In this week’s Hub book review, Patrick Luciani examines On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice, written by Adam Kirsch (W.W. Norton, 2024), and highlights how the Settler Colonialism is a flawed concept, and more of a critical theory than an ideology.
Immediately after the October 7 slaughter of 1,200 Israelis, campuses throughout North America and Europe erupted not against Hamas, the perpetrators of the violence, but against the victims—Jews. The same happened on September 1, when Hamas murdered six Israeli hostages. How could student demonstrators, who for a generation demanded “safe spaces” and mewed about protection from “microaggressions”, now take delight in the bloodshed and kidnapping of innocent men, women and children?
For an answer, we have to understand how the antisemitic virus of “Settler Colonialism” has been winding its way through the academy for the past 50 years, to the point that any resistance by scholars could end their careers. In other words, anti-colonial advocates have completely colonized the high ground of academic thinking that blames all of the world’s ills not only on Europe’s colonial past, but now counts Zionism and Jewish settlement in Israel as one of the world’s prime evils.
That is the subject of a recent book, On Settler Colonialism, by Adam Kirsch, who edits the Wall Street Journal Weekend Review. In less than 140 pages, Kirsch brilliantly lays out the rise of the Settler Colonialism concept, its fundamental weaknesses in history and philosophy, and its dangerous view of the future.
