'Settler colonialism': A dangerous intellectual virus loose on American campus

Many Americans were surprised and mystified by the outbreak of pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas, and antisemitic protests on college campuses across the nation earlier this year. What on earth was going on? Why were American college students in such large numbers marching and occupying buildings in favor of Hamas (identified by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization) and chanting “Palestine from the river to the sea” (the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea)?

The fact that approximately 8 million Israelis live in that geographical space meant that they would have to be removed or subjugated to accomplish this goal.

Recently, I encountered a volume that explained the ideological and intellectual origin of this movement. It is called “settler colonialism” and it is an academic thesis that posits that certain countries are “inherently and permanently illegitimate because of the way they were founded.” Adam Kirsch, On Settler Colonialism. Ideology, Violence, and Justice (2024).

Kirsch’s brilliant and insightful book traces the rise and influence of this toxic academic theory and the alarming cultural consequences its widespread acceptance would portend for America in particular and the West in general.

Settler colonialism’s central premise is that settlement is not a past historical event, but instead a “present structure.” In other words, every inhabitant of a country like America who is not descended from the original indigenous population will always be an interloper, not a legitimate inhabitant.

This reality, in turn, demands the settler nation be “dismantled” or “decolonized.” The illegitimate settlers must confess their sins and seek to decolonize. In the case of America, the Western civilization that superseded the original indigenous civilization of native Americans must be dismantled.

Examples of these “confessions” are often found in public acknowledgments, often recited on public occasions, of aboriginal land ownership. For example, Northwestern University proclaims, “The Northwestern campus sits on the traditional homelands of the people of the Council of Three Fires, the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Odawa as well as the Menominee, Miami and Ho-Chunk nations.”

The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center goes further in its announcement that the Center “occupies the land of the Mvskoke (“Muscogee/Creek) Nation. These individuals were forcibly removed against their will and we reap the benefits of their turmoil. Our occupation of this land is an act of privilege.”

Once the settlers have acknowledged the “illegitimacy” of their civilization, they must seek to dismantle and remake it. As Kirsch points out, this also involves the rejection of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of an America that fulfilled the promise of its founding documents and led to a country where “everyone was judged not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character.”

Settler colonialism rejects Dr. King’s vision and concludes that “a struggle for equal citizenship looks like a masked acceptance of final defeat: total colonization.”

When applied to Israel, settler colonialism perceives Israel as the product of Jewish colonization (“white settler colonialism”) over the “native” Palestinians. This ignores the fact that the Jews were in the Holy Land long before the Palestinians. It also conveniently ignores the fact that after the U.N. Partition in 1948, five modern Arab armies attacked the Jewish state and tried to obliterate it.

When the cease-fire ending that conflict took effect, Jordan expelled approximately 500,000 Jews from the “West Bank,” a term coined in 1948 to identify the Jordanian-controlled part of Palestine, areas which had been referred to since biblical times as Judea and Samaria. The great preponderance of forced population relocation in the biblical land of Israel from 1948 forward involved Jews who were expelled.

When it comes to America, settler colonialism has as its goal the delegitimization of the American experiment as immoral and reprehensible.

When it comes to the Western European settlement of the Americas, the history is complex. As Jeff Fynn-Paul explained and illustrated in Not Stolen. The Truth About European Colonialism in the New World (2023), the story is far more varied and complex than has often been presented in historical narratives or popular belief.

In a vast oversimplification, you had Western civilization coming into contact with an indigenous civilization that was far less advanced. As one of my old history professors summarized it, “What happened was inevitable. The way it happened was unconscionable.”

It should be said, however, that what the original settlers of North and South America encountered was not the “noble savage.” The Incas and the Aztecs engaged in human sacrifice in the tens of thousands annually.

An excellent example of this conflict in North America is beautifully and sympathetically told by S. C. Gwynne in Empire of the Summer Moon (2010). Gwynne tells the story of the European settlement of what is now Texas as they came into conflict with the Comanches, a ferocious and warlike tribe of native Americans who had defeated and appropriated the land of several other indigenous tribes including the Apaches. As Gwynne describes it, the Anglos were initially “profoundly shocked” by the extreme brutality of the Comanches against women and children. He then notes that the Texans' fourth and fifth century Pick and Celtic ancestors would have recognized Comanche practices as similar to their own.

Acknowledging the needless brutality and racial bigotry of white settlement of North America, one should also acknowledge that it was an advance for what we would define as civilization.

Far more importantly, it should be recognized that “settler colonialism” is intent on delegitimizing America to its people in order to deconstruct it and replace it with something else, heavily influenced by Marxism.

Kirsch concludes his important and helpful book by asserting:

“While the creation of the United States and Israel was a curse to some people, it has been a blessing to many others. It is a sign of ignorance to turn any country into a symbol of evil, but in the case of these countries in particular, it is also a sign of ideological malice.” 

To the extent that settler colonialism spreads into the American bloodstream, it will spread hatred, division and ill will.