Of all the epithets of the left that don’t make any sense, the term “settler colonialist” is one of my favorites.

We live in a world where the ability of people to relocate, even to places thousands of miles distant, has increased greatly over time. These days, many millions of people per year pick up and relocate, or try to relocate, from one country to another.

By far the biggest mass migrations going on currently are into the U.S. and into Europe from various poorer countries. This November 2023 piece from NPR puts the number of “migrants” crossing the U.S. Southern border illegally in 2023 at about 2.4 million. That would be in addition to about 1 million legal immigrants to the U.S. each year. The European Commission at this site from April 2024 gives a figure of 42.4 million people living in the EU who were not born there, about 9% of the population. That would suggest something like 1 million or so new arrivals per year.

So are all these people “settler colonialists”?

The United States: As you know, it is a systemically racist, white supremacist hellhole. It is filled with structures and barriers intended to oppress people of color and make them suffer. Or at least, you know those things if you read the usual sources from left-wing institutions and journalists. I’ll give you several examples in a moment.

But then, how to explain the undeniable fact that millions of people of color are enduring almost unimaginable hardships every day in the effort to reach and then gain entry to this hellhole.

The most recent example is on the front page of today’s New York Times. The headline is “Blinken Seeks Mexico’s Help To Slow Surge”; but the accompanying photo — occupying most of the front page above the fold — is particularly revealing. A caravan of thousands of people is shown surging forward toward the U.S. border, with nearly every single visible face having a noticeably dark complexion.

For the last several centuries, and increasingly so in recent years, millions of people have moved from one country to another. In the language of the Left, many of those people are referred to by the term “migrants,” while others get the label “settlers,” or even worse, “settler colonialists.”

Do you know the difference? Clearly, people who are “migrants” are associated with only positive connotations. They are decent human beings, just struggling to better their lives. Existing populations in the recipient countries are morally obligated not only to welcome them, but to accord them all rights of pre-existing residents, including rights to hold jobs, to attend public schools, to own or rent property, and even to receive generous welfare benefits.

“Settlers,” on the other hand, are bad, while “settler colonialists” are even worse, maybe the ultimate evil. Pre-existing populations don’t have to accept them at all, and indeed, are perfectly entitled to kill them.

But how can you tell the which are which?

In preparation for my immigration debate tomorrow, I have thought to study up on the recent riots that rocked the country of France from late June through the first two weeks of July.

These riots present an object lesson in what can happen in the event of large-scale immigration of an insular group that assimilates slowly into the host population and is culturally very different.

Although these riots have certainly been mentioned in the American press, they have mostly been kept out of the main headlines here by such things as the Supreme Court decisions of June 30, the Ukraine war, the emerging presidential campaign, the Biden family scandals (in the conservative press only), the ongoing climate scam (in the liberal press only) and so forth. But in France they were very significant.