After it was pointed out that a cartoon criticizing George Soros represented an infamously anti-Semitic cliché, Fox News’ social media accounts erased the animation, according to The Daily Beast. A.F., a conservative cartoonist, created the image. It’s a reference to rightwing complaints about progressive criminal justice policies and Soros’ alleged influence on them. Branco showed the progressive-leaning billionaire — a long-favorite target of Republican opprobrium — holding the strings of two Democratic donkeys, one holding a sign for “defund police,” the other “no bail.”
Soros, who is Jewish, was referred to in the caption as “the puppet master,” a word that has long been used as an anti-Semitic stereotype. The photo was uploaded on the company’s Facebook and Instagram pages. It earned 16,000 likes on the latter before being removed.
The Anti-Defamation League was one of the post’s detractors. “As we’ve reminded Fox News multiple times, portraying a Jewish person as a puppet master manipulating national events for nefarious intentions conjures up longstanding antisemitic tropes about Jewish dominance + contributes to the normalization of antisemitism,” the ADL tweeted after the image was released. “It’s time to get rid of this.”
Anti-Semitic stereotypes have been traded on the network in the past. Last March, substitute Ingraham Angle host Raymond Arroy — who was filling in for the host, who is currently under fire for recently unearthed frantic texts she sent on Jan. 6 conveying horror at the Capitol riot that she later downplayed — devoted an entire segment to calling Michael Bloomberg, who is also Jewish, a “puppet master.” Only two weeks ago, Fox Nation host Lara Logan compared Dr. Fauci to Dr. Josef Mengele, aka the Nazi
