ABSTRACT
This chapter is based on a short argument between two Marxian academics, Andreas Malm and Anselm Jappe, which broke out on a leftist Zoom panel, ostensibly about Covid and the state, during the Israel–Hamas escalation of May 2021. Malm, an influential environmental theorist and activist, interrupted his presentation on the pandemic to accuse the ‘Zionist entity’ of fascism and proto-genocide, and to call for solidarity with Hamas. Jappe left the panel in protest, to which Malm responded with a contemptuous reference to Jappe's German background. The chapter argues that this contretemps, however minor, reveals something important about the ongoing development of antisemitism on the contemporary left, namely its growing intertwining with climate activism. It suggests that Malm and Jappe's divergence on the questions of Israel, Zionism and antisemitism is an expression of deep underlying theoretical differences in their respective approaches to the state and capital. The latter half of the chapter hones in on Malm's dismissal of Jappe as a ‘German guy’, arguing this is shorthand for a caricatured and dehistoricised account of the German left's historical role in forcing the German state to confront its Nazi past, one which dismisses the continued existence and dangers of antisemitism both within Germany and elsewhere.
