The Assembly Line of Antizionism: Soviet Roots of Today’s Progressive Antizionism
Tue, Mar 24
|Virtual Lecture
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.
Time & Location
Mar 24, 2026, 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM EDT
Virtual Lecture
About the Event
About Lecture:
The Soviet Union did not merely criticize Zionism; it engineered a decades-long, state-sponsored ideological project designed to repackage antisemitism as antizionism. This talk traces that campaign from its origins to its global afterlife: how it began, how it evolved, and how it succeeded in transforming Jew-hatred into a morally sanctioned political language. The talk will map the ideological relay system through which Soviet antizionism migrated into global circulation, revealing its explicit entanglements with Nazi antisemitism, Arab nationalist and Islamist movements, and Western progressive frameworks. What emerged was not a critique of Israeli policy, but a coherent and portable ideology of Jewish demonization — the blueprint for contemporary antizionism.
About Scholar:
Dr. Naya Lekht is a scholar, educator, and writer known for bringing urgency and clarity to the study of anti-Jewish hatred. She earned her PhD in Russian Literature from UCLA, where her dissertation examined Holocaust literature with a…