Sesame Street puppet Elmo's X account posts anti-Jewish rant after hacking
The posts on Elmo's account on Sunday called for the extermination of Jewish people, referred to United States President Donald Trump as a 'puppet' of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and demanded the release of law enforcement files about Epstein, the accused sex trafficker who died in 2019.
The posts attracted a flurry of attention online before being deleted a short time after they were uploaded on Sunday.
'Elmo's X account was compromised by an unknown hacker who posted disgusting messages, including antisemitic and racist posts,' a spokesperson for the Sesame Workshop told Al Jazeera in a statement on Monday.
'We are working to restore full control of the account.'
Elmo, a furry red monster known for his high-pitched voice and habit of referring to himself in the third person, debuted on PBS's Sesame Street in 1980, quickly becoming one of the show's most beloved characters.
Elmo's X account, which has more than 650,000 followers, is usually associated with uplifting messages and clips of the puppet playing games with other Sesame Street characters and his human friends.
Last year, a post asking Elmo's audience how they were doing went mega-viral, attracting nearly 225 million views on X.
The hacking is the latest incident to draw attention to anti-Jewish content on tech billionaire Elon Musk's X.
Earlier this month, Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI was forced to make upgrades to its chatbot Grok after users reported that it provided anti-Jewish responses to questions, including statements praising Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
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