HBD Books

I previously shared what Kevin MacDonald wrote on the Gypsies in A People That Shall Dwell Alone.  Here he is on the Anabaptists. 

The Amish and Hutterites originated in the religious upheavals of 16^th-century German-speaking Europe.  They along with the Mennonites (not considered here) are collectively grouped together as Anabaptists.  These groups developed not only as a reaction to Catholicism but also in opposition to the strong linkages between princes and the Lutheran Church.  They developed an ideology of communal living based on their image of Christ’s original teachings.  A major aspect of socialization is to combat tendencies for hedonism and selfish, prideful behavior in favor of a high level of collectivism.

The Hutterites emerged in 1533 when Jacob Hunter united them into “one cohesive, communal religious sect, whose members played down family ties and shared their wealth and goods.”  They developed the belief that only strong group pressure could blunt human tendencies toward material acquisitiveness, pride, and vanity, and thereby restore the Christian life.  Peter Riedemann (1506-1556) solved the free rider problem for the Hutterites by requiring that consumption and production both be shared.  Originating as small communities, the Hutterites flourished as a result of proselytism and high fertility, especially in Moravia (now part of the Czech Republic).

The Moravian Hutterite communities were dissolved in 1622 but later re-emerged in Russia.  Approximately 400 Hutterites moved to the U.S. in 1874 and grew to over 20,000 in the following hundred years solely as a result of high fertility.  Anabaptists view high fertility as a religious obligation and eschew any means of birthcontrol.  Birthrates averaged around 4% per year for much of that time (implying more than 10 children per woman), a rate nearly unique and approaching the biological limits for humans.  Indeed, it is common for demographers to use Hutterite fertility as a yardstick against which the fertility of other groups is measured.

In recent years the demographic picture among the Hutterites has been changing.  The Hutterite reproductive rate, which hovered around 4%/year in the decades following their arrival in North America began to decline in the 35-39 age group in the late 1940s.  By the mid-1960s the overall fertility rate was down to between 2% and 3%-still a high rate compared to the U.S. as a whole, but considerably less than a biological maximum.  A 1971 census found many Hutterites over age 30 who had not been married, and the average age of marriage was over 25 years of age.  A later study by Ingoldsby & Stanton (1988) found that approximately one-third of Hutteritewomen in Alberta were using birth control.  Interview data suggested that birth control was initiated by women in attempting to assert their individuality in a male-dominated society.  These results suggest a role of cultural diffusion from the surrounding culture in contemporary Hutterite society-an explanation which, if true, impies that Hutterites are not completely cut off from the influences of the surrounding society as is a common tendency among religious fundamentalists…

The Amish in the U.S. derive from small Swiss groups that began emigrating in the 17^thcentury. (The European Amish died out as a result of assimilation and lack of large contiguous areas for settlement.)  The group was founded in the 16^thcentury by Jacob Ammann, a charismatic and dictatorial leader who emphasized separation from surrounding peoples by insisting on different styles of dress, grooming, and personal appearance.

Like the Hutterites, they have a very high fertility rate of 3.3%, implying 6-7 children per woman, so that the several hundred immigrants have become a population of over 140,000 today.  As an indication of their expansion, the Amish expanded in Lancaster County (Pennsylvania) from 150 square miles in 1940 to 525 square miles in 1980.  Birth rates have continued at a very high level in recent years.  The Amish rate per year from the period 1981 to 1991 was unusually high at 4.6%, (85,000 to 140,000).  Commitment to the Amish community clearly influences fertility.  Formerly Old Amish families had significantly reduced fertility compared to those who remained in the community.

Cultural Separatism.  Amish and Hutterite communities are noticeably different from surrounding populations in the contemporary world.  They speak an ingroup language (a dialect of German) among themselves, but are able to communicate in English with outsiders.  The Amish have a well-developed ideology of “separation from the world” to the point of being relatively unconcerned about whether other Amish communities have the same rules they have.  They think of themselves as a “chosen people” or “a peculiar people.”  They wear distinctive clothing-mainly black-and use distinctive implements, such as horse-drawn carriages.  They avoid modern technology-no telephones, electricity, central heating or automobiles.  Men wear beards but no mustaches.  Amish are forbidden to marry a non-Amish person or to enter into business with a non-Amish person.

Ingroup cooperation and altruism.  The Amish and Hutterites are intensely social, cooperative, and even altruistic within their groups.  A defining event in the Amish community is the barn-raising in which the entire community aids a family in erecting a new barn, an unpaid effort that requires many days’ labor.  The community also has a powerful obligation to help people who are sick or infirm.  The Amish seek to live close to each other, which also reinforces the sense of being part of a community.  While the Amish have a sense of private property, the Hutterites hold nearly all goods in common.

This high level of intra-group support and cooperation goes along with a high degree of genetic relatedness among members.  Typically Amish groups are related at the level of 3^rd or 4^thcousins, and marriage, with few exceptions, is endogamous within the local community rather than between more widely separated Amish groups.  Hutterites practice a similar or even greater level of endogamy, with some colonies reaching an average relatedness closer than that of 2^nd cousins.  Although proselytism was common during the early expansion of these groups in the 16^th century, there are no attempts to recruit outsiders since that time, so these groups are likely to remain highly inbred.

Such a high degree of genetic relatedness would be expected to trigger mechanisms of genetic similarity, making colony members more altruistic and cooperative as well as making them compatible in personality, intelligence, physical appearance, andother traits that people tend to assort on.  Indeed, there are several physiognomic profiles that have been found repeatedly in Hutterite families…

…Like the Gypsies but unlike the Jews, there is little emphasis on education in Anabaptist communities.  Schooling typically ends with the eight grade, and there is no cultural importance attached to intellectual activities so that, unlike traditional Jewish communities, there would be no selection for intelligence.  Far more likely, but unverified, would be selection maintaining the high level of collectivism found in Anabaptist groups.  A high tendency toward collectivism was presumably a common tendency among the founders of these movements.

In any case, non-conformists are shunned or ejected from the community, so there is likely to have been a continuing tendency for more individualistic Hutterites and Amish to defect, as is the case with Jewish groups.  The defection rate for Hutterites is 1.3% per year.  Defection rates among the Amish vary from 5% to 43% of adult offspring having left the congregation of origin in modern times, with more conservative groups having a lesser tendency for defection.  Hostetler reports that the Old Amish of Lancaster County Pennsylvania had a defection rate of approximately 22% in the period from 1880 to 1939.  Defections in the more “progressive” groups of Amish are often to other Anabaptist groups, such as the Mennonites who are relatively assimilated to the wider culture…

…by any standard, the Hutterites remain highly collectivist in their orientation even in the midst of the powerful trend toward individualism in modern Western societies.  The Amish and Hutterites avoid the influence of the media and even minimize traveling in order to avoid the contaminating influences of the surrounding culture…

Peters (1965) finds that the relationships between Hutterite communities and surrounding farmers range from excellent to peaceful coexistence; no colony is subject to intense hostility.  These positive relations are attributed partly to the warm hospitality with which Hutterites welcome outsiders and because Hutterites aid non-Hutterites in times of emergency…

Hutterites and other Anabaptists have certainly been persecuted, but the vast majority of the persecution was caused by their religious unorthodoxy and their stance as pacifists.  During the period of religious wars in Europe, the Hapsburgs viewed Protestant ideas on the separation of Church and state as treasonous, and they had a similar view of the Anabaptist refusal to fight in the military or pay war taxes, with the result that thousands of Anabaptists were imprisoned and executed.  Local residents often resented Amish refusal to bear arms…Hutterite pacifism resulted in considerable hostility during World War 1, especially since they spoke German.  Conscientious objectors were tortured and two died of their treatment by the U.S. army.  As a result, the Dakota Hutterites moved to Canada…

Anabaptists avoid contact with the outside world, but unlike Jews and Gypsies, they do not regard outgroups as suffering from ritual uncleanness.  Hilton and Obermeyer (1999) suggest that they do have a feeling of being a special group-analogous if not homologous to the Jewish idea of “the chosen people.”  Social identity theory would suggest that barriers between Anabaptists and other groups would tend to result in some negative attitudes toward outsiders.  However, given their pacifism and non-exploitative relations with the surrounding society, these attitudes by themselves are unlikely to lead to high levels of conflict.  Moreover, although the Hutterites and Amish are genetically segregated groups, they do not oppose recruitment and intermarriage in principle.  Hostetler (1993) describes them as relatively non-ethnocentric.  Hilton and Obermeyer (1999) suggest that the main opposition of the Amish and Hutteritesto modern society is the fear of being overcome with corrupting cultural and religious values. 

Although Anabaptist pacifism has sometimes led to free-rider type conflict with the rest of society, Anabaptists do not use public services, such as welfare.  Indeed, they might even be seen as being exploited because they pay taxes without attending regular schools.  The Mennonites, who are much more assimilated than the Amish and the Hutterites, have a strong tradition of charity to outgroups along with missionary work among other ethnic groups.  Nineteenth-century Mennonite homes typically had a “beggar’s room” especially for transients to whom hospitality was to be extended as a Christian principle, suggesting relatively benign attitudes toward outgroup members.  These traits would also tend to minimize conflict with other groups.  Indeed, the Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, are the object of the curiosity and admiration of five million tourists a year.  There is a long history of governments inviting Anabaptists to settle because of their industry and craftsmanship and expertise in agriculture.  The conclusion is that although the presence of Amish and Hutterites in modern society would undoubtedly trigger ingroup/outgroup mechanisms and this lead to some negative attributions, the general lack of resource competition with the surrounding society has not triggered any large outburst of hostility in the modern world. 

MacDonald gives an Amish population of 140,000 as of 1991.  As of 2007, there are 227,000. 

Their lack of ethnocentrism is interesting in that they end up with the same position as the Swipples: race is meaningless.  These religious fundamentalists don’t believe in Darwin, but the Jews have shown that you don’t need to believe in biology in order to believe in racial purity.  Mormons go around converting Guatemalans and Haitians to their faith and it looks like maybe Amish would too if they could convince nonwhites to give up modern technology.  Still, you’d think that generations of inbreeding would increase ethnocentrism (more genes shared within the tribe) and these groups may just be spouting anti-racism to tell the researchers what they want to hear.

The Anabaptists are like the Swipples and the men of the Enlightenment-members of a culture that could’ve only reflected the gene pool of the white race.