The Anti-Defamation League, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and Creative Community for Peace — three of the most prominent Jewish organizations in America — issued public condemnations of actor Mark Ruffalo on Saturday over what they called antisemitic comments related to the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger.
Disney, which has paid Ruffalo tens of millions to play the Hulk across more than a decade of Marvel films, has said nothing.
ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt didn't mince words. "The posts by Mark Ruffalo over the past 48 hours are cynical and sickening," Greenblatt said, urging critics to "oppose the Paramount merger on the merits" rather than resort to antisemitic tropes. He followed up directly: "Mark Ruffalo, your acting might be convincing on screen, but careless and hateful words like yours continue to put Jewish communities at risk."
The Simon Wiesenthal Center issued its own statement, commending Paramount "for speaking clearly and refusing to allow prejudice to masquerade as political or corporate criticism." That's a polite way of saying Ruffalo tried to dress up bigotry as corporate accountability and got caught.
Ruffalo's comments centered on the Paramount merger involving Larry Ellison and David Ellison — and according to these organizations, invoked antisemitic stereotypes linking Jewish people to wealth and media control. The kind of rhetoric that has a very specific and very ugly historical lineage.
Ari Ingel, executive director of Creative Community for Peace, put it plainly: "Mark Ruffalo's rhetoric has increasingly crossed the line from criticism of Israel into extremist and antisemitic messaging." Ingel added that "Hollywood should not accept this kind of rhetoric from anyone. Mark Ruffalo should retract these remarks and apologize."
This wasn't a one-off. Ingel is describing a pattern, a trajectory from political criticism into something darker. And the people best positioned to identify that trajectory — organizations whose entire mission is tracking antisemitism — are the ones sounding the alarm.
The condemnations came from across the spectrum of Jewish advocacy, not just one group with a political axe to grind. The ADL, the Wiesenthal Center, and CCFP don't always agree on everything. They agreed on this.
Ruffalo has spent years positioning himself as Hollywood's conscience — the guy who shows up at every climate march, posts about every social justice cause, and lectures the public about empathy from the comfort of a Marvel contract. He's exactly the kind of celebrity who would demand someone else be fired for this. He's exactly the kind of celebrity who would post a black square and call it activism.
But when three major Jewish organizations tell him his own words are putting Jewish communities at risk, the response from his corner of Hollywood has been silence. Disney — a company that will issue a press release if someone sneezes near a theme park — hasn't acknowledged that one of its franchise stars just got condemned for antisemitism by the ADL.
Imagine for a moment that a conservative actor — say, someone from the Clint Eastwood orbit — had made comments that drew simultaneous condemnation from the ADL, the Wiesenthal Center, and a Hollywood advocacy group. The trades would be running wall-to-wall coverage. The studio would have a statement out within the hour. The actor's next project would be "under review."
Ruffalo plays a character who smashes things when he loses control. Turns out the performance isn't entirely fiction.