Rapper and film actor Ice Cube has been getting a chilly reception, including from Jewish and pro-Israel groups, for sharing on Twitter anti-Semitic images amid the backlash over the death of 46-year-old African-American George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.
On June 6, as part of expressing support for the Black Lives Matter movement, Ice Cube (whose real name is O’Shea Jackson) posted to his 5.3 million Twitter followers the caricature of a group of white-skinned older men, some with large hooked noses, sitting around a Monopoly-like game board with a fully-bearded man counting dollar bills. The board is on top of bowed, naked backs of a group of mostly black men.
The image first appeared in mural form in London, igniting controversy in 2018 following then-British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn expressing support for the artist Mear One (Kalen Ockerman). Corbyn later apologized, and the image was removed.
The caricature is identical to “anti-Semitic propaganda used by Hitler and the Nazis to whip up hatred that led to the massacre of millions of Jews. This extends to the table these figures are sat at, resting on human bodies, as the Nazis also depicted,” according to journalist and filmmaker Michael Segalov.