The Use and Abuse of the 'Settler Colonialism' idea

Graeme Kemp reviews 'On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice’ by Adam Kirsch (2024)

As turbulent events and violence continue to unfold in the Middle East, long after the October 7th, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas, Adam Kirsch has contributed a short but powerful book about a growing ideology that seeks to explain much of the backdrop to this conflict between Israel and other armed groups: the concept of settler colonialism.

Yet the application of this term settler colonialism extends beyond the issue of Israel and Palestine; it is used to explain race issues in the USA, Canada and Australia, for instance. These countries are seen by some as examples of ‘colonialist’ states created against the will of indigenous peoples.

However, it is the increased use of terms like ‘settler colonialism’ to explain the current state of such countries that makes it such a worrying phenomenon, according to Adam Kirsch.

It is Kirsch’s contention that the explanatory tool of ‘settler colonialism’ is flawed as a way to analyse relations between ethnic groups in certain countries. It is a dubious method of trying to correct historical injustices. As Kirsch points out, events in the Middle East over the past year or so can provoke a strange reaction among many so-called progressives. On October 7th, Hamas terrorists attacked Jewish Israeli targets, killing over a thousand people and taking hundreds hostage. Young and old were subject to mutilation, rape and death.

Yet, as Kirsch notes, the assault on Israeli citizens provoked an unexpected response among many in the West: an outpouring of pro-Palestinian sentiment – and a decided lack of sympathy for the suffering of the Israelis. He notes a new, unpleasant tone heard in language used by the critics of Israel, not least in higher education. For example:

“Excitement and enthusiasm over Hamas’s exploit would have been par for the course in Gaza or the West Bank, Cairo or Damascus; now it was coming from Ivy League campuses, the Democratic Socialists of America, and Black Lives Matter.” (Page 3).

Yale professor Zareena Grewal described Israel as a lethal “settler state” (Page 3) that Palestinians had every right to resist by fighting. Joseph Massad, a Columbia University professor, similarly described the attack by Hamas as an important act of resistance against a settler colony and a significant blow to Israeli colonists. Kirsch quotes a disturbing range of opinions favouring the terror unleashed against Israel – the justification repeatedly being that Israel is a ‘settler-colonial’ state oppressing non-white, non-European Palestinians.

Adam Kirsch notes two things here: firstly, a belief among many that the violence unleashed against Israelis was either understandable or justified. Secondly, he sees the repeated use of the term settler colonial in explanations of events, noting:

“Indeed, it’s impossible to understand progressive politics today without grasping the idea of settler colonialism and the worldview that derives from it.” (Page 5).

Indeed, ‘settler colonialism’ is a term used to explain not only historical events but also current issues such as the environment, gender and the nature of capitalism.

This view, as Kirsch notes, sees the presence of all Israelis in the state of Israel as illegitimate or suspect, not just Israeli Jews who have arrived as immigrants to that country, or are living on occupied territory. Israel itself is seen as being built on land that belongs to indigenous Palestinians.

Similarly, the USA can also be viewed as a settler colonial state, wrongly constructed on land that really belongs to Native Americans – and always will rightly be theirs.

And it is here that Adam Kirsch highlights in his book another key idea in the anti-colonialist discourse: invasion is a structure, not an event. This phrase comes via Patrick Wolfe – an Australian scholar. He initially applied this idea to the British settlement of Australia, but its relevance has been extended to other ‘colonial’ states like the USA and Canada.

While it is true that in past centuries European colonisers pushed out and marginalised many of the indigenous people they encountered, the idea that invasion is a structure, not just an event, extends its reach into the present day. It implies that the original injustice is being renewed and maintained right now through visible and invisible structures of oppression. It is effectively what many call a form of structural racism.

So European settlement of other countries – and oppression of the original inhabitants – is a present-day structure that repeats the violence of the original event of colonisation. The implication is therefore that the descendants of European settlers are still settlers themselves, Kirsch points out. And from these unjust colonial structures flow the evils of capitalist excess, imperialism, nationalism, racism and even sexism.

Such claims now have a burgeoning range of academic journals to support them, focusing on such topics as native feminism, as well as settler colonial ways of ‘seeing’ – and attempting to explain how settler-colonialist structures impact areas such as health inequalities.

As Kirsch notes, the only solution to such oppressive settler-colonial power structures is seen as decolonisation. Yet, as the author notes, how one can meaningfully ‘decolonise’ the USA today is not entirely clear. The language of decolonisation demands rather obscure solutions such as “interrupting, dismantling, and refusing” (Page 11) a settler future. This casts doubt on the USA or Israel existing in their present forms.

Decolonisation is therefore not just a metaphor, as someone once said. The ‘settler’ nation must go. As Adam Kirsch notes, on October 7th this notion became a bloody reality in Israel.

The ‘settler’ culture that justifies and sustains the dominance of Europeans is seen as shaping society’s sense of reality itself. Indeed, settler colonial power structures that depend on such an ideology could even be described as genocidal. Such European ‘settler’ domination can be explained as an attempt to control the land that belongs to indigenous peoples, through culture itself. And ‘settler’ ways of being can’t be allowed to continue.

Even the creation of national parks (e.g., in North America) can represent a form of colonisation, if created on ‘native’ lands. Kirsch notes how a controversy arose around the proposal to erect the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) – an observatory – on Mauna Kea, an extinct volcano in Hawaii. Bizarrely, two professors of Geography objected to the TMT, claiming that it represented Western scientific objectivity – and embodied alien notions of time, space and matter – located within a domineering, settler-colonial discourse! It is alarming to see scientific knowledge racialised in this way.

The process of colonial domination can be seen in attempts at ‘assimilation’ – incorporating ‘native’ people into society by making them citizens, along with everyone else. It can also be seen in ‘multicultural transfer’ – whereby ‘indigenous’ people become just another ethnic minority within wider society, losing their original prominent status, according to some radical thinkers. All these things devalue indigenous peoples, it is claimed.

As Kirsch explains, some of the above ideas may be rooted in a desire for justice over past wrongs – but that should not lead, he argues, to further injustices today. As he points out, decolonisation thinking is not progressive – it seems to believe that the (pre-colonial) past of many societies was better than any future we could work towards together.

The notion of settler colonialism is pessimistic about any progress that various societies have made towards ethnic or racial equality. This negative analysis fails to live up to the ideals of black civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, who believed that the arc of the moral universe leaned towards racial justice for all. MLK, as Kirsch points out, was keen to make sure that despite racial injustices, the existing USA eventually lived up to its ideal of racial equality – becoming at last the country it claimed to be, for everyone.

Yet settler colonialism, as an explanation, rejects this optimistic view of American history. For Kirsch, however, the past cannot be undone; there is no going back.

Kirsch is clear in linking the settler-colonial analysis and decolonisation to other contemporary identitarian and critical social justice movements. The language and thinking are obviously recognisable from other radical political movements today.

He notes too how Palestinian organisations are now using the language of settler colonialism. The Palestinian BDS National Committee has called for boycotts, disinvestment and sanctions against Israel, referring to themselves as “indigenous Palestinians” (Page 78). Yet, as Adam Hirsch argues, the creation of a Jewish state in the last century did not erase or replace those inhabitants of Palestine, although it did displace them.

So, for Adam Hirsch, the dangers of the above thinking are obvious: radical movements and their ideas focus on the most negative aspects of a country’s history and erect a whole political ideology around it. Decolonisation is one such unrealistic movement:

“So, too, with the ideology of settler colonialism: the impossibility of true decolonisation impels the discourse about it to become more extreme, conspiratorial, and violent.” (Page 128). And that, arguably, sums up organisations like Hamas.

As Hirsch concludes his book ‘On Settler Colonialism’, to embrace such thinking in the context of Israel and the wider Middle East could only ever have dire consequences. To fully return the land to the Palestinian Arabs who lived there before 1948 would create further chaos and more bloodshed. It would be unjust to those born in Israel through no choice of their own. Yet Israel is often turned into a symbol of evil. Yes, the Palestinians should also have the security and dignity of their own homeland – and this is not to deny any past injustices – – but not every loss can be reversed. The analysis offered by settler-colonialist thought offers little to any future peace process.

This book is an excellent contribution to understanding disturbing ideologies and their negative impact on real-world conflicts. This short book should be required reading for everyone interested in cultural politics today, including the Middle East.

A prominent public intellectual tackles one of the most crucial political ideas of our moment. Buy On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice by Adam Kirsch.

Graeme Kemp is a former teacher and civil servant who currently lives in the Midlands. He is an English and Cultural Studies graduate of several universities in England and Scotland. He has also contributed book reviews to the Don't Divide Us website and 'Bournbrook' Magazine.