John Cusack is under fire for retweeting an anti-semitic image on Monday. The image in question showed the Star of David imposed on a hand crushing a group of people, including a quote misattributed to French philosopher Voltaire which actually refers to writing by Kevin Alfred Strom, a known neo-nazi, anti-semite, convicted felon, and all-around bad guy.
After being called out by the Twitterverse, Cusack initially defended the post multiple times against the outrage. Then he blamed it on “a bot,” claiming that he “mistakenly” retweeted what he thought was an image protesting the “bombing of a hospital in Palestine”... even though he had captioned the controversial post with "follow the money."
Now, he’s issued a full apology, admitting that no matter how you slice it, the tweet was anti-semitic.“Social media has always been a platform on which I have expressed my thoughts and opinions, however, the material that I shared does not now, nor has it ever, represented my views in any shape or form,” he writes.
- Cusack may have apologized, but the Twitterverse isn’t convinced. Not only is Cusack being called out over his “follow the money” comment, which comes across as very anti-semitic in the context of the image, but he’s also accused of being similarly problematic in the past. Journalist Marcus Baram recalls the actor calling the Huffington Post office during the night shift “to suggest terrible, hyperbolic headlines.” “One Saturday night, we stopped answering the phone. He kept calling back again and again,” he adds.