John Cusack, star of Say Anything and Being John Malkovich, doesn't keep his politics to himself on Twitter, but a meme he shared Monday got him into hot water, drawing accusations of anti-Semitism, Fox News reports. The offending picture (see it here), which Cusack retweeted along with the caption "Follow the money," showed a picture of an arm with a Star of David on it, with the hand pushing down on a bunch of people, and accompanied by a quote wrongly attributed to Voltaire: "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." The Jerusalem Post notes the meme and fake quote have often been used online by white supremacists and anti-Semites.
At first Cusack said he was merely criticizing the Israeli government—he noted he mistakenly viewed the Star of David as representing Israel's flag—but as backlash mounted, he deleted the tweet and apologized, with further explanation. "A bot got me," Cusack posted, in a follow-up tweet that also received pushback (and has also since been deleted). "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." He clarified, "It's clear that even if it was Israel's flag & even if you don't have antisemitic bone in your body, it is still an antisemitic cartoon. Because it deploys anti jewish stereotypes in its attacks on Israel, even if those critiques about state violence are legit." Journalist Yashar Ali's response to Cusack, per Fox: "Absurd." (More John Cusack stories.)
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