Actor Mark Ruffalo went on a social media rant on the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. Photo by Ian West/PA Images via Getty Images See more of our coverage in your search results.
Add The New York Post on Google Are you against “crushing workers and consolidating the wealth of the world”?
Excellent! You have your share of targets to protest — like Egypt, which systematically arrests its labor leaders, or Turkey, where criticizing a corporation is likely to land you in jail.
Or you can, ya’ know, do the trendy thing and blame the Jews. Mark Ruffalo sure did.
Sounding like he was reading from a Mad Libs book containing just about every laughable antisemitic accusation out there, the actor argued on social media that if we’re not too careful, those sinister Yids would soon have us all under their boots.
The context for his meltdown was Paramount’s proposed $110 billion merger with Warner Bros., which he opposes.
Why? Rather than argue about facts and back up his opinion with solid reasoning, Ruffalo shared a video popularized by pro-Palestinian activists of Safra Catz, the former CEO of Oracle.
The tech giant, you may recall, was founded by Larry Ellison, whose son, David, is behind the Paramount bid.
And Oracle, Ruffalo roared, is a bad company, selling technology to Israel, and is therefore complicit in powering “what we now have come to see as a genocide, which was built on an apartheid system of oppression.”
Let Ellison have too much power, Ruffalo continued, and disaster will ensue.
“Larry Ellison will own most of ‘Para Bros,’ ” he thundered.
“Larry is a classic Oligarch. They are crushing workers and consolidating the wealth of the world for their own power and concentrated dominance.”
Hear that, boys and girls? “They” are crushing the poor, noble workers because “They” control all the money and all the power in the world.
This rant sounded much better in the original German.
“We are, as always, troubled when antisemitic tropes are invoked in purported service of a business dispute,” a company representative said in response.
“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.”
But tell that to Ruffalo, and the actor — who made a career as the thinking girl’s on-screen sweet and sensitive love interest — claims to be “appalled.”
Ruffalo responded that some of his best friends are Jewish, and argued that anyone who accuses him of antisemitism is being dishonest.
All he did, Ruffalo argued, was choose to speak of a Hollywood merger by bringing up the world’s sole Jewish state and accuse one Jewish billionaire of using his benighted technology and ill-gotten wealth to “crush” the rest of us.
How could anyone interpret such words as being even remotely bigoted?
Such dazzling dishonesty, cloaked in cloying virtue-signaling, would’ve been almost comically repugnant coming from anyone.
But they’re particularly rich coming from Ruffalo.
After decades of languishing largely in indie dramas, the actor had his big break after being cast as Dr. Bruce Banner, a k a The Incredible Hulk, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies.
Marvel, you may recall, was made famous by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, two first-generation American Jews who created their superheroes as a response to a world too ready to discount or ignore Jewish suffering.
Kirby in particular was an ardent Zionist and a big fan of Israel.
It doesn’t take too much imagination to see the character he created, the Hulk, as the parable of the weak Jew suddenly made strong enough to stand up to his persecutors.
That the man who made his fame and fortune playing the Hulk on screen is now one of the loudest, most mindless antisemites is a plot twist worthy of a comic book.
But if the decades-long ascendance of Marvel teaches us anything, it’s that our timeless heroes stand strong long after rubes like Ruffalo fade from memory.
Liel Leibovitz is editor at large for Tablet and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
