For the Jewish Council, the struggle against antisemitism was connected to fighting racism and colonialism more generally.

In 1947, during a period of persistent attack by the press and conservative forces on Jewish refugees, Jewish Council activist Norman Rothfield proclaimed:

“We must attack reaction, no matter whence it comes. Dutch aggression against the Indonesia Republic is our concern, as is also the lynching of [Black humans] in America, or the maltreatment of Aborigines [sic] in Australia […] We Jews can only be secure in a secure world. It is a world situation of conflict and strife together with a situation in Australia of intense class conflict which lays the ground for a campaign of anti-Semitic prejudice greater than any previous attacks in this country against a racial or religious minority.”

The Jewish Council frequently compared the Holocaust with other instances of colonialism and racism.

A 1952 editorial from the Jewish Council-affiliated magazine The Clarion criticised Australia’s allies’ involvement in the Korean War, suggesting:

“The Master Race theory of Nazism has reached a new peak in the war circles of America and Britain: for what is the difference between exterminating […] in Korea and […] in Europe? Both are fruits from the same tree of evil.”

[…]

Another example is a short satirical story titled ‘A Nazi Writes Home’, written under the initials ‘L.F.’ and published in Unity magazine in July 1951.

In this fictional letter of furious irony, a [Fascist] in Australia named ‘Fritz’ writes his [Fascist] friend back in Germany.

He describes initially fearing Australia was “a spineless democracy-loving country, rotten with worship of the masses”. He changed his mind, however, after seeing how brutally Aboriginal people were treated. He goes on to celebrates Australia as an exemplary country of white supremacy — “the true Aryan theory”.

After seeing a white child racially abuse an older Aboriginal woman, Fritz suggested:

“Australia is a land where the principles of National-Socialism are not altogether foreign.

The writer isn’t just drawing a clear link between the ongoing fascist threat and the racism of Australian colonialism. The story also links discrimination against Aboriginal people with the plight of Jews in the Holocaust and racial segregation laws in the United States.

‘A Nazi Writes Home’ places the oppression of Aboriginal people within an international antifascist context. It suggested antifascists needed to fight the entrenched structural racism of Australia.