'Decolonisation' is about embracing 'original sin'

 

"Settler colonialism is ... the idea that countries founded by European colonialism—primarily countries like the United States, Canada, [New Zealand] and Australia, and then often by extension, Israel—are sort of permanently shaped by the original sin of colonisation. So that the countries, even hundreds of years after the original settlement, remain shaped by this settler colonial experience. And that a lot of the injustices and problems, as critics see it, with those countries can be explained by reference to that European settlement. ...
    "[A] settler colony would [originally] be a colony like Algeria or Rhodesia where Europeans had come to settle but had not displaced or replaced the native population. ... But, in the 1990s, settler colonialism came to be applied to countries with a very different history and situation, [like NZ,] Australia and ... North America. ... And, thinking about those countries as settler colonial societies means something very different. ... you can't decolonise the United States in the same way that you could decolonise Algeria by getting rid of the settlers. ... instead it means that you want to acknowledge that the country was sort of founded on the 'crime' of colonialism, of settlement, and change things about it that are directly related to that. And, it lines up with a lot of Progressive critique of the United States and other societies. So, people talk about the environment, about capitalism and inequality, about gender relations--but framing them as the results of settler colonialism. ....
    "[It] is such a flexible term that it can be applied to almost anything that one wants to criticise; and it puts social critics in a powerful position because you can say, 'Anything that's wrong with our country, it's a settler way of being. That's how we explain it, and we have to do penance for it.' ...
    "[T]here's an odd similarity with evangelical Christianity ... acknowledging that one is sinful, of saying: I've inherited this original sin, just as in the Christian doctrine of original sin. It's not something that I personally did. I personally didn't settle this country, but I've inherited it. I'm a settler by inheritance, and that the first step to curing yourself of this condition or purging the sin is to acknowledge that you are a sinner, to acknowledge that you're 'fallen.' ..."

~ Adam Kirsch in his interview with Russ Roberts on the EconTalk podcast episode: 'Understanding the Settler Colonialism Movement (with Adam Kirsch)'