A widely shared Facebook post claims that the actor Jodie Foster justified attacks on rich people, calling it an act of “self-defense”.
The post attributes a quote to Ms Foster, which reads in full: “Attacking the rich is not envy, it is self-defense. The hoarding of wealth is the cause of poverty. The rich aren’t just indifferent to poverty; they create it & maintain it.”
But there is no evidence that Ms Foster has ever said this.
The fact checkers Snopes and Check Your Fact have also failed to trace this comment to Ms Foster in the past.
The true origin of the comment is uncertain. The earliest use that we can find was in 2014, when a Twitter account shared it, without attribution. The owner of the account has claimed that they were the quote’s original author.