From Conspiracy to “Social Justice”: The Intellectual Origins and Institutional Power of Progressive Antizionism

This lecture is part of Antizionism: The History of an Ideology, a six-part series hosted by Chai Mitzvah. The series examines the historical origins, evolution, and contemporary manifestations of antizionism. Sponsored by the Institute for the Critical Study of Antizionism.

This lecture traces how progressive antizionism emerged, evolved, and became a dominant moral framework in Western academic and activist spaces. It explains how postcolonial theory, Critical Race Theory, and related intellectual traditions recast Zionism as racial domination and Jews as system-manipulating “hyper-whites,” reproducing classic antisemitic conspiratorial patterns in updated social-justice language. The talk highlights the central role of scholars, faculty networks, and NGOs in institutionalizing these ideas, and examines how this ideological ecosystem helped produce the campus reactions to October 7 and its spread in K-12 classrooms. Finally, it situates progressive antizionism within the broader global history of antisemitism—Russian, Nazi, Soviet, and Islamist—showing how older propaganda and coalitions, including today’s “Red–Green Alliance,” continue to shape the movement’s assumptions and goals.

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A passionate advocate of the free expression of ideas and a supporter of Israel’s quest for peace and security, David Bernstein is the founder of the North American Values Institute (NAVI), formerly Jewish Institute for Liberal Values (JILV), which opposes radical ideology in K-12 education. He is author of Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews. He is past President and CEO of Jewish Council for Public Affairs and former executive director of the David Project. He spent 13 years at the American Jewish Committee in senior roles. David is a Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) and a Strategic Advisor for the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM). He is a prolific speaker, podcaster and writer, having written hundreds of opinion pieces in the Jewish and general press.