On Settler Colonialism

September 15, 2024
A poet and critic argues that an academic idea has alchemized into jet fuel for antisemitism. In this slim, carefully argued book, Kirsch contends that the notion of settler colonialism is now a lethal ideology, drunk on its own violence. An editor at theWall Street Journal, Kirsch says this danger burst into view in the widespread global response to Hamas' slaughter of 1,200 Israeli Jews on Oct. 7, 2023. "In a time of terrible grief and anger, the ideas discussed here may seem abstract," he writes, "but in the long term, nothing does more than our ideas to determine the ways we feel and act." He describes a "frank enthusiasm for violence against Israeli civilians" in much of the current political discourse, asserting that "it's impossible to understand progressive politics today without grasping the idea of settler colonialism and the worldview that derives from it." Kirsch identifies its most famous construct, from Patrick Wolfe, a British-born Australian scholar. Wolfe wrote in 1968 that settler colonialism is enacted when "the colonizers came to stay--invasion is a structure not an event." Scholars pointed this lens initially at Australia, Canada, and the United States. Kirsch sees land acknowledgments as one voguish thread. Others have critiqued land acknowledgments as toothless moral theater, appealing to American Puritanism. But when the settler colonialism lens is applied to Israel, the Jewish state is deemed to be illegitimate, outraging Jewish citizens who see these contested spaces as home. Such seemingly innocuous practices as land acknowledgments, Kirsch argues, lead to young people harassing their Jewish peers on college campuses. They "are not ashamed of themselves for the same reason that earlier generations were not ashamed to persecute and kill Jews--because they have been taught that it is an expression of virtue." Kirsch, who often writes about Jewish ideas, believes there is "no true indigeneity." He writes compellingly, laying out his arguments with the care of a poet. But by keeping his focus assiduously off of Israel's lethal assault on Gaza--and the wider issue of Palestinian suffering--the author dilutes his case. A rigorous moral reckoning falters by leaving out half of the equation.

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