CURRENT EVENTS, HISTORY/CULTURE

The Jewish Question: An Empirical Examination

By Ideas and Data
April 29, 2018

This essay was originally published at Ideas and Data 

This post will be about the Jewish Question. Specifically, I am going to empirically document the following claims:

• Jews are vastly overrepresented in positions of power and cultural influence
• Jewish elites are far to the left of gentile elites and have shifted the distribution of political opinion among American elites from centrism to leftism
• Jewish leftism and success can partly be explained by their mean IQs, living in large cities, personality traits, and possibly certain cultural values, but ethnocentrism also plays an important role that should not be ignored.

After documenting these claims, I am going to spend some time on what implications can be drawn from them, and how people interested in White identity politics should act in light of them.

A Brief Word on Jewish History

The exact origins of the Jewish people are somewhat unclear, but they originated somewhere around Israel more than three thousand years ago. Since then, Jews have migrated out of Israel numerous times, creating a diaspora. Through this process, a fairly large number of Jewish populations have existed throughout history in places as far from Israel as China. Today, most of these populations only exist in Israel, with more than 95% of the worlds non-Israeli Jews being Ashkenazi Jews, a group which migrated from Israel to central and northern Europe sometime before the year 600 AD.

In 629 AD, King Dagobert of France expelled Jews from his kingdom. Following the Norman Conquest of 1066, some Jews moved to England, but they were expelled in 1290. The same occurred in Austria in 1298, France in 1394 and in Germany sometime in the 1400s, Spain in 1492, Naples in 1493, Portugal in 1496, and all Papal states but Rome in 1569. Having been expelled from Western Europe, the Jewish people moved to Eastern Europe. By the late 1800s, however, the Russian empire had begun the pogroms, and 50 years later the Nazis got going. This all caused an immigration wave of Jews moving to Anglo nations worldwide, South America and, later, Israel.

Two facts immediately standout about Jewish history. First, Jews still exist. This itself is noteworthy. It is difficult to keep a population genetically isolated for over a thousand years in a foreign land. To do so multiple times over, across as wide a range of nations the Jews have lived in, is truly remarkable. Jews accomplished this feat by genetically and culturally isolating themselves from the populations they lived among. The second thing that stands out about Jews is that anti-Semitism seems to follow them everywhere they go including, most recently, the middle east. Anti-Semitism is in part the result of the economic success of Jews, but it is also related to the first noteworthy fact about Jewish history, their isolation from the populations they live among. Thus, the long history of the Jewish people works as a kind of preface for an analysis of what Jewish people have been up to for the last hundred years or so.

Jewish Elites

Anti-Semites are fond of pointing out that Jewish people control various industries or are vastly over-represented in various positions of power. As it turns out, empirical data strongly supports these claims. (I eventually stopped citing stuff in this section. Unless otherwise noted, it all comes from Lynn, 2011, which one can find a free .pdf of online).

Finance and Wealth

In the late 19^th and early 20^th century in northern continental Europe, the Jewish elites most often talked about were those in finance. Lynn (2011) compiled data from this time and place showing Jews being heavily over-represented in finance-related occupations.

The mean factor of over-representation in this table is 25.

Lynn (2011) also reviewed a mountain of data from around the world on the socio-economic status of Jews and showed them to be overrepresented among wealthy, well educated, individuals, and underrepresented among blue collar workers. This was shown to be true all over continental Europe, the British Isles, South Africa, Australia, North and South America, as well as Israel. These differences were often large with Jews often being overrepresented among high SES individuals by factors of five to twenty.

As we might expect, the degree of over-representation was stronger the more elite the category looked at was. For instance, in the 19th century Jews were over-represented in Britain among those who had 100,000 pounds or more of wealth by a factor of 8.6 – 10.5 but were over-represented among millionaires by a factor of roughly 28 (Lynn 2011).

Similarly, in the early 20th century in Germany, Jews were found to account for 22% of millionaires and 31% of multimillionaires (Table 10.6).

In most countries, these gaps were present and large by the late 19^th century. However, in several Anglo nations, the socio-economic status (SES) of Jews relative to gentiles increased in the mid-20th century. For instance, it wasn’t until the 1950’s that Jews in Canada had higher incomes than gentiles.

The same can be seen by looking at occupational class:

Similarly, the rate of over-representation of Jews among white-collar professions in South Africa was much greater in 1960 than it was in 1936 (Table 16.3).

And in the United States the SES of Jews was lower than those of English, Scottish, and Irish, Americans in 1900, but was considerably higher by 1980 (All these tables are from Lynn).

Similarly, in the early 20^th century there was a literacy gap between Jews and Gentiles in the US that favored Gentiles (Table 19.5).

Furthermore, Jews weren’t over-represented among members of American “Who’s Who” until sometime between the 1940s and 1970s.

An analysis of the US upper class in 1945 found that Jews accounted for 22% of members, corresponding to an RR of 7.3. A 1982 survey of the 40 richest individuals in the United States revealed 40% to be Jewish (All from Lynn, again.). Similarly, a 2009 analysis of Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans found that 35% were Jewish while 40% of the top 50 were Jewish. This suggests, once again, that Jewish presence among American elites grew significantly throughout the 20th century.

The Media

Jews have also been notoriously tied to journalism and the media. An analysis of 5 data sets on those working in journalism from early 20^th century Northern Continental Europe reveals a mean factor of over-representation of 10.

Page 309 of Lynn (2011) reports on 5 analyses of Jewish representation among media elites in contemporary America:

The figure in the first row is taken from an analysis by W. D. Rubenstein published on page 61 of his 1982 books The Left, The Right, and the Jews. Rows 2 – 4 report the results of 3 analyses published in Forbes. The first defined elites as those who worked in the new divisions of the three largest TV networks and PBS, the three largest news magazines, and the four biggest newspapers. In row 3, the criterion is directors and producers of Hollywood TV shows while in the 4th-row the criterion used is directors and producers of Hollywood movies. Row 5 is an analysis of a vanity fair article that listed the 23 most important media people.  The mean factor of over-representation across the table is 19.

In the 1988 book The Media Elite: America’s New Powerbrokers, Litcher, Rothman, and Litcher report on a representative survey of 238 journalists from America’s top news organizations which found that 59% of respondents were Jewish.

A 1990 list of the top 10 US entertainment companies published in American Film found that Jews accounted for 8 of their ten CEOs (Lynn, 2011). The companies were Time Warner, Paramount, CBS, Fox, Columbia Pictures, Viacom, ABC, and MCA Inc.

Thus, claims such as “Jews run the media” are plausibly more true than untrue. When one utilizes the most elite criteria for defining members of the media, more than half are Jewish.

Part of the reason people have a problem with the media is that it is left-leaning. As will be seen later, Jews are more left-leaning than average, and elite Jews are more left-leaning than elite gentiles. Given these facts, Jewish presence in media has probably caused it to be more left-leaning than it otherwise would be.

Academia

Jews have also been said to have a great deal of power within academia. Returning again to northern continental Europe in the early 20^th century, across 5 data sets from Lynn (2011) we see a mean factor of over-representation of 7.

When looking at more elite accomplishments, the degree of over-representation becomes much more extreme. When analyzing Nobel prize awards per capita, Lynn (2011) finds that Jews over-represent gentiles by factors ranging from 6 in the case of Britain to 320 in the case of Italy. The mean factor of over-representation is 70.

In Britain, Jews have been over-represented among members of the Royal Society by a factor of 8.

In 1985, it was estimated that 4.3% of British academics were Jewish, giving a factor of over-representation of 7.2 (Lynn, 2011) Finally, in 2006  Jews accounted for 4.3% of University Heads, giving a over-representation factor of 6.6 (Lynn, 2011).

More extremely, an analysis of elite Australians found Jews to account for 15% of academics, giving them a factor of over-representation of 26.8 (Lynn, 2011)

Jewish over-representation in America becomes more extreme when we look at more elite categories of academics. Zuckerman (1977) found Jews had a factor of over-representation of three when looking at all university faculty, but that figure jumped to seven when the analysis was restricted to elite universities. Below are the results broken down by subject for fields that Jews were heavily represented in:

Finally, Kadushin (1974) analyzed the authors who were recently published in the top 20 academic journals in America and found that Jews accounted for 50% of intellectuals (RR= 18.5), 56% of social scientists (RR= 20.7) and 61% of humanity scholars (RR= 22.6). Thus, if you use a sufficiently elite criterion there is a sense in which certain fields in academia could be described as being mostly or largely controlled by Jews.

Politics

Jews have also been said to yield greater than average political power. Again, this largely seems to be true. In 1939, Jews accounted for 63% of the USSR’s NKVD, Stalin’s militaristic police force with which he conducted his great purge (RR= 35).

Turning to a democratic context, in 1950 Jews accounted for 4.5% of British MPs (RR= 5.4) and in 2000 they accounted for 3.2% (RR= 7.1).

Another analysis found Jews to account for 8% of US senators between 1989 and 1991 and 9% of US supreme court justices between 1900 and 1990, corresponding to factors of overrepresentation of 3.6 and 3.0 (Table 19.10). Today, Jews comprise 5.6% of the US house of representatives, 9% of the senate, and 38% of the supreme court (PBS, 2017). Since Jews account for 2.2% of the population, this corresponds to factors of overrepresentation of 2.5 for the house, 4 for the Senate, and 17.27 for the supreme court.

Jews are even more present among political donors. In 2012, Jews accounted for 20% of the top 5 GOP donors and 40% of the top democrat donors. In 2016, Jews accounted for all 5 of he top Democrat donors. One analysis finds that, of the top 50 donors in 2016, Jews accounted for 40% of mega-donors in total, 25% of Republican donors, and 79% of Democrat donors.

The Elite Jewish Left

Many would argue that Jewish intellectuals have had a larger impact than Jewish politicians, and that this impact has largely been to the benefit of leftism. This too seems to correspond to the empirical record.

In 1969, the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education issued a survey filled out by 60,000 American university faculty members. 6,000 respondents identified as ethnically Jewish. This survey is reported on in Lipset and Ladd (1971). Though this survey asked about religion, its sample includes atheistic Jews because it asked people about the religion of their parents rather than themselves. 29% of the Jewish sample reported their religion as none.

By breaking this data down by age, it can be shown that Jewish representation in Academia had increased dramatically in the decades preceding the 1960s. Among academics over the age of 65, Jews accounted for only 3.8% of the sample. Among those under the age of 25, they accounted for 11.9%. When the sample is restricted to only elite universities, the change goes from 9.3% among those over 65 to 20.6% among those under 29.

In 1969, Jewish professors were much more concentrated in the social sciences, law, social work, and medicine, than they were in other disciplines:

This study also demonstrated that, in 1969, the majority of Jewish academics identified as liberal or leftist (74.5%) while a majority of Catholic faculty (55.3%) and Protestant faculty (59.3%) did not.

Thus, Jewish academics have moved the mean political views of academics to the left by virtue of their own political leanings.

Even better data comes from Lerner, Nagai, and Rothman (1989) who reported on what they describe to be a random sample of 1,340 American elites drawn from the following groups: “high-ranking military officers, corporate business leaders, corporate law partners in major law firms, upper-level federal civil servants, journalists working for leading news media, prime-time television producers, directors, and writers, major motion picture producers, writers, and directors, and leaders of public interest.”

Jewish people were defined as those who said they were ethnically or religiously Jewish, and those who said they were raised Jewish. In total, 28% of the sample was found to be Jewish.

Analyzing elections between 1968 and 1980, Lerner et al. find Jewish elites to be much more likely to vote Democrat than non-Jewish elites (and non-elite Jews). In two of the elections, gentile elites voted (on net) for Democrats and in two they voted for the Republican, suggesting a centrist outlook. In all four elections, Jewish elites overwhelmingly voted for the democrat.

On average, gentile elites voted for the Republican candidate by a margin of 3.75 points. The general public did so by an average margin of 7.75 points. Jewish elites, by contrast, on average voted for the democrat candidate by a margin of 67.25 points. Because Jews accounted for 28% of the total sample of elites, we can estimate that Jews pushed the “elite vote” an average 18.83 points to the left per election, moving the totality of American elites from the right to the left.

Political ideology data was consistent with voting data. 43% of the general public, 42% of gentile elites, and 12% of Jewish elites described themselves as conservative, while 74% of Jewish elites, 37% of gentile elites, and 21% of the general public described itself as liberal. For the total sample of elites, 48.48% described themselves as liberal while just 33.6% described themselves as conservative. Thus, the influence of Jewish elites switched mean ideological bias of elites from conservative by a margin of 5 to liberal by a margin of 15.

Lerner et al also analyzed specific policy questions. On the economy, they found “A minority of Jewish elites but a majority of the non-Jewish elites think that less regulation of business is a good thing. Fewer members of the Jewish elite believe that private enterprise is fair to workers, and fewer also believe that government should not guarantee jobs. Likewise, more than two-thirds of the Jewish elite but less than half of the non-Jewish elite agree that the government should reduce the income gap between rich and poor.”

Differences were smaller on social issues. For instance, the overwhelming majority of both gentile and Jewish elites supported abortion rights. However, some large differences did emerge: 20% of Jewish elites said that homosexuality was wrong compared to 49% of gentile elites, only 15% of Jewish elites thought that courts gave too much concern to the rights of criminals compared to 64% of gentile elites, and a majority, 58%, of Jewish elites agreed with the statement “special preference in hiring should be given to Blacks” while only a minority, 44%, of gentile elites did.

Finally, Lener et al found that Jewish elites continued to be to the left of gentile elites after controlling for the specific occupation they were in, as well as the respondents sex, age, socio-economic status, and whether they were from the south.

These studies paint a picture: in the 60s and 70s the gentile American elite was reasonably moderate. A huge influx of Jews in the mid 20th century pushed it to the left. It is not unreasonable to suggest that this initial push set up a situation in which there were enough leftists among the American elite to discriminate against conservatives, leading to a cycle by which American elites became ever more liberal over the last few decades.

This is consistent with what is, to my knowledge, the only data on how the political views of social scientists have changed with time, which shows psychologists becoming gradually more liberal in the mid 20th century and then rapidly more liberal in the last few decades:

(Duarte et al. 2014)

If this is accurate, then it is no exaggeration to say that the extreme leftist bias of contemporary American elites can be blamed largely on Jews. Given that Jews represent only ~2% of the American population, for them to have such an influence would be truly extraordinary.

Moving away from American history, consider these three list analyses:

• The Washington Post made a list of their top 28 communists of all time and 32% were Jewish.
• Forbes created a list of the 25 most influential liberals in US media and 56% were Jewish. Only 4, or 16%, were Gentile Whites.
• The Nation published a list of the 50 most influential 20th-century progressives and 14% were Jewish.
•  The Audacious Epigone analyzed the Telegraph’s 2007 lists of the 100 most influential U.S. liberals/conservatives and found that  24% of influential liberals were Jewish compared to 23% of influential conservatives.

To supplement these existing analyses with more names and to compare the relative rates at which Jews were influential right and left wing thinkers, a few years ago I went through ten pages of google results for lists of influential American liberals and conservatives giving me a list of 133 names from 9 sources.

Among influential conservatives, 8.3% were Jewish. Among influential liberals, 29.3% were Jewish. This gives Jews a factor of over-representation of 4 among the elite right and 15 among the elite left. Jews are 3.5 times more likely to be an influential liberal as an influential conservative (1).

Thus, it is fair to say that Jews have played a very large role in leftism. This is not quantitative, but I will note that my impression is that influential Jewish liberals, such as Marx, Noam Chomsky, and Steven Jay Gould, as well as Jewish conservatives like Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, and David Brooks, tend to be more culturally leftist than the average important thinker on their side of politics. Given what is known about the political views of Jews in general, this would not be surprising.

Political Views of Jews 

Here, I’ll review data on Jewish opinion on 6 political topics: immigration, affirmative action, free speech, sexual politics, other social issues, and the economy.

Immigration

An article featured on The Alternative Hypothesis website (which was not written by me nor Ryan Faulk) contains an analysis of Ipsos and Reuters data for 34 immigration questions. In the majority of cases, Jewish opinion did not significantly differ from those of gentile Whites. However, roughly one in three of the comparisons showed Jews supporting a more liberal view than Whites, and in only six percent of the cases was the opposite pattern found. Thus, if you average across all 34 questions, Jews would come out being moderately more liberal than gentile Whites on immigration.

The author of the article displays to a series of graphs with the introduction: “The following graphs represent some of the most striking examples of  Jew and gentile similarity in attitudes on  immigration”, but in 75% of examples shown, Jewish opinion was to the left of Gentile opinion, but the difference was not statistically significant.

What this means is that even though Jews answered in a more liberal way than gentiles the differences were not so large that there was less than a 5% chance of them being due to sampling error given the sizes of the samples being utilized. Such cases were taken in the paper as evidence against the view that Jews hold liberal immigration views, when actually they are evidence in favor of this proposition, just not especially strong evidence.

For instance, an example pointed to in the paper as showing Jews having the same views as Whites asked participants if they favored increases in the deportation of illegal immigrants. On net, Jews supported this view by a margin of 25 points while Whites did so by a margin of 42 points. (Note: this survey was taken in late 2014 and early 2015, before the rise of Trump.) This is a large difference consistent with the view that Jews hold more liberal views than Whites on immigration, but it was counted as evidence against said hypothesis because the small sample of Jews rendered this difference statistically insignificant.

Moving to other data, The inductivist analyzed General Social Survey data from the 90s and found that a plurality of Jewish Americans thought that immigration should be decreased. However, this was smaller than the plurality favoring this view that was found among the general population, suggesting that Jews are to the left of gentiles on immigration.

Next, consider the following data from a 2009 AJC poll of 800 Jewish Americans which found that Jews favored an Arizona law which gave police the power to ask people to verify their residency status by a margin of 6 (52 to 46). I compared this margin to the margins by which the public supported this law in polls done by Pew, Gallup, and CBS, and found Jews to be to the left of the general public, and White Americans, on this law.

Polling done by the Center for Immigration Studies comes to the same conclusions:

A more recent PPRI poll found that most Jewish Americans favored liberal views on immigration reform and did so at a higher rate than did the general American public.

Finally, the 2017 Survey of Jewish American Opinion found that 77% of American Jews disapprove of how Trump is handling immigration.

Though this evidence is not 100% consistent, in totality it clearly favors the view that American Jews hold moderately more liberal views on immigration than do Whites.

To get at international Jewish opinion, I analyzed data collected between 1995 and 2009 by the World Values Survey. In total, I had data on 503 Jews and 184,203 gentiles who were asked to chose between four possible views on immigration: let anybody in, let people in as long as there are jobs, impose strict limits on immigration, and completely prohibit people from coming in (Variable 124).

12% of the general population and 19% of Jews favored open border, 40% of the total sample and 50% of Jews  favored allowing immigrants so long as there were jobs, 37% of the total sample and 25% of Jews favored strict limits on immigration, and 11% of the total sample and 6% of Jews favored closed borders.

Thus, Jews globally seem to be to the left of most people on immigration. There is, however, a catch: Jews in Israel tend to be far less welcoming of immigration.

For instance, a poll reported on by the Times of Israel found that Israelis opposed Israel taking in Syrian refugees by a margin of 69 points, but these same respondents favored Europe taking in these exact same refugees by a margin of 8 points.

In fact, Pew Polling finds that a plurality of Israeli Jews favor not only immigration limitations, but the forced deportation of Arabs.

Finally, consider this: “Fifty-two percent of Jewish Israelis identify with the statement by MK Miri Regev last month that African migrants are “a cancer in the body” of the nation, and over a third condone anti-migrant violence, according to the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) Peace Index for May 2012.”

Affirmative Action

Some of the best data on how Jews view affirmative action comes from Tom Smith’s analysis of GSS data spanning from 1972 to 2002, published by the AJC in Jewish Distinctiveness in America. Here are some relevant findings from that document:

• When asked about the government providing special help for Blacks, 47% of Blacks, 19% of Jews, and 17% of the public were found to be in favor.
• When asked if Black-White differences are due to discrimination, 65% of Blacks said yes compared to 41% of Jews and 37% of the general population.
• When asked if Black-White differences are due to lesser black ability, 11% of Blacks said yes, as did 11% of the general public, but only 7% of Jews.
• When asked if Whites should be allowed to segregate their neighborhoods, 84% of the general public said no compared to 88% of Jews and 90% of Blacks.
• When asked if there was too little government spending on the conditions of Blacks, 33% of the general public said yes compared to 40% of Jews and 76% of Blacks.

In sum, for most questions, Jews were more likely than Whites to support affirmative action and to endorse an affirmative action friendly worldview, but there were clear exceptions to this general trend.

More recently, a 2009 Quinnipiac University Poll asked if affirmative action programs that give preferences to Blacks and other minorities should be continued. The general public favored abolishing such programs by a margin of 19 points while Jews favored continuing such programs by a margin of 4 points.

When asked if affirmative action policies were worth pursuing even if they resulted in fewer opportunities for Whites, the general-public said “no” by a margin of 30 points. Jews said “yes” by a margin of 9 points. Note that the general public increased its opposition to these programs when it was specified that Whites would be hurt by affirmative action and Jews actually did the opposite.

The poll also asked participants whether they favored affirmative action in hiring, promotions, and college admissions, for three groups, Blacks, Hispanics, and White women, in order to increase diversity. The general-public opposed this by a margin of 28 points in the case of Blacks, 30 points for White women, and 35 points for Hispanics. Jews favored such policies by a margin of 7 points for Hispanics, and 13 points for Blacks, but opposed it by a margin of 8 points for White Women.

Next, consider a New York Times/CBS poll from the 1980’s which found that Jews favored affirmative action in hiring for Blacks by a margin of 3 points, and for women by 10 points. The NYT article doesn’t give numbers, but it notes that this is greater support for affirmative action than the poll found among gentile Whites.

Pew Polling also shows that Jews consider discrimination against most groups, except for Christians, to be more prevalent than does the average American:

Jews in Israel also support affirmative action… but not for a minority. Rather, Pew Polling finds that 79% of Israel Jews think that Jews should get preferential treatment in Israel.

To sum up, the data here is clear: Jews are more likely than average to support affirmative action, especially for themselves.

Free Speech

The General Social Survey asks participants if racists, anti-religionists, homosexuals, communists, militarists, and Muslim clergyman preaching hatred of the US should be allowed to speak in public. In each case, the majority of Jews say yes and by a larger margin than any other ethnic group. The rates at which Jews endorse free speech range from roughly 95% in the case of homosexuals, to 55% in the case of Muslims and 65% in the case of racists.

This is the only data on this topic I am aware and straight forwardly supports the view that American Jews are abnormally pro free speech.

Israel, on the other hand, scores slightly below average on measures of national freedom of expression. Whether this is a difference reflects the differences between the types of Jews who live in Israel and the types of Jews who live in the US on the one hand, or a difference between what Jews want to have occur in their own nation and other people’s nations, on the other, is not knowable on the basis of this data.

Sexual Mores

Jews have relatively liberal views on sexual morality. Data reviewed by Smith from the General Social Survey reveals the following (remember, this data was collected between 1972 and 2002):

• 4% of Jewish Americans say premarital sex is always wrong compared to 26% of the general public.
• 52% of Jews say that extramarital sex is always wrong compared to 78% of the general public.
• 18% of Jewish Americans say homosexuality is wrong compared to 59% of the general public. (Keep in mind this data is several decades old).
• 17% of Jews think pornography should be illegal compared to 37% of the general public.
• 77% of Jewish Americans favored allowing abortions for any reason compared to 40% of the general public.

Other Social Issues

Using Smith, again, as a source:

• 29% of Jewish Americans favor easier divorce laws compared to 22% of the general public.

• 74% of Jewish Americans and 62% of the general public disagreed with the idea that families work better if the man works and the woman tends to the home.
• 78% of Jewish Americans and 66% of the general public agreed with the view that a mother working does not hurt children.
• 41% of Jews favored legalizing weed compared to 25% of the general public.

More recently, Ipsos and Reuters data shows that 54% of the general public but only 14% of Jews have a favorable view of the NRA, which probably tells us something about Jews views on gun control.

The Economy

The GSS asked respondents whether the government spends too little on a diverse set of services. Mazur (2007) compared Jews to the general public and to a set of college-educated Whites from big cities (controls) on several such questions:

As can be seen, Jews consistently favored more spending than the general public except for when it came to social security and the treatment of drug addicts.

More recently, a 2013 Pew Poll found that Jewish Americans would prefer a bigger government to a smaller one by a margin of 16 points. The general American public prefers a smaller government by a margin of 11 points.

Similarly, a 2012 PPRI poll found the following:

“American Jews are not anti-wealth nor anti-Wall Street, but overall nearly three-quarters (73%) say that the United States’ economic system unfairly favors the wealthy.

• Nearly two-thirds (64%) of American Jews agree that the government should do more to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor, while roughly one-third (35%) disagree.
• More than 8-in-10 (81%) favor increasing the tax rate on Americans earning more than $1 million a year, compared to 17% who oppose this policy.”

In sum, the evidence clearly suggests that Jews have economic views that are to the left of the general public.

Jewish Voting Patterns

In the United States, Jews reliably vote to the left of the general public. This has been true in every election of the last 100 years. This has not always meant that Jews voted overwhelmingly for Democrats, however: in the 1910s and 1920s a large proportion of the Jewish vote went to American socialist and progressive parties rather than the Democrats.  In the 1940s and 1980s up to 20% of Jews voted for Socialist/Progressive parties.

(Weisberg 2012, Stone 2012, Smith and Martinez 2016)

Comparing them to other US racial groups, we can see that Jews vote democrat by larger margins than do Hispanics and Asians, but by smaller margins than Blacks.

Across this 44-year period, the average net democrat vote was 77 points for Blacks, 43 points for Jews, 33 points for Hispanics, 15 points for Asians, and -16 points for Whites. Data from Fisher (1979) suggests that in earlier decades Jews voted for democrats at roughly the same margins as Black people:

Looking at this phenomenon in other nations is difficult because it requires an understanding of many international political parties. I will get to some international examples below, but first: I analyzed data from 5 waves of the World Value Survey on a question that asked people around the world to place themselves on a political orientation scale from 1 to 10 where 1 is most left and 10 is most right. On average, 1,858 Jews rated themselves as being .27 SD more liberal than the total sample of 237,229 respondents did.

Though this is true globally, this is most certainly not true in Israel. Astonishingly, Pew Polling finds that a mere 8% of Israeli Jews describe themselves as being on the left while 55% describe themselves as centrist and 37% as being on the right. This is radically different from Jewish opinion in any other nation.

With the US and Israel taken care of, which account for the vast majority of all Jews on earth, let’s turn to Britain. Following Brexit, a poll of 1,000 British Jews published in The Jewish Chronicle found that British Jews voted to stay in the EU by a margin of 28 points. Obviously, this is to the left of the public, which voted to leave. On the other hand, Jews in Britain are far more likely to vote conservative than labor. In the UK, journalists have attributed this voting pattern to the British Labor party’s association with anti-Semitism.

Similarly, Jews in Canada are more likely than the general population to vote for the conservative party. This is said to be a recent change in Canada and writers have attributed this to the conservative party being perceived as more pro-Israel.

In France, Jews used to vote largely for the Socialist Party. These days, however, Jews are over-represented among voters for the center right party the UMPS and underrepresented among voters for the far right, and sometimes anti-Semitic, party the National Front. This shift is said by some to reflect Jewish opposition to mass Muslim immigration which in turn is fueled by anti-Semitism among Muslims.

It would seem forced to not interpret this pattern of data as being motivated by what Jewish people perceive to be in their ethnic interest. In many nations, Jews used to vote left, and they still largely self identify as more liberal than average, but they vote for center right parties due to a growing embrace of Islam and anti-Zionism on the left, while still being underrepresented among voters for far right wing parties due to fears of anti-Semitism. Even in populations where Jews vote right wing, Brexit showed us that Jews will still come out to vote for the left when an issue tied to immigration, and therefore “racism”, is directly on the ballot. This is unless the Jews in question live in Israel, in which case they will overwhelming favor far right immigration policies, and not identify with the political left 92% of the time.

With respect to the United States, I think the key to understanding Jewish political opinion is to understand that Jews perceive the religious right to be extremely anti-Semitic. This is obviously false, as the religious right is extremely pro-Jewish in its ideology, but a 1998 survey of Jewish Americans found that 48% considered many of most of the religious right to be anti-Semitic. In fact, American Jews were more likely to say that very few or no anti-Semites were present among Muslims (9%) than they were the Religious Right (8%). Several other iterations of the same survey found the same result, while others found that Muslims were considered more anti-Semitic, but the religious right was still regarded as highly anti-Jewish.

This is consistent with 2012 polling which asked Jews to rate how much they liked various groups on a scale of 1 to 100 and found that they rated Muslims (41.1) more highly than the Christian right (20.9).

Similarly, Pew data shows that Jews have a negative view of Evangelical Christians. In some years, Pew finds that American Jews rate Muslims more highly than they did Evangelicals:

Finally, consider that an analysis of Jewish voting in five nations, Canada, the UK, France, Australia, and the US, found an astounding -.95 correlation between the prevalence of Christianity in a country and the rate at which Jews voted to the right. Based on the linear trend found in this data, you would predict that, of these five countries, the US would be the only one in which most Jews vote to the left, and that is exactly what reality bares out.

Thus, I think it is plausible to attribute Jewish political opinion outside of Israel largely to fears about anti-Semitism, with an irrational emphasis on Christian anti-Semitism.

Jewish Ethnocentrism

Also note that in both of the religious favorability rating charts displayed above, within the 99 ratings displayed on each chart the highest, in both cases, is the Jewish rating of Jews. This is evidence in favor of the next hypothesis I want to advance: that Jews have above average levels of ethnocentrism.

Consider the following four survey analyses reported on by the blog The Inductivist:

First, the MIDUS study (n=4,088) asked participants “How closely do you identify with your race” on a 4 point scale and the mean Jewish score was .20 SD above the mean.

Secondly, the Inductivist got data (N=2,119) that asked people to rate on a 4 point scale how important their ethnicity is to who they are with 1 being very important and 4 being not at all important. Jews mean score was .29 SD below the mean, indicating greater ethnocentrism than average.

Thirdly, The Midlife Development in the United States Study asked Americans how important it is for members of their ethnic group to marry inside their group. Here are the percentages who said “very important” or “somewhat important” (N = 4,881): Jewish 47.4%, Asian 42.3%, Amerindian 37.3%, Black 34.6%, Hispanic 33.8%, English 28.4%, French 19.7%, Italian 19.1%, Scottish 18.5%, Irish 18.3%, Polish 16.3%, German 16.0%, Swedish 15.8%, and Norwegian 15.2%.

Fourthly, From the Inductivist analysis of GSS data, the following proportions of people said that they did not prefer the company of their own ethnic group at all: French 53.4%, German 50.3%, Swedish 45.9%, Norwegian 42.7%, Scottish 41.3%, Irish 38.5%, Russian 37.5%, English 32.8%, Italian 28.5%, and Jewish 20.2%. Thus, Jews are more likely than various white ethnic groups to prefer the company of their co-ethnics.

The analyses done or reviewed by the Inductivist often had small samples of Jews and they differ in terms of whether they define Jews ethnically or religiously. However, they consistently reinforce the notion that Jews are more ethnocentric than most White people.

Higher than average ethnocentrism is also evidenced by Jewish patterns of marriage. Jewish people make up only 2% of the US population, but most Jewish people are married to fellow Jews. This was true for nearly all of US history, but has recently begun to change:

Similarly, an analysis of infants born to Jewish mothers in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, found that an average of 21.2% of them were of mixed origins between 1958 and 1968. When analyzing the period 1988 to 1993, this figure rose to 50% (Lynn 2011, page 211).

On the other hand, an analysis of Jews in Australia found that they married gentiles at a rate of 22% in 1921, 7% in 1961, and 8% in 1971 (Lynn 2011, page 39).

Globally, the pattern is clear: Jews display an ethnocentric bias for marrying within their group, though this bias is lessening with time. In most nations, Jews are less than 2% of the population, but nowhere does the rate at which Jews marry fellow Jews even come close to approaching this figure. Of course, in part this is because Jews tend to live near other Jews, but this itself may partly be the result of a degree of ethnocentrism.

Years of survey data also show that Jews make friends with fellow Jews are disproportionate rates, and explicitly regard being Jewish as very important.

For instance, the 2000-2001 National Jewish Population Survey found that 52% of Jews say that half or more of their close friends are Jewish, 41% contribute money to a specifically Jewish cause, and 52% regard being Jewish as very important.

In 2013, Pew Polling found that 80% of Jews said that being Jewish was either somewhat or very important. Figures from the Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion put that figure at 79% in 2016 and 80% in 2017.

That same Pew Polling also found that 75% of American Jews have a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people, 63% say they have a special responsibility to care for Jews in need, 32% of Jews say that all or most of their friends are Jewish, 45% say some are Jewish, and 21% say hardly any or none of their friends are Jewish.

A 2012 poll finds that “More than 4-in-10 (42%) American Jews say that being Jewish is either very important or the most important thing in their lives. Approximately 3-in-10 say being Jewish is somewhat important (29%), and approximately 3-in-10 (29%) say being Jewish is either not too important or not at all important in their lives.”

Finally, consider that The National Jewish Population Survey of 1971 found that 71.7% of Jews reported being happy to be Jewish and 84.6% of Jews agreed with the statement “It is important that there should always be a Jewish people”, while only 4.2% disagreed.

To my knowledge, the only empirical challenge to the claim that Jews, on average, possess higher levels of ethnocentrism than Whites, was mounted by the previously referenced article on The Alternative Hypothesis website. Again, this article was not written by Ryan Faulk, nor was it written by me. As of now, the author of the paper is anonymous.

The article seeks to inform people interested in White identity politics on how they should view Jews. To this end, it attempts to refute what it calls the “separatist hypothesis” which it defines the hypothesis as the view that “Jews have no white identity and no sense of kinship with or preference for Europeans” and “Jews are so highly predisposed to ethnocentrism that they can never be assimilated  into gentile societies.”

This is an extreme view that I have no interest in defending. What I will do, however, is explain how the evidence offered in this article does not refute the view that Jews are more ethnocentric than Whites. Specifically, I’ll comment on six lines of evidence:

1. First, the paper shows that Jewish people score higher than average on measures of general trust and this is interpreted as suggesting that they don’t feel alienated from society. I would count this as weak and indirect evidence, and also note that different groups may have different interpretations of the answers used in trust scales. Moreover, to the degree that Jewish people tend to live near other Jews, they mostly have Jewish people in mind when they think about the trustworthiness of others.
2. Secondly, it is brought up that Jewish people date and marry White people. This is true if you consider Jews white, but, as already noted, most of these White people are Jews.
3. Thirdly, it is mentioned that Jewish people sometimes stop being religiously Jewish. This is true, but can only be taken as a sign of assimilation if they are converting to a popular branch of Christianity. Jews becoming atheists are not assimilating into White American culture.
4. Fourthly, it is shown that Jewish people self-identify as “White” on racial surveys even when “other” is an option. This is true but tells us nothing about degree to which Jewish people value their ethnic group or perceive the interests of their ethnic group as being at tension with the interests of other White people. The Nazis would have self-identified as White, but were also German supremacists who engaged in ethnic conflict with Slavs. Many French Canadians wish to separate from Canada but would still surely identify as White. Explicitly anti-White SJWs also self-identify as White. In fact, some of them, like Tim Wise, are anti-White Jewish intellectuals who write books with titles like “White like Me”.
5. Fifthly, it is shown that about half of Jewish people say they feel close to White people, as do roughly half of White gentiles. Interpreting this point is difficult in light of the fact that Jews consider themselves to be White and so may be thinking of themselves to some extent when they think of White people. Furthermore, it is possible to feel close to your racial group, at least relative to other racial groups, and still care a great deal about your particular ethnicity. Regardless, I think Jewish patterns of mating and friend making, support for anti-White political policies while supporting ethnic-nationalist policies in Israel, and their bizarre perception of Christians as crazed anti-semites, tells us more about how Jewish people relate to White people than does this sort of polling question.
6. Finally, the Alt Hype article mentioned that 1/5 of Jews raise their kids to have no Jewish identity. Unfortunately, this tells us nothing about their relative level of ethnocentrism. To do that, we would need to compare this figure to the rate at which gentile Whites raise their children without enforcing any sort of ethnic identity.

Taking these six lines of evidence together, I think they offer very weak evidence against the view that Jews are more ethnocentric than gentile White people. The evidence I previously referenced seems to me to more directly address this question and, as a result, I think the totality of the evidence strongly favors the view that Jews are relatively ethnocentric.

Jewish Ethnocentrism and Jewish Leftist Politics

At this point I want to advance the view that Jewish ethnocentrism is linked to the policies Jews advocate for. We have already seen some evidence for this by noting the differences in the policies that Jews advocate for Jewish and non-Jewish states and by noting that journalists explicitly explain Jews voting for right wing parities in several Western nations by noting that Jews perceive this to be in their ethnic interest. In America Jews seem to dislike the right because they think the religious right is anti-Semitic. This is but the tip of the iceberg in terms of evidence linking ethnocentrism to American Jewish leftism.

For one thing, if you simply ask Jews they will explicitly tell you that fighting for “social justice” is part of their ethnic identity. For instance, a PPRI poll conducted in 2012 found that:

“Seven-in-ten (70%) Jews cite the immigrant experience in America, and approximately two-thirds (66%) say that being a religious minority in America has a somewhat or very important influence on their political beliefs and activity.When asked which qualities are most important to their Jewish identity.”

Similarly, Pew Polling finds that “Large majorities of U.S. Jews say that remembering the Holocaust (73%) and leading an ethical life (69%) are essential to their sense of Jewishness. More than half (56%) say that working for justice and equality is essential to what being Jewish means to them.”

In 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1998, 1997, and 1995,  surveys by the American Jewish Committee asked respondents to select a quality they considered to be most important to their Jewish identity from a list of 6 possible choices (including “something else”).

On average, roughly one in five Jews said that a commitment to social justice was the single most defining feature of their Jewish identity.

This data comes from a series of report issues by the AJC called the Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion. Using data from eight years of this survey, I’ve found that Jews who describe being Jewish as very important to them identify as Democrats rather than Republicans by larger margins than do Jews who describe being Jewish as fairly important or not very important to them.

It is unfortunate that the AJC binned “fairly important” and “not very important” together. Had they not, I suspect we would see an even stronger difference.

Several of these reports also asked respondents whether immigration levels should be increased, decreased, or kept where they are. In the 2002 report, a plurality of Jews who said that being Jewish was either fairly or not very important favored decreasing immigration (45%). By contrast, the plurality of Jews who said being Jewish was very important favored immigration remaining where it was (45%).

The 2003 report found the same result with a plurality of the less ethnocentric Jews saying that immigration should be decreased (44%) while only a minority of highly ethnocentric Jews said so (39%).

The 2006 and 2007 reports asked respondents the following question:

“Which comes closest to your view of what government policy should be toward illegal immigrants currently residing in the United States? Should the government deport all illegal immigrants back to their home country, OR allow illegal immigrants to remain in the United States in order to work, but only for a limited amount of time, OR allow illegal immigrants to remain in the United States and become U.S. citizens, but only if they meet certain requirements over a period of time?”

In both years, the majority of Jews selected the most left-wing option and their views did not significantly differ by the importance they attached to being Jewish, so that data does not support the hypothesis I am advancing.

In totality though, the data from these reports support the contention that there is a link between Jewish ethnic identity and left-wing politics, especially when it comes to immigration. It does not, however, tell us how much of Jewish leftism can be accounted for by ethnic identity. While I think that ethnic identity is an important variable in this equation, I doubt that it can explain all of the Jewish tendency towards leftism in US politics.

For some Jewish intellectuals, fears of anti-Semitism have obviously played a large role in their leftist politics. This is well documented in Kevin MacDonald’s book the Culture of Critique. On the other hand, many important left-wing intellectuals, such as Noam Chomsky and Karl Marx, have been high profile critics of either the Jewish state or the Jewish people as a whole. For them, ethnic identity did not play a direct role in their politics. However, it is plausible, though certainly not proven, that their politics were the result of Jewish norms of critique, skepticism, and a feeling of being outside of European society, which evolved over the long course of Jewish history and experience. Regardless, as I have said, I don’t think that Jewish ethnic identity is the whole story here, but I do think it is the most important factor.

Ethnocentrism and Jewish Success

There is also some evidence that Jewish ethnocentrism contributes to their success in various domains.

For instance, Perreault et al. (2012) analyzed data on 600 entrepreneurs from four ethnic groups: Chinese, Italian, Jewish, and Sikh. Though they engaged in less ethnocentric behavior than other immigrant groups, Jewish business owners still reported that 25% of their employees were Jews, as were 25% of their customers, which is highly disproportionate to the proportion of the Canadian population that, in any city, is Jewish.

This study also finds that the degree to which a firm employs coethnics negative correlates with its performance. This makes sense, in general working with people on the basis of ethnicity rather than merit is a bad idea. However, when members of your ethnicity are sufficiently above average in traits like intelligence, it is plausible that ethnic nepotism may be an efficient heuristic. Thus, ethnic nepotism may help Jews, who score well above average on intelligence, in a way that it would not help most ethnic groups.

There are also studies linking the degree to which Jews are involved in Jewish communities with their economic success. For instance, Berner and Gainer (2001) find a correlation of .17 between household income and embeddedness in Jewish communities.

Similarly, Hartman and Sheskin (2011) analyzed 19,000 Jewish households across 21 communities and found that various measures of Jewish community strength, such as being involved in local Jewish federations, family services, synagogues, and other agencies, predicted higher levels of labor participation, income, and education, among Jews.

That Jewish communities would strengthen Jewish economic performance is unsurprising. In the modern economy, most jobs are obtained via networking, and being involved in a Jewish community gives individuals access to a social network comprised of people in which wealthy professionals are vastly more common than average (Belli 2017, Adler 2016) .

There is also evidence that Jews have helped other Jews advance in science. Specifically, Greenwald and Schuh (1994) find that Jewish researcher cites fellow Jews at a rate that is 40% higher than the rate at which gentiles cite Jews.

Once again, I should note that ethnocentrism is surely not the only variable that explains Jewish success. There are other variables of great importance, perhaps most obviously intelligence.

Jewish Intelligence

After reviewing dozens of studies, Lynn (2011, p 316) estimated the mean (Ashkenazi) Jewish IQ to be 110, 10 points above that of European gentiles. Lynn (2011) also aggregated data from 7 studies showing that Jews score much higher on measures of verbal intelligence than they do on measures of visual-spatial ability.

Lynn (2011) shows that this cognitive profile is also evident in the pattern of occupational overrepresentation seen among Jews around the world:

Based on these IQ differences, we would expect Jews to be overrepresented among those with an IQ of 130 by a factor of 4 and among those with IQ of over 145 by a factor of 7.

This corresponds well to the rate at which Jews have historically been overrepresented among academics. This figure also may account for most of the overrepresentation we saw for Jews in Journalism, especially given that journalism would seem to place a premium on verbal abilities. However, IQ cannot account for even half of the Jewish overrepresentation among financial elites or recipients of Nobel prices.

Jordan Peterson thinks that this can explain Jewish overrepresentation among the super-wealthy because he thinks that the mean IQ of millionaires and billionaires is 145. Actually, research suggests that the mean IQ of billionaires is probably in the low 130s and millionaires is in the high 110s (see also here and here), suggesting that Jews are more common in these categories than their IQ would predict.

Sometimes it is suggested that intelligence can explain why Jews have such leftist political views and vote so heavily for Democrats. This is almost surely not true.

For starters, the link between IQ and party ID is not what many people might assume it to be. Carl (2014) analyzed data on a test of probability thinking (n = 4,631), verbal reasoning (n = 2,179), verbal comprehension (n = 55,794), and vocabulary (n = 26,308). Republicans scored higher than Democrats on all four measures of cognitive ability. These differences are small, ranging from 2 to 3 IQ points, but even after restricting the sample to only Whites, Republicans scored higher than Democrats on some measures of cognitive ability and equally on others, supporting the hypothesis that White Republicans have higher mean FSIQ than White Democrats.

There is some debate about the linearity of this relationship. For instance, Solon (2015)argues that there is a U shaped relationship between intelligence and both economic leftism and democrat party affiliation such that people very low on the IQ spectrum tend to be socialist leaning and democrat leaning, and as we move up the IQ spectrum people move to the right on these issues until we reach the 85th percentile at which point people become increasingly leftist. In terms of educational attainment, this corresponds to a graduate degree.

Since Jews mean IQ of 110 puts them at the 75th percentile, and most Jews do not have a graduate degree, on the basis of their IQs and educational attainment we would predict them to be (libertarian) republicans regardless of which camp is correct in this debate.

Now, certain sorts of conservative social attitudes do correlate negatively with IQ. Specifically, Meta-analytic reviews suggest that cognitive ability has a correlation of roughly -.20 with right-wing attitudes and prejudice. Since Jews have a .66 SD advantage over Whites in IQ, we would, therefore, expect them to have a mean level of social liberalism that is .13 SD above that of Whites.

If we conceptualized social liberalism as being on a scale like IQ with a mean of 100 and an SD of 15, Jews would be predicted, on the basis of IQ, to have a “social liberalism quotient”, or SLQ, of 102. This is a tiny difference which obviously has very little to do with why Jews are so heavily overrepresented among the left.

With respect to liberal elites specifically, let’s suppose that one must be at the 95^thpercentile of both liberalism and intelligence (IQ = 124) in order to be an elite or influential liberal. Not that all people with who meet these requirements will be influential liberals, but let’s suppose that this is how smart and liberal you need to be to do that sort of thing.

Given a 0.2 correlation between liberalism and IQ, people with IQs of 124 will be at the 95^th percentile of liberalism or higher 14.2% of the time. We would expect this combination of traits to occur at a rate of 7.1 per 1,000 among gentiles. On the other hand, with Jews we would expect people to have IQs of 124 or higher 17.5% of the time, meaning that a high IQ and a really high level of liberalism would occur at a rate of 24.85 per 1,000. This gives us a factor of overrepresentation of 4. (If we lessened the liberalism threshold to just more liberal than average, the factor would be less.) In light of these calculations, IQ alone probably cannot account for even half of the degree to which Jews are overrepresented among influential leftists.

However, since you obviously cannot be a Nobel prize winner, an important intellectual, or an academic, without a good deal of intelligence, IQ is also clearly an important part of the explanation for Jewish success and influence. It’s probably best thought of as a necessary but not sufficient condition.

Cultural Values, Parenting, and Jewish Success

Many have argued that cultural values and parenting practices are important factors in explaining why it is that Jews are so successful. To my knowledge, this has never been demonstrated. Several studies have found Jews to hold various measures of achievement related values more strongly than gentiles, but when directly tested these values have normally been shown to be unrelated to actual success. More importantly, no study I am aware of has measured the effect of such values on success after controlling for cognitive ability. Given the large advantage Jews have on IQ scales, and given that people who are smarter are also likely going to have more motivation to try and achieve in domains that require intelligence, such a control would be vital before we could estimate the role such a value would play in explaining Jewish success. Finally, with respect to parenting, research generally does not favor the view that Jewish parents uniquely try to instill in their children values related to success.

The earliest empirical work on this topic I am aware of comes from Clark (1949) who analyzed data on scores on a test of scholastic aptitude and GPAs for 6,774 liberal arts freshmen from Northwestern University. Data for ten years, ranging from 1925 to 1941, were analyzed, and from said data, a series of equations were created that predicted GPA based on aptitude scores. It was found that Jewish students had higher GPAs than would be predicted on the basis of their ability scores by a margin of .15 in the case of women and .31 in the case of men. The male difference was statistically significant while the female difference was not. Neither was very practically significant, the standard deviation of GPA averaging 1.3. Despite this, these findings were taken as evidence that Jews must be more motivated than gentiles at any given level of cognitive ability, leading them to have higher GPAs. This interpretation would be plausible, though again not practically significant, but correction for multiple testing was not done despite 40 comparisons being made. While common for the time, today this would be regarded as statistically improper, and if the proper corrections were made the differences between Jews and Gentiles would be rendered statistically insignificant.

Next, Rosen (1959) analyzed data on 427 mother-child pairs, 57 of which were Jewish, who were asked about the ages at which they expected their children to do various things (e.g. have independent interests, do well in school on their own, by energetic in sports, picking their own clothes, etc.). Responses from these ten questions were averaged into an index of “age of independence training”. Jews were found to expect independent behavior at the youngest age (6.83 years), followed by Protestants (6.87), Blacks (7.23), Greeks (7.67), French-Canadians (7.99), and Italians (8.03). This variable was positively related to social class, meaning that Jews had expectations more typical of low-class individuals than high-class ones. Jews were also found to score above average on a scale of achievement motivation. However, this score was once again more typical of the lower class.

Rosen also asked the mothers which of the following occupations they would be satisfied with their sons going into in adulthood: lawyer, druggist, jewelry store owner, machinist, bank teller, insurance agent, bookkeeper, mail carrier, department store salesman, and bus driver. Jewish mothers were, on average, satisfied with 3.51 of these occupations compared to 4.7 for Greeks, 5.28 for Protestants, 5.69 for Italians, 6.6 for French Canadians, and 6.95 for Blacks. Means by social class are not given, nor is there any reference to an empirical measure of the degree to which maternal expectations actually influence life outcomes.

Veroff, Feld, and Gurin (1962) utilized data on 1,620 participants from a nationally representative sample which administered a measure of achievement motivation. When looking at males in the sample, it was found that 68% of Jews, 57% of Catholics, and 48% of Protestants scored above average. However, this same study found no relationship between achievement motivation and income, suggesting that it did not actually contribute to real-world success.

Carney and McKeachie (1963) gathered a sample of 919 US college students and had them fill out a measure of achievement motivation. This scale was an average across five other scales: dominance, capacity for status, sociability, social preference, and self-acceptance. It is not obvious to me why this would be called “achievement motivation”, but Carney and McKeachie report that it is correlated with other measures of achievement motivation.

In any case, Jews scored .31 SD above average on this scale. However, scores on this scale did not have a linear relationship with the social class from which students came nor their success in school, so there is no reason to think that the construct it measures contributed to life outcomes.

Jews also scored below average on a measure of achievement anxiety, or the degree to which one feels a debilitating anxiety in response to competitive academic situations. However, this difference was only .03 SD, and so not statistically or practically significant.

Kosa (1969) asked 2,630 medical students, grouped by religion, about their values. I have not been able to access this paper myself, but Lynn (2011, p 349) that reports that Jews placed the most importance on obtaining both high income and high prestige. No reference is made to any attempt at measuring how much such values contributed to actually obtaining a high income or prestigious position.

Kriger and Kroes (1972) compared 35 middle-class Protestant, Jewish, and Chinese, mothers on the Parental Attitude Research Instrument (PARI) which consists of two main factors: “control”, or approval of maternal control of children, and “rejection”, or approval of maternal expressions of hostility. Chinese mothers scored far higher than Protestants and Jews on measures of control, but no difference was found between Jews and Protestants on control, or between any of the three groups on rejection.

The most impressive study in this literature is Fejgin (1995) who found that Jewish 10th graders spent an average of 1.66 hours more time on homework weekly, and .71 fewer hours watching TV daily, compared to gentile Whites. Jews also scored higher than average on a measure of academic aspiration.

Analyzing scores on measures of mathematical ability, it was found that Jews scored well above the average, and this remained true after controlling for race, SES, the degree to which the home environment is educationally stimulating, student behavior (hours spent on homework and TV), and educational aspirations. However, adding a measure of school sector to the model reduced to Jewish variable to statistical insignificance. For reading, statistical insignificance is reached merely by controlling for race, sex, and SES.

Educational aspirations, student behavior, and parental behavior were also independent predictors of academic ability.

This study lends a little credence to the view that “educational aspirations” have a causal impact on success, but, since the Gentile-Jewish gap in ability survived controlling for aspirations, this research also shows that such values cannot totally explain Jewish success. Unfortunately, this study did not include a measure of IQ, so the actual impact of aspirations on outcomes cannot possibly be measured nor can the contribution of such values to Jewish success.

Finally, Lynn and Kanazawa (2007) analyzed data on 10,700 parents who were asked to select from a list the most, and three most, important values they would like they children to manifest from a list of twelve: success, studiousness, amicability, cleanliness, considerateness, control, honesty, interest, judgement, manners, obedience, responsibility, and traditional sex roles.

When asked to select a single most important value, Jewish parents were more likely than average to select judgment and less likely than average to select honesty. When asked to select three top values, Jewish parents were less likely than average to select cleanliness, honesty, manners, and obedience, and more likely than average to select considerateness, interest, and judgment. No link between parents hoping their children embody these values and life outcomes was established in the paper.

In sum, Jewish parents and Jewish individuals differ from gentiles in the things they value, but it is not clear that such differences are consistently correlated with success, let alone that they have a causal impact on life outcomes. If I had to speculate, I would wager that they do, but it is not possible to estimate how much of Jewish success such values can account for on the basis of the available data.

Geography (Living in Big Cities)

Finally, some have noted that Jews tend to live in major cities and that this makes it easier to rise to positions of influence. There is certainly some truth to this. Goldstein (1971) calculated that, in 1957, 87.4% of Jews lived in cities with populations of 250,000 of more compared to just 36.6% of the general population, and if you compared people who all lived in urban areas and had college degrees, Jewish people were actually less likely to have a “professional occupation” (58.2% ) than are the total sample (62.3%).

This hypothesis was best tested by Mazur (2007) who compared a large sample of Jews to a set of “controls” who were White, college educated, and lived in one of the nation’s 100 largest cities. These controls self-identified as republican over democrat by a margin of 9 points and were equally likely to identify as liberal and conservative. By contrast, Jews were found to identify as a Democrat by a margin of 40 points and liberal by a margin of 27 points.

Consistent with Goldstein’s data from the 50s, when using a question introduced in 1972 about whether one’s income was higher than 25,000 dollars, Jews were found to be somewhat less likely than controls to answer “yes”. However, using a question introduced in 1998, Jews are found to be twice as likely as controls to have an income of more than 110,000 dollars, suggesting that Jews today are both far more liberal and more wealthy than we would expect on the basis of them being highly educated and living in large cities.

It is also worth noting that NYC is both the biggest city in America and the largest city with the most Jews. Yet, Jews vote democrat by smaller margins in NYC than they do nationally, making the claim that living in large cities explains Jewish leftism even more implausible (Heilman 2016).

Cofnas (2018) has argued that we should consider the view that IQ and geography account for Jewish overrepresentation in just about everything a “default hypothesis”. I see no reason to accept this claim. That is, there is no reason to treat geography and intelligence as “default” variables and ethnocentrism, personality, and cultural values, as somehow less default, especially in light of the evidence that important differences in success and political orientation between Jews and gentiles persist after controlling for these sorts of variables.

To sum up, I think a large number of variables account for why it is that Jews are so overrepresented in positions of power. These include intelligence, openness to experience, living in big cities, cultural values, and ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism and personality also play a role in explaining Jewish politics. There are doubtless still more variables at play that my analysis has neglected totally.

Whatever the cause, it is truly remarkable that, by some counts, less than 2% of the population accounts for near half, or even an outright majority, of society’s most powerful people, and have radically altered the political landscape of the American elite.

Implications

Turning to said implications, I’d like to spend some time talking about how I think people interested in White Identity politics should act in light of the reality about Jews.

Race Realism vs Anti-Semitism

I analyzed data from the ADL and the GSS (Variable name: RaceDif2, asks if Black-White gaps in SES are due to inborn differences in learning ability) on the prevalence of anti-semitism and race realism among NH Whites.

The results suggest that race realism is slightly less popular than anti-semitism. These are probably low figures, people don’t like to admit to politically incorrect views, but this bias probably impacts both variables in roughly the same way so the comparison should still be valid.

Prejiduce and Sucess

One of the most obvious lessons to take away from an analysis of the Jewish question is that discrimination is not something that can stop a determined ethnic group from being successful. Probably no group has faced greater ethnic conflict than Jews, and yet they do very well for themselves. This should make us skeptical of the claim that other groups, most of which have never experienced anything like the episodes Jews have gone through, are just poor due to racism.

Ethnicity and Ideology

Another take away is that variables like socioeconomic status, belonging to a religion, and IQ, are not always large determinants of political ideology and voting behavior. Jews are a rich religious group that is above average in IQ, so if we were using a model based on how gentile Whites vote we would predict Jews to be strong supporters of the Republican party. But, as we’ve seen, other factors like personality and ethnic interest seem to trump economics, intelligence, and religion.

How and When Should We Talk About Jews?

I am not a fan of the way in which the Jewish Question is normally talked about by the far right. It often comes off as unhinged, unconnected with data and reality, and hate-filled, in a way that discussions about no other ethnic groups do. This is unfortunate, as there is perhaps no ethnic group which more carefulness should be taken when discussing than the Jews, giving how sensitive the public is to such issues.

That being said, there is a time and a place to talk about them. The fact is that Jews stand out both in terms of their influence and their politics. This is partly because Jews see themselves as a distinct group with separate interests from Whites. This is not something that a nationalist should want for his nation, and in the case of Jews, even a small number can have a large effect due to their enormous influence. It already has and it is hard to see how this can be ignored.

Moreover, there is a tendency within white identity politics such that people who are passionately anti-Semitic speak obsessively about Jews and those who are not rarely talk about Jews at all. This has the unfortunate effect of making discourse about Jews worse, from a PR standpoint, than it needs to be.

I think it is time to start trying to improve how we talk about Jews instead, with this post being my small contribution to such an effort.

That being said, I also think Jews are brought up too often by the far right. Many people know next to nothing about Jews, and their relevance is not self-evident. From the standpoint of White nationalism Jews are only bad in so far as they cause white guilt and demographic decline. Opposing anti-White ideology directly is more important than opposing an ethnic group which is overrepresented among its advocates. Moreover, discussions of Hispanics and Blacks are more obviously relevant to the situations of most Americans. So I think we should talk about Jews, but I do not think they should be our central theme.

“Naming the Jew”

There is some controversy about the so-called practice of “naming the Jew”. I think pointing out that someone is Jewish can be useful but only when a few conditions are met. First, it needs to be demonstrable that their Jewish ethnicity is playing a role in their politics. Secondly, this needs to occur in a context in which the relationship between Jewish ethnic identity and left-wing politics can be explained. And thirdly, this should only be done by people who can do all this calmly. If you feel like shouting, it’s probably a bad idea to “name a Jew”.

Jews in Right-Wing Movements

There is some debate about the role that Jews should have in White identity movements. My view on this is that White identitarians should not attempt to stop Jews from furthering anti-immigration or pro-white causes, and to my knowledge, no one does this anyhow, but Jewish people should not lead any white nationalist organizations or be a figurehead for a white nationalist movement. Such a Jew would also be under the suspicion of having an allegiance to their Jewish ethnic group more so than their White racial identity, and this would cause unneeded tension and drama in a movement that already has too much of both.

What Should We “Do” About Jews?

First, it needs to be noted that Jews have low fertility rates and are increasingly marrying gentiles, but they are still going to be around in roughly the same numbers in 2050:

For moral reasons, I don’t think the deportation of Jews from America, as some White nationalists call for, can be justified. However, it would be sensible to limit the immigration of Jews into any future White ethnostate, and I would not recommend setting up such an ethnostate in New York City.

In previous centuries, what to do with the Jews was a problem. Today, it is not. Even if all of Europe and America someday becomes ruled by Jew exiling White Nationalists, Jews now have an ethnostate of their own to return to. They need not be immigrants any longer.

Of course, Jewish people contribute a great deal of good to the world in the form of science and innovation. However, science is an international enterprise, and such advances can be enjoyed by the world with the science being done in Israel. By contrast, political theorists in Israel don’t have nearly as much influence in the West as do Jews who live here. Moreover, Jews have a funny tendency to be right-wing nationalists when they live in their own state.

Conclusion

So, those are some of my thoughts on the Jewish Question. More can always be said, and this is only one way of approach the question, but I thought it would be good to try approach the “JQ” in this way, and overall I am happy with the results.

Notes:

1. In a video corresponding to this post, these statistics are misstated. I had written this analysis some years ago and initially could not find it. I reported the result in the video based on notes of mine, but I have since found the actual analysis, via the “Way-Back Machine”, and found them to be in error. The errors are as follows: I incorrectly stated that these elites were from around the world when they were from America, I reported all names and lists including redunant ones, and I overstated Jewish representation among conservatives. I also failed to report the results of the Adious Epigone’s Analysis.

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