The Ideology Behind Campus Protests Is About More Than Israel - WSJ

(snip)

The passions on campus are focused on the war in Gaza, with protesters accusing the U.S. (and in many cases their own universities) of complicity in what they call Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. But the charge resonates for many young people, especially the most dedicated activists, for reasons that go beyond the conflict that began with Hamas’s attack last Oct. 7. The ideological basis for the anti-Israel protests is a broader set of ideas about “settler colonialism,” an influential academic concept that understands certain countries as inherently and permanently illegitimate because of the way they were founded. And while Israel is currently the most prominent example, the ideology of settler colonialism has even deeper criticisms to make of the United States. Indeed, in recent years, theorists and writers inspired by the idea of settler colonialism have created what amounts to a new countermyth of American history.

(snip)

This understanding of American history could be credible, even as a myth, only so long as the country was defined solely by the experience of its white citizens. Of course, writers like Bancroft knew that the land of freedom was built in part by enslaved people from Africa, on territory conquered from Native Americans. But these parts of the American story were tacitly agreed, by the official tellers of that story, to be inessential. That was the price of sustaining the belief that the history of America was synonymous with the history of liberty.

(snip)

It is no accident that the ideology of settler colonialism is flourishing today at the same time as right-wing populism. Both see our turbulent political moment as an opportunity to permanently change the way Americans think about their country. And as is often the case, the extremes of right and left are united in disparaging the compromises of liberalism, which they see as weakly evasive. In the case of settler colonialism, this means rejecting the understanding of American history that has been mainstream since the mid-20th century—that it is a story of slow progress toward fulfilling the nation’s founding promise of freedom for all.

(snip)

As this way of thinking about history and politics gains influence among educated young Americans, the unrest seen on college campuses this year may turn out to be just the beginning.

https://archive.ph/FwHAL