Kevin MacDonald vs Nathan Cofnas (3-29-23)
JQ Debate: Nathan Cofnas Critiques Kevin MacDonald (4-17-18)
STANDING ON A WOOD CRATE, CRITIQUING NATHAN COFNAS ON KMAC (3-25-18)
Nathan Cofnas: Still No Evidence for a Jewish Group Evolutionary Strategy (1-8-23)
Nathan Cofnas Interview March 20, 2018
JF Gariepy’s Review Of The Nathan Cofnas Critique
JF Gariepy’s Review Of The Nathan Cofnas Critique II
The Cofnas Critique Gets A Challenge From Historian J. Otto Pohl (2-16-19)
The Cofnas Critique Gets A Challenge From Historian J. Otto Pohl II
Oxford University’s Nathan Cofnas Critiques KMAC’s Culture Of Critique Book (3-10-18)
Nathan Cofnas, a graduate student at Oxford University, writes:
MacDonald argues that a suite of genetic and cultural adaptations among Jews constitutes a “group evolutionary strategy.” Their supposed genetic adaptations include, most notably, high intelligence, conscientiousness, and ethnocentrism. According to this thesis, several major intellectual and political movements, such as Boasian anthropology, Freudian psychoanalysis, and multiculturalism, were consciously or unconsciously designed by Jews to (a) promote collectivism and group continuity among themselves in Israel and the diaspora and (b) undermine the cohesion of gentile populations, thus increasing the competitive advantage of Jews and weakening organized gentile resistance (i.e., anti-Semitism). By developing and promoting these movements, Jews supposedly played a necessary role in the ascendancy of liberalism and multiculturalism in the West. While not achieving widespread acceptance among evolutionary scientists, this theory has been enormously influential in the burgeoning political movement known as the “alt-right.” Examination of MacDonald’s argument suggests that he relies on systematically misrepresented sources and cherry-picked facts. It is argued here that the evidence favors what is termed the “default hypothesis”: Because of their above-average intelligence and concentration in influential urban areas, Jews in recent history have been overrepresented in all major intellectual and political movements, including conservative movements, that were not overtly anti-Semitic.
Jonathan Anomaly and Nathan Cofnas write:
George Orwell understood the psychological benefits of directing disdain toward an out-group in order to foster social cohesion among an in-group. In his great novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, he gives the character who would receive “two minutes of hate” every day among the proletarians a Jewish name: Goldstein. It is obvious why. Orwell’s implication was that the Soviet Union and other regimes were capitalizing on a human need to have some group to hate in order to foster loyalty and obedience to the leader of the in-group.
There is some evidence in political psychology for a correlation between high IQ and liberal political beliefs. So we might suspect that Ashkenazi Jews, with the highest average IQ in the world, would lean liberal. Interestingly, though, IQ correlates positively with classical liberalism, which emphasizes both social and economic liberty. This seems to be because those with higher intelligence tend to exhibit personality traits like openness to experience and tolerance for different ways of living. But those with higher IQ are more likely to support free-market economic policies (“liberalism” in the old sense of the word). Intelligence is required to understand how trade can be a positive sum game, and how order can emerge from individuals freely interacting with one another.
