Dogs slammed as ‘settler-colonial’ as pooches and owners blamed for ‘gentrifying’ NYC by woke activists
This is a ruff take!
City-dwelling dog owners are marking their “colonial” territory with pooches who are “gentrifying” neighborhoods, critics say in a bizarre online debate.
Sparking the controversy was a story in The Cut that delves into the growing hostility between dog owners and the dog-free in New York.
The article quotes Mia, of Prospects Lefferts Gardens, the proud owner of two terriers, who noticed a growing anti-dog sentiment brewing on her community Facebook group.
One post about picking up dog poop eventually spiraled into bonkers accusations that the pooches of PGL were “gentrifying the neighborhood.”
Mia, a New York-born Latina, told the outlet upon reading this she wondered “Are they saying that only white people have dogs?”
Another woman with an off-leash dog was apparently confronted in Prospect Park by someone filming her with her cellphone camera.
“She was asking me why I thought I was special, why my dog didn’t need to be leashed. Was it because of my white privilege?
In a viral tweet this week, an X user ran sparked further debate.
“Dogs in large cities are essentially settler-colonial—a way for their owners to move into and occupy more of the urban space than they are allotted while making it everyone else’s problem,” the tweet reads in part.
According to the New York Times, “settler-colonial” is a term of art recently adopted in far-left activist circles to decry everything from gentrification to poor environmental stewardship to capitalism itself.
The term is far from benign, writes Wall Street Journal editor Adam Kirsch, who notes that the phrase has increasingly crept into the most virulent brands of anti-Israel rhetoric, particularly in the context of the war on Hamas, which began Oct. 7 after the Islamic militant group launched a surprise attack that killed around 1,200 Israeli men, women and children.
“Settler-colonial” or variants frequently accompany slogans categorized by Anti-Defamation League as antisemitic, such as “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which the anti-hate organization says is a rallying cry calling for “Israel’s destruction through violent means.”
The original tweet author received a heap of derision for his hot take.
“How do you feel about homeless people who privatize public sidewalks with their tents?” one user quipped.
“Saying ‘settler-colonial’ when you mean ‘kinda rude’ is awful,” said another reply, savaging his choice of the loaded term.
“Brb, creating a market to buy, sell, and trade our personal urban space allotments,” another mocking comment read.
In response to the online kerfuffle, the original tweet author a few hours later added an addendum.
“To be clear, the synthesis of this is that trying to create a policy around ‘good dog owners’ and ‘bad dog owners’ is nonsensical,” the follow-up tweet read.
“We need to pass common-sense supply-side policy to maintain an agreed-upon amount dogs in major cities through licensing and registration fees.”
Until NYC’s approximately 600,000 canine Collie-nizer-Setters and their owners are brought to heel, we just have to learn to live under the crushing paw of our canine oppressors and their owners.
