Bøker av Kevin Macdonald

This book builds upon my previous work, A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy (MacDonald 1994/2002; hereafter PTSDA). While PTSDA focused on developing a theory of Judaism within an evolutionary framework, the present volume focuses on the phenomenon of anti-Semitism. Judaism and anti-Semitism fairly cry out for an evolutionary interpretation. Anti-Semitism has been a very robust tendency over a very long period of human history and in a wide range of societies with different forms of government, different economic systems, and different dominant religious ideologies. Many anti-Semitic episodes, such as the Iberian inquisitions and the Nazi holocaust, have been characterized by extraordinary intra-societal violence. Moreover, anti-Semitism has sometimes been characterized by a very overt, self-conscious racialism...a phenomenon that immediately suggests the relevance of evolutionary theory.The basic thesis of this book can be summarized by the proposition that Judaism must be conceptualized as a group strategy characterized by cultural and genetic segregation from gentile societies combined with resource competition and conflicts of interest with segments of gentile societies. This cultural and genetic separatism combined with resource competition and other conflicts of interest tend to result in division and hatred within the society.Nevertheless, as Leslie White (1966, 3) wrote many years ago in his discussion of the Boasian school of anthropology as a politically inspired cult, "One who follows procedures such as these incurs the risk of being accused of indulging in non-scholarly, personal attacks upon whom he discusses. Such a charge is, in fact, expectable and completely in keeping with the thesis of this essay. We wish to state that no personal attacks are intended."No personal or ethnic attacks are intended here, either. Nevertheless, the charge that this is an anti-Semitic book is, to use White's phrase, expectable and completely in keeping with the thesis of this essay. A major theme of this volume, found especially in Chapters 6 and 7, is that intellectual defenses of Judaism and of Jewish theories of anti-Semitism have throughout its history played a critical role in maintaining Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy. Parts of the book read as a sort of extended discourse on the role of Jewish self-interest, deception, and self-deception in the areas of Jewish historiography, Jewish personal identity, and Jewish conceptualizations of their ingroup and its relations with outgroups. This is therefore first and foremost a book that confidently predicts its own irrelevance to those about whom it is written.MacDonald, K. B. (1994/2002).A People that Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy. Westport, CT: Praeger. Paperback edition published in 2002 by iUniverse (Lincoln, NE) (www.iuniverse.com). White, L. (1966). The social organization of ethnological theory. Rice University Studies: Monographs in Cultural Anthropology

Los movimientos que se analizan en este libro (la antropología boasiana, el radicalismo político, el psicoanálisis, la Escuela de Fráncfort y los intelectuales neoyorquinos) fueron abrazados sólo por unas pocas personas cuyos puntos de vista no eran conocidos ni comprendidos por la comunidad judía. La tesis aquí es que estos movimientos intelectuales estaban dominados por judíos, que el pensamiento de la mayoría de los que participaron en estos movimientos se caracterizaba por un fuerte sentido de identidad judía, y que estas mismas personas actuaban en interés de la comunidad judía a través de su participación. Por lo tanto, no hay nada en lo anterior que indique que el judaísmo es un movimiento unificado o que todos los estratos sociales de la comunidad judía estaban involucrados en estos movimientos. Los judíos pueden ser un elemento importante, incluso necesario, en los movimientos políticos o de ciencias sociales radicales, y su judaísmo puede ser fuertemente compatible con ellos o incluso facilitar su desarrollo sin que la mayoría de los judíos estén involucrados.Por consiguiente, la cuestión de los efectos de la influencia judía en la cultura gentil es independiente de la cuestión de la proporción de la comunidad judía que ha participado en movimientos destinados a la destrucción de la cultura gentil. Es importante hacer esta distinción porque, por un lado, los antisemitas han visto a menudo, implícita o explícitamente, la participación de los judíos en los movimientos políticos radicales como parte de una conspiración judía mucho más amplia en la que también estaban implicados los ricos capitalistas judíos, así como los judíos al frente de los distintos medios de comunicación, el mundo académico y tantos otros ámbitos de la vida pública. Del mismo modo, el hecho de que la mayoría de los judíos anteriores a 1930 no fueran sionistas, al menos no abiertamente, no implica probablemente que la identidad judía no estuviera relacionada con el sionismo, o que los judíos no ejercieran una influencia considerable en el sionismo, o que el sionismo no tuviera un efecto en las sociedades gentiles, o que algunos gentiles no se convirtieran en ardientes partidarios de la causa sionista.

In Imaging Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary, Oscar-winning documentary-maker Kevin Macdonald (One Day in September, Touching the Void) and leading broadcaster/historian Mark Cousins (The Story of Film) offer an expanded, revised edition of their 'definitive, inspirational' (Independent) compendium on the roots and history of the documentary film. Imagining Reality takes the reader on a tour of the evolution of documentary film as an increasingly vibrant, polemical, experimental and entertaining form. It gathers a wide-ranging collection of writings by and about such groundbreaking documentary-makers as Vertov, Flaherty, Marcel Ophuls, Chris Marker, Kieslowski, Claude Lanzmann, and Nick Broomfield. The story is carried up to date by attention to the success documentaries have had among mainstream movie audiences in recent years, including Michael Moore's Bowling For Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11, The Buena Vista Social Club, Spellbound, Capturing The Friedmans, Etre Et Avoir, and The Fog Of War.

A biography of one half of the partnership responsible for films such as "The Red Shoes", "Colonel Blimp" and "The Tales of Hoffman". Written by his grandson, the book includes material from Emeric Pressburger's diaries and attempts to show what he brought to the Pressburger/Michael Powell films.