Adam Kirsch On “Settler Colonialism”

His new book tackles much more than Israel.

Adam is a literary critic and poet. He’s been a senior editor at The New Republic and a contributing editor for Tablet and Harvard Magazine, and he’s currently an editor in the Wall Street Journal’s Review section. The author of many books, his latest is On Settler Colonialism: Violence, Ideology and Justice. I’ve been fascinated by the concept — another product of critical theory, as it is now routinely applied to Israel. We hash it all out.

For two clips of our convo — on the reasons why Europe explored the world, and the bastardization of “genocide” — pop over to our YouTube page.

Other topics: Adam’s roots in LA; coming from a long line of writers; the power of poetry; its current boom with Instagram and hip-hop; Larkin; the omnipresence of settler colonialism in human history; the Neanderthals; the Ulster colonists; the French in Algeria; replacement colonialism in Australia and North America; the viral catastrophe there; the 1619 Project; “decolonizing” a bookshelf; Marxism; Coates and fatalism toward the US; MLK’s “promissory note”; Obama’s “more perfect union”; migration under climate change; China the biggest polluter; More’s Utopia; the Holocaust; the Killing Fields; Rwanda; mass migration of Muslims to Europe; “white genocide”; Pat Buchanan; the settler colonialism in Israel; ancient claims to Palestine; the Balfour Declaration; British limits on migrant Jews in WWII; the US turning away Holocaust refugees; the UN partition plan; the 1948 war; the Nakba; Ben-Gurion; Jabotinsky’s “Iron Wall”; Clinton’s despair after 2000; ethnic cleansing in the West Bank; the nihilism of October 7; civilian carnage and human shields in Gaza; Arab countries denying Palestinians; a two-state solution; the moral preening of Coates; and the economic and liberal triumphs of Israel.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Andrew Neil on UK and US politics, John Gray on the state of liberal democracy, Jon Rauch on his new book on “Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy,” Sebastian Junger on near-death experiences, Evan Wolfson on the history of marriage equality, Yoni Appelbaum on the American Dream, Nick Denton on the evolution of new media, and Ross Douthat on how everyone should be religious. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

Here’s a fan of last week’s pod with Mary Matalin:

I have liked Matalin for many years, and again she did not disappoint. What I love about the Dishcast is the depth you go into. You discover your guests more intimately, and you as well. I was surprised a few weeks ago when you talked about your faith and your mother. It was lovely.

Anyway, thank you! Every Friday I look forward to listening to your guest and reading your column. I bought your book, Virtually Normal, after it was mentioned last week.

Another listener dissents:

After hearing your discussion with Mary Matalin about your concept of God’s relationship to humans, as exemplified by the life and death of Jesus, I think you are wrong about something. We are not saved or improved by suffering; we are saved by God’s grace, which is God’s gift of Himself to us. Suffering is caused by mistakes we make which interfere with our ability to receive, appreciate, and absorb grace, which over time changes us and allows us to experience union with God — even sometimes, if we’re lucky, in our lifetimes.

The goal of life is happiness, and if we are mired in suffering, we’re on the wrong path. Jesus suffered on the cross so that we, if we choose, don’t have to — or at the least don’t have to experience hell after we die. That is the message of the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Suffering is what can bring us to see and accept God’s grace. It’s not an end in itself. And it’s integral to human life. Our attempt to banish it is foolish.

Another dissenter looks to politics:

Happy New Year! I enjoyed the ramble with Mary Matalin, but you all were a bit too smug in raking progressives over the coals for Covid shutdowns, “defund the police,” trans issues, etc. However bad any of those was or is, it will never hold a candle to the colossal mistake of, say, promoting the Iraq War — a war created from thin air and arguably responsible for over a million deaths, accelerating destabilization of the Middle East, wasting billions of dollars, and fueling distrust in institutions (thus paving the way for Trump, etc.).

I know you have acknowledged this mistake, but Matalin didn’t express any regret over the war, or compassion for how people miscalculate in moments of crisis. To your credit, you did reach toward an explanation for why public health officials erred on some aspects of Covid out of fear. But how much of your support for the Iraq War came from instinctively disliking us peaceniks who were protesting in DC (brushed off by Bush as “focus groups”)? Clearly the left going nuts since 2016 was a sort of Trump Derangement Syndrome and wanting to stake out opposite positions, even if he was vaguely right about some things. Maybe resisting the instinct to oppose everything your opponents support can serve us all better this time around?

One other issue: there’s a legitimately difficult calculation to be made on how “tough on crime” to be in poor (often African-American) communities, what percentage of young men to keep in prison or saddle with lifetime underemployment due to felonies, etc. Obviously “defund the police” isn’t a reasonable position, but the 1990s tough-on-crime/“three strikes” era also overshot in terms of how best to improve kids’ life chances in those poor neighborhoods, how much to spend on prisons, and so on. I would have liked to hear a little more “on the one hand, on the other hand” from you all.

Yes, it was about as rambly an episode as we’ve yet run. But I loved it nonetheless. Mary’s life, mind, and personality shone through I thought.

Yes, I do think negative polarization can blind us to good things on the other side. I’ve tried to get better on this, and I think I have. But no, I don’t think the ‘90s were an overshoot. I think they were an attempt to achieve some very basic security in mostly African-American neighborhoods. And they succeeded. The only way out is better rearing for young black boys, more fatherhood, more role models, better schools, etc. But until then, mass incarceration is the least we can do to protect others from the predations of a minority of violent criminals.

Here’s another clip from the Matalin pod — on the old bogeyman of the Dems, Lee Atwater:

Here’s one more on Matalin — and an earlier guest:

Loved the episode, but your warning that it would be free-flowing was probably an understatement! I guess that was part of what it made it so compelling.

I wanted to jump in during your segment regarding the madness of the 2020-2024 policy discussions (e.g. BLM, Defund the Police). I thought your previous guest Musa al-Gharbi answered a lot of Mary’s questions. As early as 2014 or so, symbolic capitalists went completely off the rails and built a nonsensical worldview on top of some legitimate concerns about social inequality in the 21st Century.

This social contagion “captured” governments, NGOs, academia, and even religion (just read the signs outside Grace Presbyterian near DuPont Circle). They collectively enforced this worldview with Maoist tactics until it began to collapse under its own weight. To borrow from al-Gharbi, it arose because too many elites had too much time on their hands, society was generally working fairly well, and we had all been filled with neo-Marxist teachings since the 1980s, so it all had to be “burned down.”

I am a gay middle-aged man who has always been a political moderate with libertarian leanings. In the past few years, I have lost so many friends and received so many hostile lectures from the true believers, watched as total grifters received praise and wealth, and found myself jumping straight from semi-marginalized in the 1990s to having my boot on the throats of the masses by 2020. It was a crazy time and I cannot wait for its full repudiation.

Me too. On the recent pod with Brianna Wu:

I was happy to see you having a conversation with Brianna, since I’ve been following her for a while now. I’ve been relieved to see her moderate positions on trans issues, especially as it relates to minors. I’m extremely concerned about the impact of the radical activists on gay children and gay/lesbian people overall. I know Brianna has caught holy hell from the far left and far right, so I admire her courage.

Another calls the episode “a great and enlightening conversation.” And another:

I loved the podcast with Brianna Wu. So refreshing to hear you both speaking with such candor. It is not true, however, that nobody teaches Virtually Normal. I’ve used it before, in a course on US history from 1974-2001. And when I teach the class again this spring, and get to discussing the AIDS crisis, I’m going to ask students to listen to the first half of the remarkable episode about grief you recorded with Anderson Cooper.

Thanks! But when most universities study gays, they only do it through the prism of critical queer theory. It’s a terrible ideological grip.

A guest recommendation:

I just read David Samuels’ essay in Tablet, “Rapid-Onset Political Enlightenment,” which you referred to as “an essay built on Samuels’ pathological hatred of Barack Obama.” And I have to say the essay was one of the best explanations of what we in America have been through over the past 15 years. I could never understand the way groupthink permeated the landscape so quickly and uniformly, especially in the age of decentralized social media and after the fall of the MSM influence.

As a longtime listener of the Dishcast, I had to endure 90 minutes of Sam Harris and his “40 of 44 generals think Trump is a danger” bullshit that he repeated on several other podcasts as he was making the rounds in October. Sam never disclosed that the retired generals for the most part all have management consulting firms or work for contractors and therefore have to ensure they can still be hirable by the establishment. Sam even brought out the “Trump is a Russian Asset” song and you (I guess, since there is no video) nodded along approvingly without any pushback even though it has been proven to be a complete lie.

I think you should invite David Samuels onto the Dishcast. If Glenn Loury could have Norman Finkelstein and Amy Wax on his podcast, you could have Samuels on yours to explain how the rise of catchphrases like structural racism, defund the police, white privilege, assigned gender, and “stop the genocide in Gaza” were not accidental or organic, but were just clever marketing from the Democrat machine. The left is wrong on every position, but they have the best marketing.

Samuels laid out a conspiracy theory in which Barack Obama was behind every malign woke development since he left office. If you want some quick and easy template to explain everything in the last decade, and loathe Obama, I guess it might have some appeal. And I very much admire what Samuels has done with Tablet. It’s a real gift to the discourse. But his Iran obsession and Obama Derangement Syndrome are not my cup of tea.

Maybe we should have Amy Wax on too. Would anyone have a conniption if we did?

A reader responds to my last column of 2024, “I Was Right”:

Thank you so much for another wonderful year. It was a wild ride, and all of us in the Dish community appreciate the resilience that you and Chris showed through both personal and professional challenges.

Everything in your column seems correct to me. But to turn to the optimism point, I’m reminded of one of my favorite pieces of yours, “Goodbye to All That: Why Obama Matters,” in the December 2007 issue of The Atlantic. If only the Dems had appreciated the import of this in 2016, 2024, or arguably in 2020, we might have been spared any dose of Trump.

So, where is the next Obama?

Perhaps the thing we were most denied these past four years was a more thorough vetting of the alternatives to Biden and Harris: Buttigieg, Shapiro, Whitmer, Polis, to name a few. Ultimately, I’d be very curious to get your take on the center-left person who is best positioned to give us a good debate in 2028. I realize this might be “too soon,” but we know it’s coming. If the Vance beatdown of Walz taught us anything, it’s that there’s hope for a different kind of debate next time, and the biggest worry for us to avoid is Trump’s children doing to us what GW and HRC gave us in dynasty-seeking. I wonder who will seize the moment.

Me too. I do have hope the Dems will recover some sanity. It just usually takes time, unless some new Clinton or Obama shows up to save the day.

Another reader on the year-end column:

There is no denying that you were right in your assessment of the election and in Americans’ views of the left’s overreach, and it’s worth examining why you were, while so many pundits and pollsters totally whiffed. Primarily, it’s because far too many of today’s elites are ensconced in a bubble.

Back when Jon Stewart was relevant, I would regularly meet highly-educated professionals whose only exposure to right-of-center ideas or people was via the Daily Show. One of the correspondents would interview some yokel on the street about the controversy of the day, or Stewart would play a five-second video clip, taken out of context, of a GOP representative, and then mock it. Whenever I would explain the other side of an issue to such people, they were gobsmacked that there was a respectable counterargument, as they never imagined any such thing could exist.

I was reminded of this out-of-touchness when during your podcast with Michelle Goldberg, she asked incredulously when you became “radicalized,” solely because you — as ardent a Trump critic that exists — noted some objections to the left that might draw reasonable people to vote for Trump.

My advice to such people has long been the same: It’s a big country, and not everyone who sees things differently is a bigot. Listen to some other people. Talk to them. Consider their perspective. After all, they’re the ones actually living with the consequences of the policies you advocate for but don’t affect you, such as mass immigration or defunding the police. You’ll be amazed at how much you can learn from them. And you’ll keep misunderstanding the electorate if you refuse to engage with any of them.

I live among the bubbled. It was surreal talking to otherwise sane people who were quite confident Kamala Harris would win as late as October. One leading writer at a major magazine wrote me afterward:

This is such a terrific column, and people like me need to take it seriously. I, too, was struck by the Wall Street Journal piece about Biden’s decline, and I recall the angry reaction to their earlier piece. But you — and the Journal — were so much more right about Biden than people like me. I am very familiar with that Orwell quote, and I struggle, with mixed success, to do as he says.

So there’s hope for some kind of epistemic opening. Maybe.

Another reader continues a thread:

I’d like to make a comment regarding the reader who wrote, “There were numerous gun-related homicides in America that day and the media isn’t in a frenzy over those. They’re in a frenzy over the killing of a member of their own class — because make no mistake, the ruling class, corporate class, and journalistic class are all pooled from the same elite body of Americans.”

Mangione was a child of great wealth who went to private schools in the Northeast and ultimately to Penn. Brian Thompson was raised by a Midwestern working-class family, went to public high school, and graduated from the University of Iowa before working his way up the totem pole of the insurance industry from near the bottom. Only one of these two men was born “elite” — and it wasn’t the man who was shot in the back.

Our excitement to scapegoat the entirely wrong people seems to know no bounds. For people who don’t like the current setup of the American healthcare system (and this includes me), the idea that Brian Thompson deserves more blame for this than, say, Newt Gingrich, is preposterous. It’s like blaming American Airlines and United Airlines for 9/11.

Absolutely. Another responds to a Substack piece we plugged recently, “The Deep Roots of Irish Antisemitism”:

I am compelled to defend my country against the antisemitism charge. I write as a pro-Israel Irish man who detests the reflexive anti-Israel stance of many so-called “progressive “ elements in Ireland. But mostly this is not antisemitism, but a naive post-colonial view of the Palestinian issue in our body politic that’s largely coloured by our own history. I suspect most Irish Jews would share my view that Ireland is hostile to Netanyahu and his government, but not antisemitic. We have had many distinguished Jewish parliamentarians, lawyers, doctors, and regular citizens who have contributed to our civic life.

Yes, we have pockets of antisemitism. What country doesn’t? But our government is most definitely not antisemitic, but rather deeply hostile to this current Israeli government, as am I. I also believe the Israeli government is pulling their ambassador for the optics, nothing more. I also understand the deep trauma October 7th represents to all Israelis and the evil nature of Hamas, but the antisemitism charge is repugnant and unfair.

Thanks for that perspective. I find it persuasive. From an old-school Dishhead:

Back in the days of the Daily Dish, I recall you posting about an old manuscript that had been recovered — hundreds of years old, I think from the medieval period — of a Catholic rite for same-sex unions. I also remember a reference to a Renaissance writer who had heard of a group of men that had been just going ahead and getting married through Catholic sacrament on the grounds that it made perfect sense, and the writer remarked on what a fine group of people this was.

I’ve been looking for these on and off for a number of years, but so far I’ve been unable to devise search terms that will surface those posts. Could you help me find them? I’m doing some writing about the historic relationship between homosexuality and Christianity — which has been far less monotone than largely believed — and the bits about the manuscript in particular are of significant interest to me.

Also, do you have a recommendation on some reading on the subject? Particularly of times and places when same-sex love was somewhere on the spectrum between tacitly acknowledged with a wink to recognized. Also, to whatever degree I can impose, what is your take on John Boswell? I’d like to understand more before I try to read him, but so much of the criticism seems too defensive by half.

Two Dish posts on medieval gay marriage are here and here. The key historian is John Boswell, and his book, Same-Sex Unions In Premodern Europe. Sadly, the book is not as good as his previous masterpiece, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality. He was dying of AIDS as he finished the book on same-sex unions and was unable to defend it when it came out because he died a year earlier, at the age of 47. Evan Wolfson and I both dedicated ourselves to the struggle for same-sex marriage having read the first book. It’s a revelation.

By the way, here’s a photo I saw on X this week — “two young men hold a sign proclaiming their love and willingness to be legally married to one another, circa 1900”:

Maybe they were merely advertising for women suitors. But maybe they weren’t.

Next up, here’s the latest reader on the nasal beat:

I read with interest the sinus advice you gave recently. Sadly, my wife suffers with the same problem. When I told her about your recommendation, she checked the Afrin website and told me that you were not supposed to use it for more than three days. Is she missing something, or is prolonged use of Afrin not necessarily a good thing?

The comedian Nate Bargatze does a bit about his father becoming addicted to Afrin and having to go to the doctor as a result. Nate specifically mentions the three-day maximum usage warning on the label, so if you don’t believe me, believe Nate Bargatze!

Yes. I made a mistake. My bad. Here are the instructions: two puffs of Afrin, then two puffs of Flonase, then two puffs of Astrepo up each nostril. Do this for four days, then quit the Afrin and just use the Flonase and Astrepo twice daily. I’m really sorry I screwed that up. Every day, I first flush with Navage, then use the Flonase and Astrepo. I have not had an asthma attack since. But I’ll keep you posted.

As for the Semaglutide, my end-of-year analysis was 175 pounds and 12.1 percent body fat. That’s down from 187 pounds and 17 percent body fat a year ago. I’ve pretty much achieved my target weight. Because I’m nutty, I’ve decided to aim for 180 pounds and under 10 percent body fat by the end of 2025. It would be awesome to have some abs at some point before I die.

And this week was a big one for Truman. His first encounter with snow. He had a blast.

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