“Angel of History,” image from Walter Benjamin, SFU
In Chapter 7, “Justice and Despair,” Adam Kirsch tries to make succumbing to injustice the mature option. His essay pretends to be deep, but it’s really just afraid of change, confusing comfort with morality. What he calls philosophy is really damage control for empire, an attempt to make giving up sound profound. He positions despair as clarity and treats hope as delusion, portraying the fight against colonialism as a moral mistake and treating resistance as excessive. It is the oldest colonial trick there is: convince the oppressed that their resistance is the real violence.
Kirsch claims to be examining “the ideology of settler colonialism,” but his essay functions more as a defense of it. He rewrites history as an emotional problem rather than a material one, a question of how to feel about injustice instead of how to end it. Throughout the chapter, he borrows from Walter Benjamin, scripture, and moral philosophy to argue that history’s horrors cannot be undone, only endured. But in doing so, he exposes exactly what he is trying to hide: the deep fear of what genuine justice would require.
This blog breaks down how Kirsch twists ideas of despair, morality, and decolonization to preserve the logic of domination, and why his argument, beneath all the literary polish, is little more than a plea to stop imagining freedom.
Walter Benjamin and the “Tradition of the Oppressed”
Kirsch draws on Walter Benjamin’s 1940 essay “On the Concept of History.” He recounts Benjamin’s suicide while fleeing Nazi persecution and uses it to frame Benjamin’s despair at “historical evil.” Kirsch writes:
“Despair in the face of historical evil is the subject of ‘On the Concept of History.’ In a series of short reflections, Benjamin argues that in the twentieth century it is no longer possible to believe in the idea of progress… ‘The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the “state of emergency” in which we live is not the exception but the rule,’ he writes. Rather than trying to accelerate the course of history, then, our duty is to resist it—‘to brush history against the grain.’”
Kirsch interprets Benjamin’s “angel of history” as a rejection of progress and as the root of modern moral pessimism. He connects this to how people now view the past through the eyes of the oppressed:
“Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe… Where they saw Christopher Columbus as a champion of progress, we see the people he killed, enslaved, and infected… and where many Americans once understood the founding of the State of Israel as the miraculous rebirth of a destroyed people, today many see it as a crime against the Palestinians.”
Kirsch claims, “The ideology of settler colonialism is founded on this shift in moral perspective.”
But this assumes that morality itself suddenly “shifted,” as if people never saw the horror before. The moral compass was always there, it was just manipulated. Indigenous, colonized, and enslaved peoples always knew what was wrong; they were simply silenced by power.
Kirsch’s framing makes this moral clarity sound like a late discovery rather than an ongoing resistance to historical violence.
He further cites John Collins of St. Lawrence University:
“For many who are tuned in to what Walter Benjamin called ‘the tradition of the oppressed,’ the centrality of Palestine is almost axiomatic. But an axiom is not a truth; it is a statement that must be accepted as true in order for a system of thought to function.”
Kirsch follows by claiming, “The fact that many of these conclusions are false and harmful should lead us to question whether the axiom is sound.”
But this is circular reasoning. If the conclusions (such as decolonization or liberation) are “harmful,” that is only because they threaten a harmful system. The harm lies in the structure being challenged, not in the moral premise itself.
Kirsch’s Core Claim: Settler Colonialism as a Theology of Despair
Kirsch argues:
“The ideology of settler colonialism is founded on a similar sense that history is evil and deserves to be repealed.”
But this is a strawman. The point isn’t that “history is evil,” it’s that the same historical evils are still being practiced. Recognizing that “history itself is a state of emergency” is not about rejecting history; it’s about changing the present that continues to reproduce it.
He continues:
“The call to decolonize Turtle Island and liberate Palestine ‘between the river and the sea’ is based on the same kinds of moral and political error as earlier radical movements that appealed to idealists and intellectuals.”
Kirsch’s comparison collapses under scrutiny. What “past progressive radical movements” is he talking about? None. He gives no examples. The dismissal is rhetorical, not analytical, serving to paint all liberation as reckless extremism without engaging its ethics or logic.
Kirsch then claims that the “ideology of settler colonialism turns its wrath not on the most deserving targets but on those that are closest to hand,” arguing that its adherents unfairly single out nations like the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Israel. He writes that “every country’s history provokes horror if seen through the eyes of its victims.”
Okay, but so what? This whataboutism erases the unique structure and continuity of settler colonialism. Authoritarian conquest and settler colonialism are not the same, even though they intersect. Settler colonialism is not just historical invasion but an ongoing system that structures present-day power, law, and belonging.
Kirsch repeats the mantra “invasion is a structure, not an event,” then attempts to neutralize it by saying it applies “everywhere.” He cites Russia, India, and the British Isles as proof that “every people took their land from someone else.”
That is not historical wisdom; it is moral relativism. This logic collapses the specificity of continuing systems of domination into a fatalistic human condition: a way of saying “everyone did it,” so no one can be held accountable.
Despair, Justice, and What Cannot Be Undone
Kirsch argues that moral revolutions “create a feeling that the past must be destroyed.” He keeps framing evolution and justice as destruction, as if moral growth requires annihilation. But not all destruction is violent. Sometimes systems must be dismantled to make way for justice. Ending slavery or apartheid required destruction of institutions, not people.
Kirsch throws around vague references to “radical movements,” maybe Communism or Jacobinism, but he can’t name a single progressive struggle whose outcome was anything like the horrors he claims, only cherry-picked failures to scare you.
Here is a reality check: Indigenous sovereignty, land return, anti-apartheid activism are all built on liberation, not domination. What’s destroyed is oppression, not life. Yet he blurs the lines, acting as if any resistance is automatically violent or genocidal. He claims the authority to write the book, take market space, and dictate the moral framing, turning himself into the oppressor who decides what counts as just. It is bold, it is arrogant, and it is a reminder that his argument is not critique, it is a blatant justification for oppression and ongoing violence wrapped in a fake moral argument.
He continues:
“For the ideology of settler colonialism, the impossibility of concretely imagining a decolonial future ought to serve as a warning sign.”
But since when is imagination supposed to be concrete? Kirsch essentially claims that “since you can’t describe utopia in detail, your vision must be dangerous,” as if imagining a future must be literal to be legitimate. In reality, radical imagination has always preceded structural change. Abolitionist thought, for example, was once mocked as impossible. Indigenous futurisms and restorative sovereignty models explicitly outline nonviolent, plural futures (Per Eve Tuck & K. Wayne Yang, Decolonization is not a metaphor, 2012). Kirsch’s dismissal exposes his own limits for ideology and creativity, not proof of impossibility.
He adds that decolonization would cause “destruction and suffering on such a vast scale that even partisans refuse to discuss it.”
This reveals his own zero-sum mindset. The “suffering” he imagines is mostly the discomfort of the privileged confronting redistribution. He fears that justice requires suffering because he cannot imagine a future that redistributes power without repeating domination. His accusation becomes an admission: he sees suffering as inevitable because his worldview depends on it.
Kirsch on Activism and the Narrative of Violence
Kirsch writes that slogans like “from the river to the sea” are empty because activists “refuse to spell out what they mean.” But this dismissal ignores the many concrete political, legal, and humanitarian frameworks that already define Palestinian liberation — from international law to ongoing human rights documentation. There is nothing “empty” about them; what’s empty is Kirsch’s engagement.
He writes that October 7 “was a document of barbarism… yet to the ideology of settler colonialism they were praiseworthy.” This is narrative control. No credible scholar or activist described that day as “praiseworthy.” He collapses all resistance into terror, ignoring the decades of state violence, occupation, and apartheid that led to it. By reducing a living genocide to a “historical grievance,” he distances it from its ongoing reality pretending history stopped in 1948, and that Palestinians’ existence as a colonized people is merely emotional residue (positioning the reader to think they’re irrational).
The Logic of Despair
Kirsch concludes:
“In reality, the past cannot be redeemed because history cannot be undone.”
This framing is obnoxious and unhelpful because it treats evolution or transformation as “undoing.” First, the critique isn’t that history happened but that its violent logics persist in the present. Second, decolonization doesn’t undo history, it acknowledges it and interrupts its persistence.
To illustrate his point, Kirsch cites a Talmudic parable about stolen property: if a thief sells a cloak to an innocent buyer, the original owner cannot reclaim it without wronging the new owner.
Kirsch’s “cloak” analogy treats colonization like a petty theft that is too complicated to undo, trivializing mass displacement and genocide. Colonialism is not a lost jacket; it is an ongoing system of ownership, law, and resource extraction. His framing also flattens political accountability into a private moral puzzle, ignoring that state violence is not accidental loss but deliberate policy. That so-called “model of despair” has nothing to do with colonization, and certainly nothing to do with us or the United States. NEXT!
Critical Breakdown
Kirsch’s essay moves like a moral fable: despair as wisdom, justice as aggressive delusion. He reframes anti-colonial anger as theological error and calls resignation “maturity.” His argument universalizes oppression to excuse it, suggesting that since conquest is universal, no redress is possible.
He claims to advocate peace, but his peace depends on the oppressed giving up their demand for justice. His so-called “right kind of despair” is really a moral anesthetic: a way to virtue signal and numb the discomfort of history without changing it.
Benjamin warned that history’s emergency is the rule, not the exception. Kirsch responds by declaring that since the emergency is everywhere, it’s normal, and therefore we should stop resisting it.
Conclusion
Kirsch’s “Justice and Despair” is not about settler colonialism as a structure but about emotional control and telling the oppressed to accept despair as virtue. He portrays decolonization as delusion and resignation (giving up) as sick forms of maturity and enlightenment.
Despair is not moral strength, it is the symptom of settler colonialism.
Therefore, justice does not come from despair, it comes from resistance.
Discover More
Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History” (1940)
A foundational essay exploring how history is written from the perspective of the victors, and what it means to break from that cycle. Available via the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Eve Tuck & K. Wayne Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor” (2012)
A key text that argues decolonization is not a metaphorical concept or social justice trend, but a material process of returning land and power to Indigenous peoples.
Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native” (2006)
An influential article defining settler colonialism as a structure, not a single event, and explaining how it seeks the elimination, not assimilation, of Indigenous peoples.
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