Kanye West became public enemy number one last October when he tweeted he was going to go “Defcon 3 on Jews.” A subsequent appearance on Alex Jones’ Info Wars, in which he praised Adolf Hitler, put the nail in the proverbial coffin. From there, businesses such as Adidas and Gap started cutting ties with West faster than a bullet train. But it appears there were more severe consequences from West’s anti-Semitic comments—not just the loss of his billionaire status.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, there are at least 30 incidents linked to West’s comments. On Monday (February 13), the ADL released a report outlining the harm they did to the Jewish community.
“These incidents — which include vandalism, banner drops, targeted harassment and campus propaganda distributions — demonstrate the ongoing influence of Ye’s conspiratorial, bigoted rants,” the report reads. “Immediately following Ye’s antisemitic comments, which included inflammatory tropes about Jewish power and Holocaust denial, the slogan ‘Ye Is Right’ surfaced online in hashtags and antisemitic accounts. The ADL Center on Extremism has also tracked references to ‘Ye Is Right’ in instances of on-the-ground antisemitic vandalism and harassment nationwide.”
Often, references to Kanye West (who now goes by Ye) were paired with swastikas or other anti-Semitic slurs “[and]have become mainstream shorthand for the hatred of — or a desire to commit violence against – Jewish people.”
Beginning last month, white supremacist Groypers launched a series of “Ye is right, change my mind” events on college campuses, where extremists perpetuate the idea the Holocaust never happened while praising Hitler as a way to defend Ye’s anti-Semitic comments. Meanwhile, West has since remarried and seems to express little remorse for his harmful rhetoric.
