‘RELEASE THE FILES’: Sesame Street’s Elmo hacked, becomes basically a red furry Hitler

Everybody loves Elmo. He’s one of the most popular Sesame Street characters, beloved by children and adults around the world for his kind and compassionate nature, loyalty to his friends, and willingness to learn new things. So, what’s new in the world of Elmo today? Well, as per his X profile, he wants to “kill all Jews”.

Huh. Waitaminute, that doesn’t sound like something Elmo would say! Yup, it looks like some nefarious actor has invaded Elmo’s brain and has been forcing him to say some stuff that’s extremely un-Sesame Street:

Elmo got hacked. pic.twitter.com/VP9Xk3Zv4C

— Mukhtar (@I_amMukhtar) July 14, 2025

We’ve just had to deal with the rise of MechaHitler, and it seems Der Fuhrer is raising his ugly head once again, albeit as a red and fluffy muppet. An investigation is underway on who’s responsible for this, with the Sesame Workshop releasing a damage control statement underlining that this doesn’t accurately reflect Elmo’s position on the Epstein files, Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump or, indeed, Jewish people as a whole:

“Elmo’s X account was compromised today by an unknown hacker who posted disgusting messages, including antisemitic and racist posts. We are working to restore full control of the account.”

Not Elmo!

In the meantime, there’s been shock and sadness from across the political spectrum. Nobody seriously believed Elmo was becoming Hitler 2.0 (maybe 3.0 at this point?), but even the thought is disquieting:

I’m forever scarred … by @elmo

Words I never expected to utter

— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) July 13, 2025

I thought we all agreed @elmo is off limits

— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) July 13, 2025

Others leaned into the thought of Elmo being a fascistic, genocidal maniac:

“Isn’t it true that you were instrumental in planning and promoting the eradication of the entire jewish community from Sesame Street…that “Elmo’s world”, is in fact, a genocidal muppet ethnostate!?” pic.twitter.com/GI17fmhzew

— Supreme Grillmaster Vanir (@Dark_Asgard_) July 14, 2025

Elmo has allegedly fled to Argentina after his antisemitic rant. pic.twitter.com/uTd2BaYrUt

— Steven (@heavydutysteven) July 14, 2025

Still others point out that this is far from the first time Elmo has been linked to anti-semitism:

Reminder: Elmo has a long history of Anti-jewish freakouts. pic.twitter.com/wIAXSVTfOc

— Slobadog Midogevic (@SlobadogDogevic) July 14, 2025

As this happened on X, we guess Elon Musk also has some questions to answer about account security. Major figures seeing their profiles hijacked is far from uncommon. However, in this instance, we can’t be sure what security measures were in place on the @Elmo account, though given that it’s an incredibly valuable corporate property, we’d have to assume it was 2FA’d up tightly and the hacker obtained control through a more complicated move than simply guessing the correct password.

Fortunately, Elmo is now back to his lovable self, though we’ll be keeping an eye on him over the next few weeks. One hint of a Nazi salute, goosestep, or a maniacal Austrian accen,t and the little guy is spending some serious time in the naughty corner!