some of Irving's strong points as well as his
weak. But I have not read enough of Evans yet to determine if
there are things he later covers that explain why he is so strongly
against Irving, so unwilling to recognize anything of merit.
Having read almost the entire Evans report, I was convinced that
in fact Evans had nothing positive at all to say about Irving.
Indeed, Evans reiterates Lipstadt's assertion that Irving is not
a historian at all. Again, I was confirmed in my belief that testifying
for Irving was entirely appropriate.
My view is that political, personal, and ethnic biases are ubiquitous
in the social sciences. If the situation were reversed, I would
be more than willing to testify on behalf of a Jewish historian
suing an anti-Semite because there had been an analogous campaign
of suppression against his work.
References
Chomsky, N. (1988). Language and Politics. Black Rose
Books: Montreal-New York.
Guttenplan, D. D. (Feb. 2000). The Holocaust on trial. Atlantic
Monthly, 45-66.
Katz, J. (1986). Jewish Emancipation and Self-Emancipation.
Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America.
Lindemann, A. S. (1998). Esau's Tears. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
MacDonald, K. B. (1991). A perspective on Darwinian psychology:
The importance of domain-general mechanisms, plasticity, and individual
differences. Ethology and Sociobiology, 12, 449-480.
MacDonald, K. B. (1994). MacDonald, K. B. (1998). Separation
and Its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism.
Westport, CT: Praeger.
MacDonald, K. B. (1995). Evolution, the Five Factor Model, and
Levels of Personality. Journal of Personality 63, 525ñ567.
MacDonald, K. B. (1997). Life History Theory and Human Reproductive
Behavior: Environmental/Contextual Influences and Heritable Variation.
Human Nature, 8, 327-359.
MacDonald, K. B. (1998). Evolution, Culture, and the Five-Factor
Model. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 29, 119-149.
MacDonald, K. B. (1998). Separation and Its Discontents: Toward
an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism. Westport, CT: Praeger.
MacDonald, K. B. (1998). The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary
Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual
and Political Movements. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Novick, P. (1999). The Holocaust in American Life. Boston:
Houghton-Mifflin.
Wilcox, L. (1996). Crying Wolf: Hate Crime Hoaxes in America.
Laird Wilcox Editorial Research Service, P.O Box 2047, Olathe,
KS 66051.
Walzer, M. (1994). Toward a new realization of Jewishness. Congress
Monthly 61(4):3-6.
Appendix
ON DECEMBER 29, 1999 I SENT DAVID IRVING THE FOLLOWING LETTER:
Hi David: I managed to download the Evans report. I have read
about 100 pages thus far, and it would seem to be quite damaging.
How are you going to deal with it? I should think that even if
you attempted to rebut the claims made, a court would be reluctant
to award damages because the charges made by Lipstadt have at
least a surface validity. Kevin
IRVING'S FIRST RESPONSE: I shall have to ponder how to deal with
Evans. I have a clean conscience, but I am not sure how to bring
that across. David Irving (now back in London with my family)
I THEN SENT THE FOLLOWING TO IRVING ON DECEMBER 30, 1999: David:
Having read about half of Evans report, it seems to me that it
is devastating to your case for libel. It seems to me that you
have to show that Lipstadt's charge that you were irresponsible,
etc. is wrong and to do so you will now have to plow through dozens
of highly detailed charges brought be a highly respected historian
that you were in fact irresponsible, dishonest, and/or incompetent...
My own interest in your case stemmed from the censorship over
the Goebbels book. Evans now undermines the case that that book
is free from problems in the use and interpretation of sources
-- that in fact there was dishonesty involved in the attempt to
exculpate Hitler. This is very troubling to me. On the other hand,
the suppression of the Goebbels book was not the result of the
Evans report but the result of Jewish activism. If the Goebbels
book had been rejected as a result of a reviewer like Evans employed
by St. Martins Press, that would raise no issues for me. The fact
that it was rejected in the end because of who you are and that
Lipstadt publicly agreed that it should be suppressed remains
troubling to me because at that time there was simply nothing
that people pointed to in the book that should have caused it
not to be published. The focus of my statement and my testimony
will be on this issue, but if I am asked my opinion of the Evans
report I will say that it seems devastating to your general case
that you are a disinterested scholar. And the problem is that
this sort of testimony cannot exonerate you from the charges of
dishonesty brought by Evans. Perhaps you could argue that in general
what Lipstadt says was irresponsible and libelous at the time
she said it because she offers no real evidence for her charges
and that what Evans says is therefore irrelevant because it is
essentially an ex post facto buttressing of Lipstadt's position.
However, I don't know if this tactic is allowable in a libel case.
Of course it bothers me that you are suffering for this when there
are a great many Jewish scholars who essentially do the same thing
in their work. Evans even makes some scathing comments on Goldhagen,
indicating that he may be aware of how widespread this problem
is in the area of Jewish studies... Kevin
IRVING REPLIED AS FOLLOWS: Dear Kevin: I am disturbed that you
find Evans impressive; I think that you will find I can demolish
his arguments one by one and as a whole. Have you read the message
I sent yesterday on his first 50 pages? He has to stand in the
box and be cross examined, and for that I have asked their lawyers
to set aside four whole days at least. I am not the least bit
disturbed by his arguments, and I shall keep you full informed
of the progress of the counter attack on him (which will not be
until February at the earliest: before that, I get in my full
arsenal as I open the case, not they.) I am far more concerned
by the ad hominem attacks on me by their other experts. Which
allegations by Evans perturb you most? I will set your mind immediately
at rest... David Irving
I RESPONDED AS FOLLOWS: David: The vastness of the Evans document
makes it difficult to pick out a particular feature. However,
I would appreciate it if you would give me some indication of
how you will deal with the claims made regarding Reichskristallnacht
that you manipulated evidence, disregarded evidence and invented
evidence to support the idea that Hitler opposed the violence
and didn't know about it until after it had begun. Just one or
two detailed examples would be nice. I just want to have some
confidence that you are able to deal with these accusations. Kevin
IRVING RESPONDED AS FOLLOWS: Dear Kevin: On the Reichskristallnacht
I am super-secure. It is something they are particularly sore
about, as they are frantic that they can no longer pin it on Adolf.
More on that when I reach that chapter of his report.
IRVING THEN SENT ME THE FOLLOWING: Dear Kevin: O, ye of Little
Faith! I have resumed reading the Evans report. The report is
so shoddy and sloppy I can hardly wait to sink my fangs into him...
IRVING THEN WENT INTO A DETAILED EXAMPLE THAT I WILL NOT DIVULGE
AT THIS POINT BECAUSE THE TRIAL IS CONTINUING. LATER, IRVING FORWARDED
ME A LETTER HE HAD SENT TO LIPSTADT'S ATTORNEYS IN WHICH HE RAISED
THIRTEEN SPECIFIC ISSUES REGARDING THE EVANS REPORT.
++++++++++++++++++++
Extracted from Re: Final sign-off post on Shulevitz-Tooby Dialog--
Kevin MacDonald -- mvo-ca22-60.ix.netcom.com -- Wed Feb 16 11:58:56
From e-magazine Slate: http://bbs.slate.msn.com/bbs/slate-dialogues/posts/jb/6795.asp.
Ce texte a été affiché sur Internet à des fins purement éducatives, pour encourager la recherche, sur une base non-commerciale et pour une utilisation mesurée par le Secrétariat international de l'Association des Anciens Amateurs de Récits de Guerre et d'Holocauste (AAARGH). L'adresse électronique du Secrétariat est <aaarghinternational@hotmail.com>. L'adresse postale est: PO Box 81475, Chicago, IL 60681-0475, USA.
Afficher un texte sur le Web équivaut à mettre un document sur le rayonnage d'une bibliothèque publique. Cela nous coûte un peu d'argent et de travail. Nous pensons que c'est le lecteur volontaire qui en profite et nous le supposons capable de penser par lui-même. Un lecteur qui va chercher un document sur le Web le fait toujours à ses risques et périls. Quant à l'auteur, il n'y a pas lieu de supposer qu'il partage la responsabilité des autres textes consultables sur ce site. En raison des lois qui instituent une censure spécifique dans certains pays (Allemagne, France, Israël, Suisse, Canada, et d'autres), nous ne demandons pas l'agrément des auteurs qui y vivent car ils ne sont pas libres de consentir.
Nous nous plaçons sous
la protection de l'article 19 de la Déclaration des Droits
de l'homme, qui stipule:
ARTICLE 19
<Tout individu a droit à la liberté d'opinion
et d'expression, ce qui implique le droit de ne pas être
inquiété pour ses opinions et celui de chercher,
de recevoir et de répandre, sans considération de
frontière, les informations et les idées par quelque
moyen d'expression que ce soit>
Déclaration internationale des droits de l'homme,
adoptée par l'Assemblée générale de
l'ONU à Paris, le 10 décembre 1948.
You found this document at: <http://aaargh-international.org.fran/polpen/dirving/kmd000216.html>
| Accueil général | Accueil français | Procès Lipstadt |