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Like thousands of others in the entertainment industry, Mark Ruffalo is speaking out against the looming Paramount-Warner Bros. merger.
In response, he is being accused of disparaging the Jewish people.
Actual antisemitism is insidious and widespread. But, lately, so are false allegations of that same bigotry.
What did Mark say? How has he responded to the backlash?
What did Mark Ruffalo say?
On Friday, August 21, Mark Ruffalo — famous for everything from 13 Going On 30 to the MCU to The Normal Heart, but also for his activism — shared a lengthy message to his Instagram Story.
He took aim at Larry Ellison, a backer of the Trump regime and the co-founder of Oracle. His son, David Ellison, recently acquired Paramount Global through a controversial merger. After gutting CBS and other controversial changes, they’re trying to absorb Warner Bros.
Referring to an Oracle statement that we’ll share in a moment, Mark warned: “These ‘really profoundly scary technologies’ will most likely be merged into one of the largest media conglomerates in the world and one day used on you.”
He then pointed out: “Look how [Catz] revels in what we now have come to see as a genocide, which was built on an apartheid system of oppression powered by Oracle.”
Mark encouraged fans and followers to oppose the merger. He accurately warned that it would be “catastrophic for our film industry” on every level from job losses to cost for consumers.
What did an Oracle exec say about helping Israel?
Before we get into the allegations of antisemitism in Mark’s post, we should go into the clip that he included in his post.
The short video features comments from Safra Catz, the Executive Vice Chair of Oracle.
At the time, she claimed that Oracle possesses “really profoundly scary technologies” and suggested that the company had helped the government of Israel wage its brutal campaign of mass death and terror against the people of Gaza.
Many framed this as an admission to aiding and abetting in crimes against humanity. It seems unlikely that Catz intended for it to be such.
Numerous companies have been caught rendering aid to the Israeli government and/or military. Very few have been recorded admitting to it with such malevolent glee, however.
Why is he accused of antisemitism?
A spokesperson for David Ellison told Variety that the company feels “troubled when antisemitic tropes are invoked in purported service of a business dispute.” (It is unclear which tropes this refers to.)
“Words like ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid,’ applied to a corporate transaction, aren’t just wrong — they’re a bridge too far, and they cheapen the very real suffering those words are meant to describe,” the statement continued.
“This doesn’t deserve a response in kind,” the spokesperson continued. “And to be clear, we don’t tolerate prejudice of any kind, against anyone.”
Though many online have pointed out that the syntax sounds like AI slop, we tend to caution folks against leveling that accusation unless they are certain. Some people just talk like that.
We want to note that it seems clear that Mark was referring to Israel, an apartheid state, and the ongoing genocide that it is committing against Palestinians. It is not our understanding that he was equating a corporate merger by a company linked to that genocide to crimes against humanity. But what does he have to say?
How did Mark Ruffalo respond to the smear campaign?
In a tweet on Saturday, August 22, Mark responded to the baseless allegations of antisemitism and redirected the conversation to how Larry and David Ellison are a threat to freedom.
“Scrutinizing the Ellisons, including Oracle’s business built on data, surveillance technology and government contracts, and the serious threat to editorial freedom and the loss of a livelihood for thousands of families, is fair and necessary,” he began accurately.
“The $111 billion deal would hand one family control over CNN, HBO, and Warner Bros.,” he warned. “Backed in part by foreign money whose influence on editorial decisions has never been fully explained to the public.”
Mark affirmed his love for the Jewish community, emphasizing: “Criticizing the actions of the Israeli prime minister, a military technology contract, or the executives who supply it is not the same as criticizing Jewish people.”
In reality, it is deeply antisemitic to pretend that criticizing the atrocities of Israel is somehow antisemitic. Israel is a country. There are Jews all over the world who have been and continue to be vocal critics of its war crimes, its government, and its very existence as an apartheid state.