Throughout the month of October, Kanye West, also known mononymously as Ye, unleashed a slew of anti-semitic rhetoric on social media. These comments began on October 6th when Ye appeared on Tucker Carlson and made false and insulting claims about Jewish people. One of these claims was that Jews are actually black people, thus making his comments permissible because he cannot be anti-semitic if he is in fact Jewish. He also asserted that Planned Parenthood was a collaboration between the KKK and Margaret Sanger— a birth control activist— to “control the Jew [i.e. Black] population”.
Ye’s additional comments fed into stereotypes about Jewish people being in control of wealth and power. He shared screenshots on Instagram claiming that Jews in the music industry are trying to intimidate him and force him to conform to some preconceived agenda. While Ye has since deleted these posts, their impacts on the rest of the world linger.
This is not the first nor the last time Jewish people have been presented negatively in the media. In J.K. Rowling’s acclaimed Harry Potter series, the goblins that run the banks are presented using caricatures typically used in anti-semitic depictions of Jews. Again, this media asserts the notion that Jews control the money and therefore the power of a society—a control seen as dangerous and a reason to mistrust Jewish people.
All of these anti-semitic depictions in the media trace back to the genocide of the Jewish people in the Holocaust. Adolf Hitler convinced people to harbor these awful ideas about Jewish people through the use of propaganda. He portrayed Jews as people in control of the wealth and power of their society and the ones to blame for society’s failures.
Already, Kanye’s words have inspired people to take action outside of the digital sphere. On October 22nd, in Los Angeles, members of the extremist group Goyim Defense League created a public demonstration in which they hung a sign stating “KAYNE IS RIGHT ABOUT THE JEWS” and gave Nazi salutes.
Being a widely known public figure, Kayne’s words and actions reach a large number of people. There are bound to be extremists who will use his comments as justification for persecution. We’re seeing it happen already. Comments are never harmless when they speak about harming others. These comments lead to actions that lead to the persecution and erasure of cultures. It bears an important reminder on the responsibility of everyone to call out injustice. Kanye, and all those who propagate messages of hate, must be held accountable.