The Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism (ICSZ) and the Radical Antiracism Today seminar series co-presents an International webinar on the politics of hate as a concept in politics and academia. The intention is to help place the new ‘Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Act’, passed by the Australian government in January 2026, in the context of the history and politics of Zionism, imperialism, and settler colonialism.

Five speakers will develop on this from specific angles:

Dylan Rodríguez (University of California, Riverside and ICSZ) - Antisemitism as Lexical Warfare

Emmaia Gelman (Director, ICSZ) - The evolution of Anti-Hate as a Zionist Project

Jessie Daniels (City University of New York and ICSZ) - Hate Studies and the Academic 'Terrorism Industrial Complex'

Keiran Stewart-Assheton (Black Peoples Union) - Weaponising the Rhetoric of Hate against Indigenous Resistance Struggles

Ihab Shalbak (University of Sydney) - On 'Mandatory Zionism'

The webinar will be chaired by Alana Lentin (Western Sydney University, ICS and ICSZ).

As we come to terms with what the new law will mean for activists, journalists, scholars, teachers, and a whole host of other groups and individuals in Australian public life, particularly Indigenous people, Palestinians, and negatively racialised people, it is vital we have an understanding of the evolution of ‘anti-hate’ as a specific interpretation of antiracism that emerged in the United States that builds on the dominant understanding of racism, not as institutionalised in state law and policy and embedded in racial-colonial culture, but as a matter of individual prejudice.

As Director of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism and scholar, Emmaia Gelman in conversation with Dylan Rodríguez has noted,

"The very brief history of what we call the hate crimes framework is that it emerges out of a moment of crisis in the late 70s, early 80s, of anti-Black racism where there’s white supremacist vigilantism... And law enforcement almost entirely refuses to respond. So the idea of hate crimes comes up as a way to legally force the state to address racist violence.

The Anti Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee see this crisis as an opportunity. They attach their own interests to it... the very genesis of the hate crimes framework is already kind of a cooptation of conversations about racism. It very materially takes the focus off of anti-Black violence, turns attention away from questions of who has power, and it takes state violence out of it entirely, right.

So that’s why hate crime statistics don’t measure police violence. And as it develops, it actually replaces our conception of racist violence, gendered violence, class violence. It becomes about just hostility toward someone who has a particular identity, without looking any more deeply at why they might be in conflict."

Please join us by registering here. You will receive a link to Zoom one day before the event.

* The image used in the banner for this event was adapted from an article in the Herald Sun that appeared on Dec 15 2025

Contact the host of WEBINAR - “Hate": Placing the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill in Context

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