Jewish Antifascism and the False Promise of Settler Colonialism

This book takes a timely look at histories of radical Jewish movements, their modes of Holocaust memorialisation, and their relationships with broader anti-colonial and anti-racist struggles. Its primary focus is Australia, where Jewish antifascism was a major political and cultural force in Jewish communities in the 1940s and early 1950s. This cultural and intellectual history of Jewish antifascism utilises a transnational lens to provide an exploration of a Jewish antifascist ideology that took hold in the middle of the twentieth century across Jewish communities worldwide. It argues that Jewish antifascism offered an alternate path for Jewish politics that was foreclosed by mutually reinforcing ideologies of settler colonialism, both in Palestine and Australia.

1. Introduction.- 2. Remembering the Holocaust, Fighting Fascism.- 3. Jewish Antifascism, Communism, and Antisemitism.- 4. The Jewish Left, Zionism, and the Diaspora.- 5. The Anti-German Migration Campaign and the Fall of the Jewish Antifascist Left.- 6. Jewish Antifascism, Australian Cultural Nationalism, and Settler Colonialism.- 7. Defining a Jewish Antifascist Minor Literature.- 8. Conclusion.

Max Kaiser lives on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. He completed his PhD at the University of Melbourne, Australia.