Kanye West is not above criticism.
World famous rapper-producer Kanye West has made headlines due to his espousing of antisemetic conspiracies on major news outlets.
Recently, West was on Fox News with Tucker Carlson where an unaired portion of the interview had the artist claiming that the Jewish holiday Hanukkah comes with “financial engineering.”
West has also found legitimation for his grievances with large corporate entities through what he sees as Jewish plot to keep himself in debt and barred from making certain upward moves in the fashion and music industry.
Furthermore, he recently wore a “White Lives Matter” shirt with right-wing pundit Candace Owens at a fashion show. In a similar vein, an inflammatory clip emerged from West’s recent interview with Piers Morgan wherein he says he “empathizes” with the position of the straight white male, partly because it’s the position he’s headed towards, that being the “top power position” (43:00).
Since then, Adidas has cut business ties with West and, as usual, many are outraged and many are defensive of him, particularly on the right. These instances pretty much speak for themselves; however, the most interesting media outing West has done in recent weeks, and the one I want to focus on, was his going onto the Lex Friedman Podcast, Friedman being Jewish, and facing some real contention.
On the podcast West stated a few things: first, that black people are going through an equivalent holocaust to that of Jews called Planned Parenthood; two, that black people are the real, authentic Jews, they are the lost tribe of Israel and people of Abraham; and three, that the history of the Jewish holocaust should not be taught because of those two previous items.
Friedman pushes back saying this is hurtful to those, himself included, whose families perished in the Jewish holocaust. He also says that Planned Parenthood is not comparable to what the Nazis did to Jews.
Furthermore, he says that learning history is extremely important. Friedman also tries to get West to stop placing his frustration with corporate corruption on Jews but on “asshole” individuals — interestingly enough, both men are reticent to condemn capitalism for any endemic corruption in large corporations — who are just that and nothing more. West remains steadfast with his beliefs and just shifts topics eventually.
The rapper at some point in the podcast finally claims he is a “prophet” for the younger generations, that they will understand why he’s doing what he’s doing.
Kanye West is not a prophet, and he’s not above criticism either.
The things he has been saying are utterly contemptible. Some of his defenders look to his mental illness as a scapegoat. Sure, Kanye is unstable, displaying the megalomaniac highs and persecutory lows of someone with bipolar disorder—which he’s been diagnosed with.
However, he has a massive platform and with that comes responsibility. Kanye is still making the choice to be bigoted, conspiratorial and anti-abortion in a post repeal of Roe v. Wade world.
Suffice to say, I won’t be listening to his next record.