![\"photo](\"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/feb-27-people.27.Adam-Louis-Klein.jpg\")
<\/a>Louis-Klein, a McGill University PhD candidate who now lives in New York state, describes a swift loss of \u201call my social and professional contacts.\u201d But that didn\u2019t stop him from expressing his views. He felt an obligation, he said, to offer a Jewish voice that speaks the same language as the academy and the left, especially in response to antizionism.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I wrote more about it, I think my understanding of antizionism got sharper and sharper,\u201d he said. \u201cI got more focused on antizionism itself as an ideology, not just antisemitism.\u201d<\/p>\n
That shift \u2013 treating antizionism as something that should be named and confronted directly, rather than in the context of its relationship with antisemitism \u2013 has become central to his work. In his view, focusing on antisemitism as the lens can become a rhetorical trap, positioning antizionism as a respectable political position.<\/p>\n
His ideas went viral.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI was posting on Facebook and people kind of liked the little mini-essays I wrote,\u201d he said. He launched a blog at the Times of Israel<\/i>, then began writing for other outlets. \u201cOne thing led to another.\u201d<\/p>\n The visibility has accelerated in recent months, he said. Movement Against Antizionism (MAAZ), the organization he founded and leads, has also caught on rapidly.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n People found his Times of Israel<\/i> blog and were on the lookout for voices explicitly naming and confronting antizionism, he said. The people he works with have helped refine his language. Looking back at his writing over a short span, he said, \u201cI already see a kind of progression whereby I get sharper at naming antizionism and making that the focus.\u201d<\/p>\n The backlash was instantaneous.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople tried to shut me down,\u201d he said. \u201cThere were fake complaints against me \u2026 they would call my advisor, they would call the anthropology department to try and get me expelled.\u201d He said he was removed from WhatsApp groups, a book club he organized collapsed, a presentation he organized on the Soviet roots of antizionist rhetoric was canceled without explanation.<\/p>\n He described a hardened ideological environment.<\/p>\n \u201cI was told that no one would discuss with me whether it\u2019s a genocide,\u201d he said. \u201cThe genocide libel was not something that could be discussed.\u201d<\/p>\n While the university environment may be a hotbed of antizionism generally, anthropology is particularly hostile, he said.<\/p>\n Early anthropology was connected to colonial infrastructures and later efforts to reckon with that legacy have put \u201csettler-colonialism\u201d at the centre of the discipline, Louis-Klein said. In his telling, the field has \u201cswallowed wholesale\u201d a narrative in which \u201cIsraelis are these evil white settlers.\u201d He no longer sees a future in the discipline. \u201cIt\u2019s not a field that Jews who do not profess loyalty to the antizionist movement \u2026 can exist in at this point,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Louis-Klein, who grew up mostly in Seattle and who spent time in Whistler growing up, holds a bachelor\u2019s degree in philosophy from Yale University, a master\u2019s in philosophy from the New School, a master\u2019s in anthropology from the University of Chicago, and is nearing completion of his PhD at McGill.<\/p>\n With academic doors closing in front of him, he sees a new possibility: the creation of a serious intellectual space for the study of antizionism itself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThere is now a movement to try and create an academic space for critical studies of antizionism,\u201d he said, adding that he wants to \u201cprovide an intellectual framework for treating antizionism as an objective study, as something that we can critically understand, break down, trace its genealogy, understand how it functions in the present as its own phenomenon.\u201d<\/p>\n In his view, the public conversation must change for practical reasons, not just academic ones.<\/p>\n \u201cWe cannot fight anti-Jewish violence today without naming and opposing antizionism,\u201d he said. \u201cThe vast majority of anti-Jewish violence is directly motivated by antizionism.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Even attacks rooted in \u201cmore classical\u201d right-wing antisemitism now unfold within \u201cthe overall hysteria that has been created by antizionism since Oct. 7 and the genocide libel,\u201d he said. Besides, he argued, as a strategy, equating antizionism and antisemitism is failing.<\/p>\n \u201cCalling antizionism antisemitism is also not working,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re assuming that if we just say it\u2019s antisemitic, a number of institutional levers will set into place Holocaust memory, and it\u2019ll shut it down.\u201d<\/p>\n But that\u2019s not happening, he said, \u201cbecause antizionism doesn\u2019t look like classical antisemitism.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, he thinks people need to be taught what antizionism is.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t just say it\u2019s antisemitic,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have to explain to people what antizionism is as an ideology, and you have to stop treating it as political critique.\u201d<\/p>\n He draws a distinction between debating Zionism and describing antizionism as a social phenomenon.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cTalking about antizionism also doesn\u2019t mean \u2026 explaining how Zionism is actually good. It goes far beyond that. It means explaining how antizionism is a hate movement,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a mob movement,\u201d he added. \u201cThere are lynch mobs \u2026 people who hunt down Zionists and try and shame and humiliate them.\u2026 They vandalize buildings, they smash windows.\u201d<\/p>\n MAAZ delivers training in different sectors, including education, business, arts and journalism, designed to help people understand antizionism and \u201cto fight back and to give people a language.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe really think naming and labeling is the way to defeat it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Louis-Klein described teaching people to \u201cmaintain boundaries,\u201d and to label recurring accusations \u2013 \u201ccolonizer libel, apartheid libel, genocide libel\u201d \u2013 as antizionist so that Jews and allies stop feeling obligated to defend their legitimacy and instead \u201chold antizionism to account.\u201d<\/p>\n The organization also includes legal thinking, with scholar Rona Kaufman developing a legal concept of antizionist discrimination.<\/p>\n Beyond training, MAAZ emphasizes public education. Louis-Klein encourages people to explore the organization\u2019s website (movementagainstantizionism.org), which he describes as \u201ckind of like a museum \u2026 a curation where you enter inside of the whole history of antizionism and its different forms and the different libels.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He emphasized a point he sees as essential for long-term success: expanding beyond the Jewish community.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHaving non-Jewish people who can get behind that \u2026 will just be the key,\u201d he said. \u201cThat will be the thing that catapults it to the next stage.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Adam Louis-Klein was deep in the Amazon on Oct. 7, 2023 \u2013 three months into fieldwork with an Indigenous community, living without any internet or phone contact. Two days later, in a local town, he reconnected with the outside world and saw the news. Then he saw something else: how people in his professional orbit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[19780,24657,801,24645,3470,3076,24658,24659],"class_list":["post-48483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national","tag-academia","tag-adam-louis-klein","tag-antisemitism","tag-antizionism","tag-discrimination","tag-education","tag-maaz","tag-movement-against-antizionism"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48483\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}