Adam Kirsch — Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice

The Michael Shermer Show Archives

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Since Hamas’s attack on Israel last October 7, the term “settler colonialism” has become central to public debate in the United States. A concept new to most Americans, but already established and influential in academic circles, settler colonialism is shaping the way many people think about the history of the United States, Israel and Palestine, and a host of political issues.

This short book is the first to examine settler colonialism critically for a general readership. By critiquing the most important writers, texts, and ideas in the field, Adam Kirsch shows how the concept emerged in the context of North American and Australian history and how it is being applied to Israel. He examines the sources of its appeal, which, he argues, are spiritual as much as political; how it works to delegitimize nations; and why it has the potential to turn indignation at past injustices into a source of new injustices today. A compact and accessible introduction, rich with historical detail, the book will speak to readers interested in the Middle East, American history, and today’s most urgent cultural-political debates.

Adam Kirsch is the author of several books of poetry and criticism. A 2016 Guggenheim Fellow, Kirsch is an editor at the Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Review section and has written for publications including The New Yorker, Slate, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Times Book Review, Poetry, and Tablet. He lives in New York. His new book is On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice.

Shermer and Kirsch discuss:

• Settler ideology
• Settler colonialism
• Colonialism
• Decolonization
• “The colonizers came to stay—invasion is a structure not an event.” —Patrick Wolfe
• Wolfe: “logic that initially informed frontier killing transmutes into different modalities, discourses and institutional formations as it undergirds the historical development and complexification of settler society.”
• Genocide and “necropolitical transfer”
• Kirsch: “If the definition of a progressive movement is that it believes the future can be better than the past, then the ideology of settler colonialism is not progressive, because it believe the past was better than the future.”

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