John Cusack Posts Anti-Semitic Meme, Says He Was Trying To Support Palestinians
John Cusack at the Spooky Empire Horror Convention at the Hyatt Regency on October 28, 2017 in Orlando, Florida. Image by Manny Hernandez / Getty Images
By Aiden Pink June 18, 2019
Actor John Cusack posted an anti-Semitic meme on Twitter on Monday night, before deleting the post and trying to explain that he thought it would show support for Palestinian rights.
The image featured a hand with a Star of David crushing a mass of people below, along with the quote “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” (The meme said the quote was by the French philosopher Voltaire, but it actually originated from the white supremacist Holocaust denier Kevin Alfred Strom.)
This is disgusting pic.twitter.com/4b2RlPrNfL
— Yashar Ali ? (@yashar) June 17, 2019
Cusack, who was tagged in an original tweet of the graphic along with other prominent supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, shared the image along with the words “Follow the money.”
After being accused of anti-Semitism, Cusack deleted the tweet and tried to offer an explanation: “A bot got me- I thought I was endorsing a pro Palestinian justice retweet – of an earlier post – it came I think from a different source – Shouldn’t Have retweeted…” That explanation was also deleted.
Cusack later issued an apology for sharing the image and admitted that it was anti-Semitic. “The image depicted a blue Star of David, which I associated with Israel as their flag uses the same color and shape,” he wrote. “I know the star itself is deeply meaningful to Jews no matter where they stand on Israel’s attacks on Palestinians.”
Aiden Pink is the deputy news editor of the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @aidenpink
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
