Statement from Ari Ingel, Executive Director, Creative Community for Peace regarding Mark Ruffalo’s latest comments:
“Mark Ruffalo’s rhetoric has increasingly crossed the line from criticism of Israel into extremist and antisemitic messaging.
For nearly a decade, Ruffalo has supported BDS and campaigns to isolate and demonize Israel. In 2021, he accused Israel of committing ‘genocide,’ then apologized and admitted that the claim was ‘not accurate,’ ‘inflammatory,’ and was ‘being used to justify antisemitism.’
Instead of becoming more careful with his words, he has repeatedly doubled down on his extremism, leading to his latest antisemitic attack on Larry and David Ellison.
Ruffalo describes Ellison as a ‘classic oligarch,’ warns about people ‘consolidating the wealth of the world for their own power and concentrated dominance,’ raises the specter of control over one of the world’s largest media companies, and invokes ‘profoundly scary’ technology that could one day be ‘used on you,’ recklessly insinuating that the Ellisons have designs to brutalize people worldwide.
Taken together, his statements echo some of the oldest antisemitic conspiracy theories in history, depicting Jews as a wealthy and sinister elite who accumulate control over media, money and power, then use that control against society.
This is also part of a broader pattern of extremism.
Over the past two years, Ruffalo has amplified claims to his millions of followers that 14,000 babies in Gaza would die within 48 hours and that Israel had actually killed 680,000 Palestinians, including 380,000 children under five. He repeatedly pushes accusations of “genocide,” “apartheid” and “famine” to millions of followers, almost always without correction when those claims prove false, are wildly exaggerated, unsupported or are preposterous.
Ruffalo now says accusations of antisemitism against him are ‘fundamentally dishonest.’ Intent does not erase impact. Repeatedly amplifying inflammatory falsehoods and rhetoric that mirrors historic antisemitic tropes helps normalize the violent anti-Jewish hatred we are seeing take hold once again around the world, regardless of how he chooses to describe his own motives.
Point blank, he has been warned before about the consequences of this rhetoric, yet continues contributing to the toxic antisemitic atmosphere we are witnessing today. That makes him culpable.
His argument increasingly fuses hostility toward Israel and Zionism with Jewish-associated wealth, media ownership, oligarchic power and ominous warnings about concentrated control into a single narrative. Those echoes are impossible to ignore.
Hollywood should not accept this kind of rhetoric from anyone.
Mark Ruffalo should retract these remarks and apologize, and nobody in Hollywood should platform him until he does.”
Cover photo: Getty Images: Credit: Rodin Eckenroth / Stringer