from many occupations, he nevertheless believed that Jews were racially predisposed to unscrupulous capitalism but also that the Jewish people were intellectually superior. According to Irish historian Aidan Beatty, Davitt was not an antisemite, because his anti-Jewish statements coexisted with others which were supportive of Jews. According to Stanford University historian Steven Zipperstein, Davitt "emerged as a folk hero among Jews" following his writings on Kishinev, with plays written about him in English and Yiddish. Moody considers that Davitt's "passion for social justice... transcended nationality". Reception The American abolitionist James Redpath considered Davitt "the William Lloyd Garrison of the anti-landlord movement". Political scientist Eugenio Biagini views Davitt as "a social radical in the Tom Paine tradition" who was the "chief inspirer of the Land League and the greatest hero of popular nationalism". Freeman's Journal lead writer James Winder Good hailed Davitt as the man whose "hammer strokes destroyed a system of land tenure, which for over three centuries had been the most powerful instrument in encompassing the economic degradation of the Irish people, and ensuring their subjugation to alien rule." James Connolly considered Davitt "an unselfish idealist, who in his enthusiasm for a cause gave his name, and his services freely at the beck and call of men who despised his ideals". According to Moody, in the estimation of his "innumerable" admirers, his faults were outweighed by "his great-heartedness, his self-sacrifice, and his invincible courage". According to King, Davitt "may fairly be seen as a founding father of Irish democracy". Moody wrote that Davitt's habit of "reinterpreting his past actions and attitudes in accordance with altered conditions was partly the outcome of a longing for integrity in his political conduct". An alternative interpretation is that this inconsistency is evidence of "Davitt's devious character", in the words of English historian Pamela Horn. The historical value of Davitt's books, such as the "deeply influential" The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland (1904) has been hotly debated in the century since it was written. His view of Irish history was deeply shaped by his family's experiences during the Great Famine, and Davitt subscribed to the popular view that it was an "artificial famine" which the British government chose not to alleviate. His version of the Land War, that it was an uncomplicated struggle between landlords and tenants, was widely accepted, but has been complicated by later scholarship. Moody, who disagreed with Davitt's conclusions, admitted