Australian Jewish academic and policy commentator
Why do anti-racists advance pro-racist outcomes?
From the 1952 Slansky AntiSemitic show trial to the contemporary Australian AntiSemitism crisis: Why do professed anti-racists act to advance pro-racist outcomes? By Philip Mendes
As a progressive Jew, the type of AntiSemitic prejudice that particularly angers me is that perpetrated by progressives who falsely claim to be anti-racist. Of course, we all recognize and detest the overtly pro-racist arguments emanating from some progressive groups and individuals who alternatively deny Antisemitism, minimize Antisemitism, belittle the impact of Antisemitism, or pontificate as principled bystanders to Antisemitism. But even worse are those lefties who actively promote anti-Jewish hate, and then obtusely pretend that they are anti-racist. I have called them elsewhere ‘PEJs’ as in ‘Progressive except for Jews’ (Mendes 2024a; 2024b).
But in reality, they are not progressive at all. Their views are regressive and reactionary. And I will show, by reference to the November 1952 Slansky show trial in Communist Czechoslovakia, that their disingenuous incapacity to distinguish between political Anti-Zionism and racist Antisemitism is nothing new. Those who fail to learn from history are arguably doomed to repeat its worst failures and traumas.
The Slansky Trial
In November 1952, reports of the AntiSemitic Slansky show trial in Communist Czechoslovakia caused shock waves around the world given that most Marxists historically had opposed any manifestations of racism including Antisemitism.
The trial presented charges of high treason, espionage and sabotage against fourteen leading Communists (11 of them Jewish, all of whom were life-long opponents of Zionism). The defendants included the former Party Secretary-General and second most powerful man in the Communist hierarchy, Rudolf Slansky, the head of the Party’s international department, Bedrich Geminder, and the former Minister for Foreign Affairs, Vladimir Clementis. They were alleged to have spied for Zionism and American imperialism to economically benefit the State of Israel, and defraud the Czechoslovakian economy and people. On 27 November, 11 of the 14 defendants (including eight of the 11 Jews) were sentenced to death, whilst the other three defendants (all Jews) were given life imprisonment. The eleven were hanged on 3 December (Cotic 1987).
Antisemitism was embedded throughout all periods of the trial. The preliminary interrogations included extreme Antisemitic abuse of defendants reminiscent of Nazism. During the trial, all the defendants were labelled by their nationality, either Czech, Slovak or Jewish. The 11 Jews were stereotyped as having overwhelmingly bourgeois, wealthy capitalist origins, and alleged to have participated in Zionist programs as youth. The implication was that their long-term involvement in the Communist movement had been a trick to hide their ongoing partnership with other Jewish nationalists to advance Zionist interests (Cotic 1987) The official Czech Communist Party newspaper, Rude Pravo, actively endorsed the anti-Jewish tone of the trial, stating: ‘Before the court in Pancraz prison sat eleven Jewish cosmopolitans, people without a shred of honour, without character, without country, people who desire one thing only – career, business and money’ (Shindler 2012: 144).
The evidence that the Communist regime had resorted to traditional AntiSemitic tropes and stereotypes for political gain was undeniable. Yet, Marxists around the globe endorsed the trial, insisting against all publicly available facts that only political anti-Zionism rather than racist Antisemitism was involved. In Australia, the Communist Party actively defended the trial, and rejected allegations of Antisemitism. The pro-Soviet Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Antisemitism (JCCFAS), organized via two separate branches in Melbourne and Sydney, regretted the harsh Communist attack on Zionism and Israel, but nevertheless denied that Antisemitism per se was involved, and refused to condemn the Prague Trial.
In their official statement issued in February 1953, the JCCFAS denied that any official government AntiSemitic campaign existed in the Eastern European countries.
According to the Council, ‘An Executive sub-committee was set up to consider all the available evidence, including reports of the Czechoslovakian trial. This committee, consisting of lawyers as well as laymen, came back with the conclusion that there was no evidence of Government-inspired antisemitism in the Eastern European countries, although it was evident that Zionism was in disfavour there. Of course it is true that Zionism is regarded as an ideology hostile to those States, but that does not amount to antisemitism any more than hostility to Slovakian nationalism can be regarded as evidence of a bias against the Slovak people. Nor is it denied that there are still relics of anti-Semitic tendencies amongst certain anti-Semitic forces in the East’.
The Council added that ‘A study of statements by leaders of various communist states and of the legislation making antisemitism illegal, which these countries have adopted and which is unique in world history, must lead to the inescapable conclusion that there is no foundation for the charges that in these countries there is a campaign aimed at the Jewish people…
If the Jewish communities of the western world join in the hymns of hatred which are being sung in ever increasing volume without trying to appreciate the true facts of the situation, or if we fail to distinguish the happenings in Eastern Europe from the Nazi attempt to annihilate the Jewish people, then we only join in what is a deliberate attempt to aggravate a situation which is the basis of the fears leading to actions from which flow the injustices and the hardships of which we complain’ (cited in Mendes 2026).
The JCCFAS statement was an earlier example of what contemporary scholars have termed the ‘as-a-Jew’ phenomenon whereby a small number of progressive Jews opportunistically misuse their Jewish identity to undermine or delegitimise the views expressed by most other Jews (Schraub 2020).
In contrast, all the mainstream Jewish organisations within Australia were informed by the factual evidence. Citing both the reports by the global media and the translated trial transcripts, they argued accurately that the trial was informed by explicit anti-Jewish stereotypes. Equally, non-Communist leftists within Australia (e.g. the Jewish Labor Bund) and globally (e.g. leading figures in the left faction of the British Labour Party and the left-wing Mapam Party in Israel) expressed similar concerns.
The reason that Communist and pro-Communist groups within Australia and beyond such as the JCCFAS adopted a different view was arguably not because they were especially naïve or gullible. Nor did they locate or present alternative forms of credible evidence. Rather, it was because their tribal allegiance to a pro-Soviet world view required them to unconditionally align with the Communist interpretation of events (For a more detailed discussion of the 1952-53 Australian debate, see Mendes 2026).
Two case studies of contemporary Antisemitism in Australian academia
Unfortunately, many contemporary progressives have little knowledge of the long history of AntiSemitism within some left-wing groups and movements. If they had researched the Slansky trial, they might have been aware of the evil consequences that can occur when professed anti-racists (including some Jews) dismally fail to recognize, name and oppose anti-Jewish racism in public life.
Case Study One: Approving the racist harassment of a Jewish academic at the University of Melbourne
Professor Steven Prawer is a University of Melbourne academic who heads an academic collaboration program with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Over a number of months, he was harassed by a pro-racist group called Students Against War who printed posters accusing him of genocide, held a protest rally outside his office building, and in October 2024 invaded his laboratory to intimidate and threaten him (Hill 2024). That attack was condemned by the National Tertiary Education Union/NTEU as an example of ‘intimidation and bullying’ that threatens the safety of academics and should not be permitted on university campuses (Gooding et al 2024, p.6).
One would have expected all anti-racist academics and students at the University of Melbourne to align with the NTEU in condemning this virulent display of racism. But in fact, many sided with the perpetrators rather than victims of anti-Jewish racism. Indeed, a group letter was signed by over 120 University of Melbourne staff and students (including three influential senior academics) defending the populist mob that invaded Professor Prawer’s office, and insisting that such racist ‘protest actions’ be protected as ‘legitimate student activism’. The letter derided any opposition to AntiSemitism as necessarily undermining the political struggle against Zionism (University of Melbourne Staff 2024).
Case study Two: the pro-racist reaction to the Special Envoy Jilian Segal’s report urging action to combat anti-Jewish racism
In July 2025, the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy to combat AntiSemitism, Jilian Segal, released a policy framework to address the rise of anti-Jewish racism in Australia. Segal’s plan dispassionately summarized the empirical evidence and statistics concerning the sharp increase in AntiSemitism since October 2023, and accurately identified the particular rise of institutional anti-Jewish racism in sections of universities and schools, ‘cultural spaces’ such as the arts, and several professional groups.
She recommended a wide range of policy initiatives to combat anti-Jewish racism including a coherent definition based on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of AntiSemitism, legal reforms to prevent vilification of Jews, public education, institutional reforms within universities to end tolerance for acts of anti-Jewish prejudice, and reforms to discourage anti-Jewish discrimination within cultural, arts and public broadcasting institutions (Segal 2025).
Some of Segal’s proposed policy solutions were arguably contentious, but one would have reasonably expected critics of her report to identify alternative evidence-based methods that were, in their opinion, more likely to prove effective in combatting anti-Jewish racism. Instead, much of the critical response to Segal has been informed by bizarre conspiracy theories that accuse Segal personally and the Jewish community more broadly of advancing secret schemes to undermine Australian democracy. The hateful malevolence of that campaign has been well summarized by journalist Julie Szego (2025).
One of the worst examples of that hatred was a signed ‘Open Letter against the adoption of the Australian Special Envoy to combat AntiSemitism’s plan’ that appeared under the ironically titled group name of ‘Academics against racism’. The Open Letter, which was signed by hundreds of academics including many Professors and Associate Professors able to exert major power and influence over the advancement of academic careers within their Faculties, accused the Envoy of mounting an ‘unprecedented attack on academic freedom and the autonomy of universities’.
Oddly, the Open Letter does not refer to the bucketload of evidence concerning AntiSemitism within universities (for example Markus et al 2025), or propose even one single strategy to combat the multiple manifestations of anti-Jewish racism on campus. Instead, it directly sides with the perpetrators rather than the victims of AntiSemitism. Specifically, the evidence-free Open Letter opposes any official definition of AntiSemitism on the absurd grounds that political anti-Zionism never converges with anti-Jewish racism, falsely implies that other ethnic and cultural minorities as well as Jews are also the subject of an organized racist campaign within universities, and obtusely conflates principled opposition to anti-Jewish hate speech with the right of academics to academic freedom in areas where they have specialized knowledge and skills (Open Letter 2025).
As with progressive responses to the 1952 Slansky trial, none of the signatories of this Open Letter can pretend that they are naïve or gullible or that they do not understand the inherent contradiction between their professed anti-racist beliefs and their refusal to endorse any action against anti-Jewish racism. What they are arguably doing is expressing their unconditional loyalty to the pro-Palestinian tribe, and asserting that any combatting of AntiSemitism will undermine the anti-Zionist cause. Or in other words, confirming that an anti-Zionist fundamentalist cannot be a principled opponent of anti-Jewish racism.
Conclusion
As noted above, Communist and pro-Soviet groups globally and locally such as the Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and AntiSemitism made a political decision in 1952-53 to ignore the unassailable evidence of institutional AntiSemitism within the Communist countries, and instead side with the perpetrators of racism rather the victims. Similarly today, many of those who also claim to adhere to progressive, universalistic social justice traditions, deliberately ignore the evidence concerning the rise of anti-Jewish racism, and make a conscious political decision to side with the perpetrators rather than the victims of Antisemitism.
Yet, pro-racist sentiments dressed up as fake anti-racist views are malevolent in both their intent, and particularly their impact, on victims of bigotry. To paraphrase the late 19th century German socialist leader, Auguste Bebel, who famously coined the term ‘Socialism of Fools’ to denounce the naivety of workers who fell for the lies of AntiSemites, we can reasonably label these contemporary pro-racist views ‘the anti-racism of idiots’. It is time for all genuine anti-racist progressives to listen to the lived experience of Jews harmed by anti-Jewish racism, and actively speak out against, and combat, this ancient form of prejudice.
References
Cotic, Meir (1987) The Prague Trial: the first antizionist show trial in the communist bloc. Herzl Press, New York.
Gooding, Gabe, MacDonald, Terri, & McCarron, Kieran (2024). Submission 17 to PJCHR inquiry, 19 December. https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=14a34fa7-9014-4aa9-b2a3-44e334a59658&subId=775374.
Hill, B. (2024) ‘Jewish academic’s office occupied by demonstrators’. Australian Jewish News, 18 October. https://www.australianjewishnews.com/jewish-academics-office-occupied-by-demonstrators/.
Markus, Andrew; Eilam, Efrat; & Rutland, Suzanne (2025). Antisemitism in Australian universities post 7 October: Survey by Australian Academic Alliance Against Antisemitism. Australian Academic Alliance against AntiSemitism
Mendes, Philip (2024a) Why have many Australian progressives abandoned Israel and the Jews? The Jewish Independent, 16 April,
Mendes, Philip (2024b) Progressive except for Jews (PEJs): The Australian Greens and the 7 October Hamas Death Squad Massacre. Fathom Magazine, February.
Mendes, Philip (2026) How did the Australian Jewish print media report the 1952 Antisemitic Slansky show trial in Prague, Czechoslovakia? Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal, In Press.
Open letter against the adoption of the Australian Special Envoy to combat AntiSemitism’s plan (2025). Overland Literary Journal, 28 July. https://overland.org.au/2025/07/open-letter-against-the-adoption-of-the-australian-special-envoy-to-combat-antisemitisms-plan/.
Schraub, David (2020). The distinctive political status of dissident minorities. American Political Science Review, 114, 4, 963-975. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/distinctive-political-status-of-dissident-minorities/11441BB38BE35E31D50EFD0EAC9F455C.
Segal, Jilian (2025) Special Envoy’s plan to combat AntiSemitism: A policy-oriented framework for government and the Australian community. ASECA. https://www.aseca.gov.au/sites/default/files/2025-07/2025-aseca-plan.pdf.
Shindler, Colin (2012) Israel and the European Left: Between solidarity and delegitimization. Continuum, New York.
Szego, Julie (2025) The crucifixion of Jilian Segal. 23 July, https://szegounplugged.substack.com/p/the-crucifixion-of-jillian-segal.
University of Melbourne Concerned Staff (2024) UniMelb staff statement on the right of protest and academic freedoms. Overland Literary Journal, 22 October. https://overland.org.au/2024/10/unimelb-staff-statement-on-the-right-of-protest-and-academic-freedoms/.