ADL assails Republicans for branding Facebook CEO 'Zuckerbucks'

ADL assails Republicans for branding Facebook CEO 'Zuckerbucks'

Republicans and others are calling Mark Zuckerberg “Zuckerbucks.” The Anti-Defamation League wants that to stop, claiming the term suggests that “rich Jews are controlling levers of power.”


The Zuckerbucks term has been circulating since last year, when the Facebook founder and his wife, Priscilla Chan, steered $400 million through the nonpartisan Center for Technology and Civic Life to assist local election offices ahead of the November vote. A conservative think tank, the Foundation for Government Accountability, has posted multiple articles using the term and decrying the donations as unfairly tilting elections.


This month, the term made it into Congress: Rep. Claudia Tenney, a New York Republican, proposed the End Zuckerbucks Act, which would ban nonprofits classified as tax exempt and nonpartisan from giving money to election offices.


Among the co-sponsors are two Republican congresswomen, Reps. Elise Stefanik of New York and Lauren Boebert of Colorado. Stefanik, a Donald Trump ally, is the third-ranked Republican in the House of Representatives. Boebert recently drew criticism for likening coronavirus protections to the Nazi era.With Democrats controlling Congress, the bill has no chance of passage.


ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the term Zuckerbucks perpetuates an age-old antisemitic stereotype claiming that rich Jews use their money to exercise inordinate control over governments. Zuckerberg is the fifth-richest person in the world, according to Forbes, with a net worth of approximately $97 billion.


“In recent years, we’ve seen antisemites alleging that Mark Zuckerberg is ‘proof’ of this stereotype,” Greenblatt wrote in an email to JTA. “Those who use the term ‘Zuckerbucks,’ particularly members of Congress, are dangerously enabling this antisemitic trope, and we urge these policymakers to stop using this term immediately.”


Zuckerberg and Chan provided the $400 million after Senate Republicans blocked ..

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