During a shocking interview broadcasted on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ InfoWars program on Dec. 1, Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, praised Hitler and the Nazi party in yet another attack against Jewish people.
InfoWars is an American far-right conspiracy theory and fake news website owned by Alex Jones, founded in 1999. Several people who were once close to the artist formerly known as Kanye West told CNN that he has long been fascinated by Adolf Hitler — and once wanted to name an album after the Nazi leader. He would praise Hitler by saying how incredible it was that he was able to accumulate so much power and would talk about all the great things he and the Nazi Party achieved for the German people.
Many people have gotten used to Ye’s wild and unpredictable comments. In the past, Ye has been on the receiving end of backlash because of his repeated comments criticizing Jewish people. He even falsely claimed that a cabal of elite Jewish power brokers controlled the media, Hollywood and politics.
During InfoWars, as the show headed to a commercial break, Jones talked about Hitler, Ye jumped in and calmly responded, “I like Hitler.”
Even Alex Jones, who owes thousands of millions of dollars to the parents of Sandy Hook victims, was taken aback by Kanye’s comments.
Any sane person would have stopped after the first sentence, but Kanye went ahead and voiced his support for the fascist dictator, adding, “Well, I see good things about Hitler,” even after Alex tried to offer the rapper a chance to recover from his insensitive remark.
Ye’s speech attacking Jews and praising Hitler is wrong and dangerous and will promote hate speech attacking Jews that will spread Antisemitism around the world. His pattern of anti-semitic behavior is unacceptable and should be condemned in the strongest way possible. Major brands and companies could blacklist Kanye from making deals with them, and all major social platforms should remove or ban Kanye from their platform. Free speech does not extend to incitement of violence and demonization of the Jewish community, which faces the highest levels of religious-based violence in the United States.
Even before the now-infamous quote “I like Hitler,” Yehas said anti-semitic things in the past, resulting in his sponsors dropping him at a tremendous financial cost.
For example, Adidas recently ended its partnership with Ye after the rapper made offensive and antisemitic comments. The Yeezy business earned more than $500 million in total royalty payments and marketing fees through 2020, the first four years of the Adidas deal. Now that they terminated the contract, the company could still be paying him millions of royalties into 2023, which is essentially a complete loss for them.
Many clips of Kanye West’s comments immediately became viral on many social media platforms, spreading his anti-Semitic statements to even more people around the globe. Expectedly, the majority denounced the singer.
This has led significant social platforms like Youtube to remove video clips of Kanye West‘s controversial interview on Alex Jones’s Infowars talk show, and its parent company Google is even working to remove reuploads of the controversial clip of Kanye’s interview if the antisemitism in the discussion is not denounced in the video via added commentary.
This is not the end of the matter, as shortly after, Kanye posted a picture of a swastika merged with a Star of David resulting in his Twitter account being suspended. Throughout the nearly three-hour-long interview, Kanye makes egregious remarks including, “I see good things about Hitler.” Later, he veered into Holocaust denialism. As Jones was visibly uncomfortable, and Fuentes watched with a grin, Ye pulled out a bottle of Yoo-hoo chocolate drink and a small net he indicated represented Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, mimicking him in a high-pitched voice saying, “We have to control the history books. We have to control the banks. And we have to go and kill people.”
This immediately led many Jewish leaders to condemn and criticize Alex for providing a platform for Kanye and enabling his unacceptable behavior. However, multiple people on social media are also defending Kanye, with some of his fans saying things like “I am glad that the Holocaust happened” and that the Jews “are the seed of the devil.” A Jewish leader condemned people like Alex are giving a chance to people like Kanye, who when given the chance, could start a second, “The Final solution.” that killed millions of Jews.
Former president of the United States Donald Trump, a self-declared candidate for reelection in 2024, had dinner with Kanye West, whose antisemitic public statements have grown increasingly extreme, along with Nick Fuentes, who is among the nation’s most vocal Holocaust deniers. The dinner had an unplanned explosive fallout, with Kanye West Unexpectedly announcing presidency of 2024 against him and said Trump should instead be his running mate — all of which angered the former president, who attacked Ye’s ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, according to two dinner participants.
However, the dinner seems more like a trap set by Kanye West. Milo Yiannopoulos, a British commenter, said Kanye arranged the dinner “just to make Trump’s life miserable” because news of the spread would leak and Trump would mishandle it. Furthermore, one longtime Trump adviser, who did not want to go on the record criticizing his preferred candidate, said it was clear that Fuentes’ presence was part of a headline-grabbing setup.
Many critics explain why the need to take action against Kanye is now more than ever, to prevent people from forgetting the tragic pain that Jewish people suffered from the holocaust. Hopefully, in the future, Kanye will learn from his past mistakes and the criticisms that he received and put an end to this nonsense.
