Increasingly, what the postcolonial academy calls criticism is in fact mere opposition. “Critical thought” has come to mean nothing more than opposing some presumed power structure, invariably described as “oppressive.” But opposition alone is not critical. One can oppose from dogma, from resentment, or from ideology. Very often what is opposed as "power-structure" is a conspiracy theory. True critical thought is epistemological: it involves the testing of claims, the interrogation of premises, and the disciplined application of reason.

Contemporary discourse articulates antizionism and antisemitism through a specific configuration of perception. Antisemitism functions as the ground; antizionism appears as the unstable figure, repeatedly dissolving back into that ground. Antizionism is treated as the marked term, antisemitism as the unmarked—but the marking never holds. Antizionism oscillates between being framed as mere “criticism of Israel” and being reabsorbed into antisemitism, and in doing so comes to mark nothing at all. Antisemitism is positioned as essence; antizionism as accident, inessential, a mask, saying nothing in itself. The result is that antizionism continually recedes from view, never allowed to become the focal object of perception in its own right.

Right-wing antizionism is official.