The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements

This book is the third and final volume developing an evolutionary perspective on Judaism. Ethnic conflict is a recurrent theme throughout the first two volumes, and that theme again takes center stage in this work. However, whereas in the previous works ethnic conflict consisted mainly of recounting the oftentimes bloody dynamics of Jewish-gentile conflict over the broad expanse of historical time, the focus here is on the world of ideas and ideologies. The emphasis shifts to a single century and to several very influential intellectual and political movements that have been spearheaded by people who strongly identified as Jews and who viewed their involvement in these movements as serving Jewish interests. Particular attention will be paid to the Boasian school of anthropology, psychoanalysis, leftist political ideology and behavior, the New York Intellectuals, and the Frankfurt School of Social Research. In addition, he describes Jewish efforts to shape United States Immigration policy in opposition to the interests of the peoples of non-Jewish European descent, particularly the peoples of Northern and Western Europe. An important thesis is that all of these movements may be seen as attempts to alter Western societies in a manner which would neutralize or end anti-Semitism and provide for Jewish group continuity either in an overt or in a semi-cryptic manner. At a theoretical level, these movements are viewed as the outcome of the fact that Jews and gentiles have different interests in the construction of culture and in various public policy issues (e.g., immigration policy).