Twitter Allows Russian Officials to Share Antisemitic Cartoon of Zelenskyy – By Robert Mackey (The Intercept) / Nov 22, 2022
Elon Musk’s Twitter permitted a Russian Embassy account to post a cartoon that echoed Nazi propaganda in its depiction of Ukraine’s Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
ELON MUSK’S TWITTER failed to stop the circulation of an antisemitic cartoon posted on the network by Russian diplomats drawing on a trope of Nazi propaganda by depicting Ukraine’s Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, with a huge nose.
Despite pleas from Twitter users who objected to the anti-Jewish racism of the cartoon, the tweet remained where it was posted, on the official account of the Russian Embassy in London, without being deleted, contextualized, or restricted in any visible way.
Before Musk took control of the social network, tweets containing images that used racist tropes to attack individuals or groups based on their ethnic identity were routinely removed from the platform or made impossible to share.
Joan Donovan, research director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and the co-author of the book “Meme Wars,” posted a screenshot of the Russian embassy tweet and noted that the diplomats were using “open antisemitism” to drum up support for the Russian war on Ukraine.
