What began as a disturbing antisemitic rant from Elmo’s hacked X account has quickly spiraled into other hateful content online that exploits and celebrates the character’s hijacked image. On Sunday night, the verified account of the beloved Sesame Street character was compromised, with the hacker posting a series of inflammatory tweets.
These included references to the Jeffrey Epstein files, slurs targeting multiple communities, and an explicit call to “kill all Jews.” Although the posts were deleted within hours, screenshots circulated widely, ensuring the content reached millions. The tweets were swiftly condemned, and Sesame Workshop issued a public apology on Elmo’s official account.
Yet despite the public outcry, the incident became a springboard for further extremism.
In the days that followed, antisemitic users doubled down—turning Elmo into a tool to spread hate across digital platforms. Memes quickly emerged depicting Elmo endorsing antisemitic slogans and classic conspiracy theories. A frequent theme was “the noticing,” a dog whistle used by antisemites to suggest people are seeing patterns pointing at Jews controlling global systems.
Many posts also mocked Sesame Workshop’s apology, framing it as part of a so-called “Jewish apology tour”—a term used by extremists to claim that celebrities or public figures accused of antisemitism are forced to visit Israel as punishment or re-education.
The phrase plays into longstanding antisemitic tropes about Jewish control of media, politics, and public discourse, portraying efforts to address antisemitism as manipulative or disingenuous.
Some users took the campaign further by dressing as Elmo to film antisemitic skits or rants, exploiting the character’s innocent persona to mask bigotry with irony. Former Temple University student Mo Khan—who gained attention earlier this year for sharing a “f*** the Jews” sign at a popular bar and later embracing conspiratorial rhetoric—was among those who leveraged Elmo’s new hijacked image for antisemitic content.
One of the more disturbing offshoots of this trend is the parody account “Adolf Elmer,” which has quickly become a hub for spreading hate. Created just days after the hack, the account now has over 24,000 followers, with its posts reaching millions.
Using grotesque reinterpretations of Elmo’s voice and imagery, the account mimics the character’s childlike tone to mask violent rhetoric.
Its posts have included Holocaust denial, praise for Hitler, and antisemitic caricatures—often framed in absurdist or meme formats to skirt moderation policies and appeal to fringe communities.
The exploitation of Sesame Street characters to spread hate unfortunately isn’t new. More than a decade ago, a man known as “Evil Elmo” was repeatedly arrested in New York City and San Francisco for shouting antisemitic slurs and harassing tourists while dressed as Elmo.
In Germany, two neo-Nazis were arrested after distributing propaganda at a school using the image of Cookie Monster alongside Nazi messaging. Holocaust denial memes documented in Canada have also included Cookie Monster as a recurring symbol, embedding hate into formats designed to look playful or ironic.
Meanwhile, Count von Count—the vampire-themed mathematician—has been reimagined on social media as a Jewish caricature, drawing on tropes about blood libel, parasitism, and his oversized nose that have been used to dehumanize Jews for centuries.
What this latest incident reveals is not just the persistence of antisemitism, but the evolving strategies used to disguise and distribute it. By hijacking childhood icons, antisemites aim to make hate more viral, more normalized, and more difficult to challenge—especially among younger, irony-driven online audiences.
