Genetic superiority

In his post of May 7, 2003 (which I reproduce below) Professor Wagar made a great number of remarks with which I fully agree, and for which I wish to thank him. However, I think that he yielded too much to the supremacist cause when he accepted the thesis that there might be some Darwinian grounds to the claim that there are "genetically superior" human groups - as Jewish supremacists now claim about the Jews, as the Nazi supremacists claimed about the Aryans (especially Germans), as the Anglo-American supremacists claimed in the nineteenth century about the Anglo-Saxons while exterminating Native Americans, etc.

It is not that I shy away from the possibility of genetic superiority of certain groups. In fact, in my novel Dawn of the New Man: A Futuristic novel of Social Change, I dwell on the subject of how an enlightened future society, which enjoys true freedom and democracy, deals with the technology of genetic engineering leading to various superior human species. But the arguments that the Jews, or the Aryans, or whatever, are "genetically superior" at the present time simply does not represent well-established scientific fact.

Rather, I believe that many nations and social groups have not managed to realize their full potential because of various historical circumstances. For example, I come from a part of the world that has witnessed many upheavals during the twentieth century. It consists of nations and people who had not been very fortunate even in many of the preceding centuries, for this region was situated for a very long time in the buffer zone between three empires: the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Russian Empire. In the West this region is often referred to by the somewhat misleading name of "the Balkans," which lumps together nations and cultures as diverse as the English, the French, the Spanish and the Dutch are in Western Europe. But the Balkan nations have not had the chance to develop cultures on par with these Westerns ones because they were too busy trying to defend themselves against the foreign incursions from these three empires, or were subjugated by them. In other words, they were fighting imperialism, and as some modern nations have learned from the Americans, that can be a full-time occupation. Moreover, to the extent that they nurtured great writers, scientists, etc., those high achievers were ignored in the West, except if they had emigrated to Western countries while being at the peak of their creative powers.

A good example is Nicola Tesla - to whom we all owe the technology of alternating current that supplies electricity to our homes. Born in a Croatian town, but of Serbian parents, he had to emigrate to US to realize his full potential. Even then, although he had a much more original mind than Thomas Edison, he was taken advantage by the latter. To quote from an online biography of Edison (check Google under "Thomas Edison"): "Edison was also a ruthless businessman who fought viciously to defeat his competitors. One of the most notorious examples of his competitive vigor were the lengths he went to discredit Nicola Tesla's Alternating Current system, which is the system of electrical distribution in use today." Well, Edison had "Anglo-Saxon genes," while Tesla had only "Serbian genes," so, the ultimate outcome was, a supremacist might assert, very predictable: although Tesla's ideas eventually prevailed, he died destitute, while Edison died a wealthy man. Probably every American child knows nowadays about Edison and his discovery of the light bulb, but how many know about Tesla and his alternating currents, including the miraculous Tesla coil?

As for Dr. Wagars' mention of "the Darwinian effects of pogroms and holocausts, which may have thinned the ranks of the least wary and resourceful" Jews, I have to point out that the great Jewish scientists, composers and writers whom we all venerate had the advantage of living in societies which were in the center of European culture. Hence, their achievements were a reflection of very favorable cultural climates, rather than of their pre-selected "Jewish genes." The support and help they received from the Jewish community (which everywhere has a strong sense of identity) also helped them a lot on the road to success. Actually, in countries in which there were pogroms, such as Russia, the Jews were not doing especially well; whereas they did very well in German speaking countries (Germany, Austria, the German-speaking part of Switzerland), which highly respect education and cultural achievements.

As for the "great success" of contemporary American Jews, I believe that there are factors at play which have very little to do with genes, but rather more with a strong Jewish belief in education (which lacks in many other American ethnic groups), the ability for effective self-promotion, and the influence that Jews can exert as a group, as opposed to other ethnic groups within the United States, which are not as well organized. Hence, the arguments advanced by such American Jewish supremacists as Cantor and Patai in favor of "Jewish genetic superiority" reflect their own mode of thinking and the present-day social relationships within the US, rather than an objective scientific truth.

Dear WSN,

       I cannot believe that the WSN community, after the passage of four
days, has not responded to this important post by Dr. Prugovecki. As
analysts of the modern world-system, we cannot possibly ignore the fact
that the current thrust toward empire on the part of the United States
involves an intimate alliance with the state of Israel, bankrolled for
decades by billions of U.S. dollars. We also cannot possibly ignore the
fact that Israel has deliberately colonized Arab lands with hundreds of
thousands of Jewish settlers, rendering the creation of a sovereign
state on formerly Palestinian soil almost impossible, even if a
Palestinian authority should relinquish the right of Arabs to return to
ancestral lands seized by Israeli invaders during the 1940s in what is
now Israel.

     It is also indisputable that many Israeli Jews regard Arabs as
indolent vermin who have no right to the sacred soil of the Holy Lands,
and should seek the hospitality of adjacent deserts.

       The triumphalism and claims to racial superiority of many Jews,
worldwide, are also well documented, as Dr. Prugovecki notes. There is
absolutely no moral difference between such claims and the hideous

rhetoric of Nazi apologists.

Of course one must distinguish between the "moral" and the
"factual." I, for one, have no difficulty asserting the conviction that
in late modern times, since the second half of the 19th Century, persons
of Jewish heritage--albeit seldom observant Jews--have provided close to
one-half the artistic, intellectual, corporate, and scientific leadership
of Western civilization, a percentage absurdly out of proportion to their
numbers, and explicable only as the result of the cultural history of the

resourceful.

But by the same token, one might also build a case for the
superiority of the Germans in the 19th and early 20th Centuries. I doubt
that an objective survey of the music, literature, philosophy, science,
technology, and military arts of that period--excluding every Jew--would
disclose any people in the world with a record equal to the German. And
before that came the Chinese and the Arabs and the Romans and the Greeks,