The settler mindset has long outlived the immediate settler colonists that were genociding the natives or otherwise assisting it by stealing land (with extra steps). Nobody who uses the term has that meaning. We are referring to the settler colonial psychology that persists, and particularly its US version that is merged with white supremacy and national chauvinism.
You can also recognize it in other Euro settler colonists like the Afrikaners and “Israelis”. They tell the same stories about deserving the land, of doing a better job with it, of blaming the colonized for fighting back or “bringing up the past”, they seed conversations with racial supremacist implications and sometimes just overt racism. Are cowboys the good guys? Is it cool to be a cowboy? If you picture a cowboy in your head, are they a white guy? Most cowboys were brown and a substantial minority were black. American settler psychology has in some ways moved beyond those examples, however, as the “settlement” is nearly complete so they can entertain performative actions like cynical land acknowledgements while never supporting Land Back or even just basic material improvements for natice people. They can temporarily “feel bad”, but not so bad as to need to actually do anything, because the national genocide doesn’t warrant doing even one tangible thing per year.
I have not gotten too deep into the material basis of the settler mindset, but it is also prevalent and the most important. The fundamental fact of free or almost free land (stolen land) led to an economic base premised on it that has been slowly closing up. It acted as a release valve for social pressures that advanced in Europe, it could create profits from essentially nothing and be a carrot dangled in front of the face of generations that told their kids and grandkids that you could just work hard and go be a farmer. Two depressions resulted from the loss of the material basis for this but not the culture, as The New Deal and associated red scare then coincided with the US firmly taking over as prime imperialist, propping up the welfare of white people of settler culture via neocolonial exploitation. Pineapples on tables and virtual guarantees on jobs and cheap houses for a few generations. Not so much for black or brown people.
These are things in living memory. They color all of our experiences, ambitions, cultural references, and attitudes towards one another - and what we think we owe each other (usually nothing per this mindset).
Re: knee jerk reactions, yes of course, it is supposed to be dismissive when you call someone a settler to their face. It is usually an irrefutable fact and they don’t know how to deal with it because they don’t understand it. Is it always wrong to be dismissive? I think it can carry important emotional content so as to agitate others. Maybe the audience isn’t the centrist settler, or is otherwise someone they think it would be a waste of time to try and convert directly. Most of the time they are going to be right about that. A “centrist” sharing their opinion already lacks humility and that’s rarely the place a person can improve from.
The overwhelming majority of leftists I know used to be centrists at some point in their lives. Also, I’m really astonished that you openly admit that you use the word “settler” specifically to be antagonizing. I kind of thought that was the bailey, not the motte.
Given that you don’t organize, how many leftists do you know? The people I know ran quite the gamut before winding up coherently left.
I don’t know why you’d be astonished at the term being used dismissively. Generally it’s when someone is being white supremacist, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, etc. They may not even realize it at first because it’s normalized for them, but when they respond negatively to correction well guess who’s digging in their heels about being shitty. That’s exactly who you don’t want to cater to. They will eat up all of your time and fight you the whole time because they have not developed basic humility.
Like, all my friends are leftists. When we talk about politics, they sound like leftists, they say leftist things, and espouse leftist values. My friends are all leftists because my friends’ friends are leftists and I make friends with my friends’ friends.
Regarding “settler,” I think it’s a motte-and-bailey tactic you’re using. The motte – the easily defensible position – is that settler refers to people who are bigoted. The bailey – the hard to defend position, but which is easily equivocated for the motte – is that it refers to any non-indigenous person. The reason I see this equivocation is because in my mind, a settler does not stop being a settler simply because they turn into an ally for indigenous people. Settlerdom is a property of a person that depends only on their geographic location and ancestry, not their philosophy. Father Le Jeune is generally regarded as an ally to the linguistic preservation of indigenous languages in the pacific northwest, and he even helped develop a writing system for Chinuk Wawa – but was he not a settler?
I don’t deny that it’s a useful verbal weapon against bigots. I would merely like it to be well-understood that a verbal weapon is what it is intended to be.
Like, all my friends are leftists. When we talk about politics, they sound like leftists, they say leftist things, and espouse leftist values. My friends are all leftists because my friends’ friends are leftists and I make friends with my friends’ friends.
Why would you think this would be in some way representative? It’s just your friend network.
Regarding “settler,” I think it’s a motte-and-bailey tactic you’re using. The motte – the easily defensible position – is that settler refers to people who are bigoted. The bailey – the hard to defend position, but which is easily equivocated for the motte – is that it refers to any non-indigenous person. […]
You’re wrong in your attempt to identify a fallacy and are doing your own one at the same time (straw man). I have explained at least twice that being a settler is a psychology derived from settler colonialism. Someone else suggested that you read Sakai. Have you done so before trying to contradict and lecture? Have you asked questions about a topic that is clearly new to you?
You keep belaboring this straw man that it means anyone non-indigenous. I think I was pretty clear on this, so can you explain why you are pretending otherwise?
I don’t deny that it’s a useful verbal weapon against bigots. I would merely like it to be well-understood that a verbal weapon is what it is intended to be.
Why would you think this would be in some way representative? It’s just your friend network.
I think it’s representative of my friend network. Perhaps I misunderstood what you were asking. This was a response to “how many leftists do you know?”
No I have not read Sakai yet. This topic is not new to me, I just disagree with you. But very well, I am glad that we have reached the mutual agreement that it is not an appropriate word for non-indigenous people in general, which was my original point that you responded to:
Reading this reminded me about another unpopular opinion: I think “settler” and “colonizer” are poor terms for non-indigenous people broadly.
As I see it, it turns out we both agree. I misunderstood your initial response to that statement as one that was intending to be a counterargument. So, sorry – I really didn’t mean to straw man you; I legitimately misunderstood what your point was.
I think it’s representative of my friend network. Perhaps I misunderstood what you were asking. This was a response to “how many leftists do you know?”
And what was that in response to?
No I have not read Sakai yet. This topic is not new to me, I just disagree with you.
These are somewhat contradictory statements.
But very well, I am glad that we have reached the mutual agreement that it is not an appropriate word for non-indigenous people in general, which was my original point that you responded to:
Reading this reminded me about another unpopular opinion: I think “settler” and “colonizer” are poor terms for non-indigenous people broadly.
As I see it, it turns out we both agree. I misunderstood your initial response to that statement as one that was intending to be a counterargument. So, sorry – I really didn’t mean to straw man you; I legitimately misunderstood what your point was.
I introduced the use of the term. When you started talking about your own understanding, I told you I was talking about something else and explained what it was twice and with examples and context. So far as I can tell that was entirely ignored in order to seek conflict. This is a tendency many of us have at the beginning, but we must train it out of ourselves because it is highly counterproductive.
The settler mindset has long outlived the immediate settler colonists that were genociding the natives or otherwise assisting it by stealing land (with extra steps). Nobody who uses the term has that meaning. We are referring to the settler colonial psychology that persists, and particularly its US version that is merged with white supremacy and national chauvinism.
You can also recognize it in other Euro settler colonists like the Afrikaners and “Israelis”. They tell the same stories about deserving the land, of doing a better job with it, of blaming the colonized for fighting back or “bringing up the past”, they seed conversations with racial supremacist implications and sometimes just overt racism. Are cowboys the good guys? Is it cool to be a cowboy? If you picture a cowboy in your head, are they a white guy? Most cowboys were brown and a substantial minority were black. American settler psychology has in some ways moved beyond those examples, however, as the “settlement” is nearly complete so they can entertain performative actions like cynical land acknowledgements while never supporting Land Back or even just basic material improvements for natice people. They can temporarily “feel bad”, but not so bad as to need to actually do anything, because the national genocide doesn’t warrant doing even one tangible thing per year.
I have not gotten too deep into the material basis of the settler mindset, but it is also prevalent and the most important. The fundamental fact of free or almost free land (stolen land) led to an economic base premised on it that has been slowly closing up. It acted as a release valve for social pressures that advanced in Europe, it could create profits from essentially nothing and be a carrot dangled in front of the face of generations that told their kids and grandkids that you could just work hard and go be a farmer. Two depressions resulted from the loss of the material basis for this but not the culture, as The New Deal and associated red scare then coincided with the US firmly taking over as prime imperialist, propping up the welfare of white people of settler culture via neocolonial exploitation. Pineapples on tables and virtual guarantees on jobs and cheap houses for a few generations. Not so much for black or brown people.
These are things in living memory. They color all of our experiences, ambitions, cultural references, and attitudes towards one another - and what we think we owe each other (usually nothing per this mindset).
Re: knee jerk reactions, yes of course, it is supposed to be dismissive when you call someone a settler to their face. It is usually an irrefutable fact and they don’t know how to deal with it because they don’t understand it. Is it always wrong to be dismissive? I think it can carry important emotional content so as to agitate others. Maybe the audience isn’t the centrist settler, or is otherwise someone they think it would be a waste of time to try and convert directly. Most of the time they are going to be right about that. A “centrist” sharing their opinion already lacks humility and that’s rarely the place a person can improve from.
The overwhelming majority of leftists I know used to be centrists at some point in their lives. Also, I’m really astonished that you openly admit that you use the word “settler” specifically to be antagonizing. I kind of thought that was the bailey, not the motte.
Given that you don’t organize, how many leftists do you know? The people I know ran quite the gamut before winding up coherently left.
I don’t know why you’d be astonished at the term being used dismissively. Generally it’s when someone is being white supremacist, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, etc. They may not even realize it at first because it’s normalized for them, but when they respond negatively to correction well guess who’s digging in their heels about being shitty. That’s exactly who you don’t want to cater to. They will eat up all of your time and fight you the whole time because they have not developed basic humility.
Like, all my friends are leftists. When we talk about politics, they sound like leftists, they say leftist things, and espouse leftist values. My friends are all leftists because my friends’ friends are leftists and I make friends with my friends’ friends.
Regarding “settler,” I think it’s a motte-and-bailey tactic you’re using. The motte – the easily defensible position – is that settler refers to people who are bigoted. The bailey – the hard to defend position, but which is easily equivocated for the motte – is that it refers to any non-indigenous person. The reason I see this equivocation is because in my mind, a settler does not stop being a settler simply because they turn into an ally for indigenous people. Settlerdom is a property of a person that depends only on their geographic location and ancestry, not their philosophy. Father Le Jeune is generally regarded as an ally to the linguistic preservation of indigenous languages in the pacific northwest, and he even helped develop a writing system for Chinuk Wawa – but was he not a settler?
I don’t deny that it’s a useful verbal weapon against bigots. I would merely like it to be well-understood that a verbal weapon is what it is intended to be.
Why would you think this would be in some way representative? It’s just your friend network.
You’re wrong in your attempt to identify a fallacy and are doing your own one at the same time (straw man). I have explained at least twice that being a settler is a psychology derived from settler colonialism. Someone else suggested that you read Sakai. Have you done so before trying to contradict and lecture? Have you asked questions about a topic that is clearly new to you?
You keep belaboring this straw man that it means anyone non-indigenous. I think I was pretty clear on this, so can you explain why you are pretending otherwise?
I have no idea what that is supposed to mean.
I think it’s representative of my friend network. Perhaps I misunderstood what you were asking. This was a response to “how many leftists do you know?”
No I have not read Sakai yet. This topic is not new to me, I just disagree with you. But very well, I am glad that we have reached the mutual agreement that it is not an appropriate word for non-indigenous people in general, which was my original point that you responded to:
As I see it, it turns out we both agree. I misunderstood your initial response to that statement as one that was intending to be a counterargument. So, sorry – I really didn’t mean to straw man you; I legitimately misunderstood what your point was.
And what was that in response to?
These are somewhat contradictory statements.
I introduced the use of the term. When you started talking about your own understanding, I told you I was talking about something else and explained what it was twice and with examples and context. So far as I can tell that was entirely ignored in order to seek conflict. This is a tendency many of us have at the beginning, but we must train it out of ourselves because it is highly counterproductive.