Racist billboards in Chicago pretended they were paid for by Mr Beast. Why?

Hacked billboards displayed a series of anti-Israel messages on Wednesday night. But they’re just the latest in a slew of controversial, Israel-focused messages appearing in the Midwest, John Bowden reports

A billboard paid for by the Democratic National Committee attacking Green Party Candidate Jill Stein in Dearborn, Michigan (John Bowden)

Sometimes, politics is a game of subtlety. Other times, it’s not.

On Wednesday, a series of billboards in a Chicago suburb were “hacked”, according to police, to display a series of shocking anti-Israeli messages, including “death to Israel” and “f**k Israel”.

Even stranger, they featured references to YouTube megastar Mr Beast: “paid for by Mr Beast LLC”, they declared. The YouTuber quickly rejected any suggestion of involvement in a statement.

Multiple electronic billboards in a Chicago suburb were reportedly hacked, displaying antisemitic messages on Wednesday. https://t.co/Uiv6bj42eR

— FOX 32 News (@fox32news) October 17, 2024

"MrBeast did not pay for this billboard and after being made aware of its existence, we contacted our attorneys and the authorities about how to have it immediately removed,” said a spokesman.

The billboards were also condemned by a local Democratic congressman in a statement, and quickly deactivated by owner OUTFRONT Media, which told a local news station: “We are aware of this incident. The copy has been removed and the situation is being investigated.”

OH MY GOD pic.twitter.com/ZSwQb54irr

— Experiment 626 : “Stitch” (@s626ch) October 17, 2024

Why someone is trying to connect Mr Beast with these billboards remains a mystery. But this is not the first incident of racist billboards that has plagued Democrats in the Midwest recently. A quick hop across state lines in Dearborn, Michigan, the ugliness has been on display for weeks.

The town’s politics are something of a unique case in the US. Dearborn was a so-called “Sundown Town” until the 1980s; Black people were not welcome there, explicitly so, under a hegemony enforced by the town’s white residents. Yet, by the mid-2000s, it had become a hub of migration from Muslim-majority countries across the Middle East, particularly Lebanon. It’s now the only Muslim-majority city in the country.

Now, many believe there is an ongoing effort to discourage the roughly 55 percent of the town’s residents who claim Middle Eastern or North African ancestry from voting Democrat. And that effort has taken a particularly cynical turn, thanks to none other than Twitter/X CEO Elon Musk.

Workers at the Kabob Inn on Rt. 24 will tell you they don’t look at the digital billboard which towers over their restaurant, just feet away. Despite the base of the sign resting in their parking lot, owner Essa Badereldean told The Independent that he doesn’t have regular contact info for the owners, who also advertise his shop on the sign. Every few seconds, the images on the sign’s two screens shift through a rotation of advertisements.

They also said they know nothing about the two dueling images which flash on the screens. The first ad is sponsored by the Democratic National Committee, and features Green Party candidate (and perennial centrist Democrat headache) Jill Stein, clad in an (edited) MAGA hat. The ad, while not specifically mentioning any religions or ethnicities, has a clear aim in mind. Stein has picked up an endorsement from the Muslim-led “Abandon Biden” group, which pivoted to “Abandon Harris” after July. Stein is making a clear play for votes from supporters of an end to the slaughter in the Middle East, and having some success doing it.

It’s the second ad on the sign which truly leans into the cynicism, however. On its face, it seems like the kind of ad you’d run in a conservative district: it declares Kamala Harris and Elissa Slotkin — who is the party’s Senate candidate in Michigan, and is Jewish — as“the pro-Israel team we can trust”. It also thanks them both for standing with Michigan’s “Jewish community”.

A second billboard, this one aimed at highlighting Kamala Harris’s support for Israel and ties to American Jewish communities, hangs over a Halal restaurant in Dearborn, Michigan, the only Muslim-majority city in America. (John Bowden)

When you realize the ad was paid for by Republicans — specifically, the Future Coalition PAC backed by Elon Musk as part of his last-minute push to save Donald Trump’s campaign — the intent becomes strikingly clear. HuffPost first reported FEC reports on Tuesday which revealed that the Musk-backed group Building America’s Future was the sole source of Future Coalition PAC’s $3m in funding.

The group is also running digital ads in Dearborn area: “Kamala and Doug, America’s pro-Israel power couple,” the narrator of one reads.

It would be a positively shocking strategy, were the Republican nominee for president not openly engaged in the kind of anti-Arab racism that the US hasn’t seen since the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Trump himself has already referred to the highest-ranking Jewish politician in America as “a Palestinian” (as a slur) for the latter’s remarks about Benjamin Netanyahu. Now, the MAGA section of the Republican Party is leaning into anti-Muslim rhetoric in a way it never has before.

The battle in Dearborn isn’t an effort by the GOP to win Muslim votes, but rather to force Democrats to lose them. It’s not clear yet how it will play out — but the warning signs are all there.

A survey from the Arab-American Institute found that Kamala Harris remains underwater with the demographic, even having rebuilt some of that support since taking over the ticket from Joe Biden.

"Kamala Harris regained much of the support Biden lost after October 7th, but Harris remains 18 points below Biden’s 2020 level of support with Arab American voters,” the organization said in a statement last week.

Musk, for his part, has not commented on the efforts to cause racial and religious divisions funded by his donations. But the owner of one of the US’s main platforms for political discourse been open about his abandonment of any pretense of neutrality — he famously jumped around onstage with Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania.

James Zogby, a prominent Arab-American activist and supporter of Democratic candidates, told HuffPost that the Musk-backed group’s strategy was “devious” — but claimed that his party didn’t know what to do.

“It’s a kind of disinformation. It’s clearly designed to suppress Arab voters for Democrats,” Zogby told the news outlet. “And the problem is: Democrats don’t have a response.”

Polls have shown that the Harris campaign is in serious danger of seeing large numbers of key blue-leaning voter demographics stay home. Part of the problem: Harris, like Biden before her, has not outlined a clear path for ending the now year-long slaughter taking place in the Middle East, which has led to the deaths of over 40,000 people in Gaza alone.

She has also failed to explain why the administration seems unable to make serious inroads in changing Israeli policies which wide segments of the Democratic base find abhorrent.