Jewish Diaspora & Antisemitism

White House withdraws invitation to artist who drew anti-Semitic cartoon

Cartoonist behind anti-Semitic ‘Rothschilds’ image has invitation to White House social media summit revoked.

By The Algemeiner

A Montana-based cartoonist whose work features anti-Semitic and racist tropes has been disinvited from the “social media summit” being held at the White House on Thursday.

Sources in the White House told Politico on Wednesday morning that cartoonist Ben Garrison would not be attending the summit.

Garrison caused a storm on social media over the weekend after he tweeted a picture of his invitation to the summit.

Several of Garrison’s critics pointed to a cartoon he drew in 2017 that was denounced by the Anti-Defamation League as the “blatantly anti-Semitic” creation of “an artist known for cartoons with right-wing, anti-government and conspiratorial themes.”

In its own commentary, Politico said that “it doesn’t take much to see why the cartoon is considered anti-Semitic. It shows the Rothschilds — a Jewish family — controlling George Soros, another Jew, on puppet strings, who, in return, has David Petraeus and H.R. McMaster wearing military garb, attached to puppet strings.”

Noted Politico: “Jews controlling the strings of government is a decades old anti-Semitic meme.”

Among the groups protesting the invite to Garrison was the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), which said in a statement that it had engaged in “an active conversation with the White House on this and are working with them on it.”

The decision to hold the summit was taken last month, amid concerns in the Trump administration that platforms like Twitter and Facebook are rife with anti-conservative bias.

In a June 26 interview with Fox Business Channel, Trump insisted that social media companies were run “by people [who] are all Democrats.”

The president added: “We should be suing Google and Facebook and all that, which perhaps we will.”

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Published by
Atara Beck
Tags: anti-Semitism Social media Trump administration

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