Hitler’s Jew-Hating ‘Octopus’ Imagery Appears On Anti-Facebook Group’s Sign

Image by Screenshot/Twitter
Update, July 19: This article has been updated with a statement from the artist behind the cartoon.
At today’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on “social media filtering practices,” representatives from an anti-Facebook group held up signs depicting Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg as octopuses whose tentacles wrap around the entire planet behind the head of a Facebook representative.
The group, Freedom from Facebook, tweeted out a photo of the flyer, along with a caption saying it was an “homage to the famous Standard Oil cartoon.”

Image by Wikimedia Commons
Throwback Tuesday? #FreedomFromFacebook paid homage to the famous Standard Oil cartoon today at the @HouseJudiciary committee’s hearing on content filtering practices of social media giants like @Facebook.https://t.co/CspFpoN7lC pic.twitter.com/6Lsv5jW8Yh
— Freedom From Facebook (@FacebookBreakup) July 17, 2018
The Freedom from Facebook coalition aims to have the Federal Trade Commission break up Facebook to make it “safe for our democracy,” and to protect the privacy of users.
“The FTC should spin off Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger into competing networks, require interoperability, so we have the freedom to communicate across social networks, and impose strong privacy rules that empower and protect us,” the Freedom from Facebook website states.
Depictions of Jews as octopuses have long been associated with anti-Semitism, stemming back to Adolf Hitler’s declaration of “Jewish tyrants” as octopuses.
“If our people and our state become the victim of these bloodthirsty and avaricious Jewish tyrants of nations, the whole earth will sink into the snares of this octopus; if Germany frees herself from this embrace, this greatest of dangers to nations may be regarded as broken for the whole world,” Hitler wrote in “Mein Kampf.”
Caricatures of Zuckerberg as an octopus have been decried as anti-Semitic before. In 2007, the NRA came under fire for depicting then-New York mayor Michael Bloomberg as an octopus. More recently, in 2018, the Columbia University College Republicans were called out for a cartoon depicting severed tentacles.
In a statement, Eddie Vale, the Jewish artist behind the cartoon, reiterated that the flyer was meant to evoke the Standard Oil cartoon.
“Obviously there’s racist and anti-Semitic idiots throughout history, and online today, who do stupid and hateful things but that has no bearing here because I’m the Jewish person who designed, and knows, what it is,” Vale said. “We’re arguing Facebook is a monopoly…we made a graphic riffing off of the most famous, and recognizable, anti-monoply (sic) cartoon in American history…that’s all it was and I am confident in saying that because I know what was in my head through this entire process.”
Some on Twitter had taken notice of the signs, expressing dismay and confusion over the imagery.
Um… WTF is up with those signs? https://t.co/HDYXJSfzZ6 pic.twitter.com/WFO9ueyVRN
— Alex VanNess (@thealexvanness) July 17, 2018
Juliana Kaplan is a news intern at The Forward. Email her at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter, @julianamkaplan
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward ‘Another Jewish warrior’: Fine wins special election for U.S. House seat
-
Fast Forward A Chicagoan wanted to protest Elon Musk — and put a swastika sticker on a Jewish man’s Tesla
-
Fast Forward NY attorney general orders car wash to stop ripping off Jews with antisemitic ‘Passover special’
-
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.