The news about the first all-female Ghostbusters team was shortly overshadowed by the Twitter abuse black actress Leslie Jones received following the film’s debut. Then, the movie’s Executive Producer Dan Aykroyd said the offensive social media trolls would surely vote Republican. Great.
It all started when Jones was sent racist tweets, pictures of gorillas and even told that she was the “source of AIDS.” Although Twitter did not act quickly enough in disciplining the nasty tweeters, many fans and celebrities used the medium to voice their support for Jones with the hashtag #LoveForLeslieJ. Original Ghostbusters actor and now Executive Producer Dan Aykroyd was one of the stars who came to the actress’ aid; yet, instead of simply condemning the hurtful comments, Aykroyd decided to make it political.
Speculating about the demographic of the puerile tweeters, Aykroyd declared in an interview with ET Canada: “I would say you’re looking at obese white men between 50 and 60 who are active Klan members or members of the Aryan Nation and there are millions of them.” Millions? Really? According to the Anti-Defamation League, there may be as many as 5,000 KKK members in the United States.
Aykroyd continued: “I’m afraid to say that that contingency will be voting for the Republican ticket, pretty much that’s what the statistics are indicating, that there’s a lot of white racist hatred out there that’s going to channel into a support for the Republican ticket, maybe in the false belief that these people share their views.”
“I don’t think that Trump and [GOP vice presidential nominee Mike] Pence are as racist as the people who attacked Leslie Jones, I really don’t,” the actor clarified. “Trump may be saying some things to go that way to get some votes but—well, I don’t know.”
