Politicians, celebrities react to Kanye West’s rants about Jews on X

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Rapper Kanye West ranted about Jews in a series of posts on X on Friday morning, saying that antisemitism was “made up” by Jewish people to protect themselves.

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West, also known as Ye, has recently been out of the public eye, but made an appearance on the Grammy Awards red carpet over the weekend. He made headlines for posing with his wife, Bianca Censori, who donned a sheer minidress that showed her naked body underneath.

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As well as referencing his wife’s outfit in a post on X — saying that it was not a “stunt” — on Friday, he also spoke about the Jewish community and praised Nazis.

“Any Jewish person that does business with me needs to know I don’t like or trust any Jewish person,” he said, adding that he was “completely sober.”

In another post, he said: “Jewish people actually hate white people and use Black people.”

He also said he “loves Hitler” and referred to himself as a Nazi.

In yet another post, he said that Jewish people and white people were different, and highlighted a centuries-old antisemitic trope that Jews are money-hungry and greedy.

“You can get money with Jewish people but they always gonna steal,” he wrote. “Jews hate whites because of the Germans” responsible for the Second World War, he said.

New York Congressman Ritchie Torres said, in a post on X, that West was descending “deeper and deeper into the abyss of antisemitism.”

“Yet he continues to be invited to the Grammys as if he had done nothing wrong,” wrote Torres. “West should be ostracized for his rabid antisemitism.”

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Jewish advocacy group Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) condemned West’s posts on social media and called for X to remove him from the platform.

More people have viewed these posts than there are Jews on the planet

Campaign Against Antisemitism

“At this very moment, (Kanye West) is going on yet another antisemitic rampage. It couldn’t be any clearer that he is an unrepentant, proud antisemite. More people have viewed these posts than there are Jews on the planet,” the group said in a post on X. “It is obvious that Ye has not learned his lesson the first time, when Adidas ended its partnership with him, following our call to do so at the time.”

Israeli writer Hen Mazzig also posted on X, speaking out against West’s rants. He echoed CAA’s sentiment that West has double the amount of X followers than there are Jews in world. More than 32 million people follow West’s X account; meanwhile, there are roughly 15 million Jews in the world, according to a 2023 report by the The Jewish Agency for Israel.

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“If you really think antisemitism ‘doesn’t matter,’ then you just don’t care about Jews,” said Mazzig.

Nioh Berg, an Iranian Jew, also reacted to West’s X rant. She said that he shouldn’t be suspended from the platform. Rather, he should be allowed to expose himself, she said.

In another post, Berg said: “Can someone inform Kanye what Nazi Germany did to the Black people they got their hands on please?”

Per the Holocaust Encyclopedia, run by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Nazi regime “harassed and persecuted (the Black community) because the Nazis viewed Black people as racially inferior.”

“While there was no centralized, systematic program targeting Black people for murder, many Black people were imprisoned, forcibly sterilized, and murdered by the Nazis,” the publication explained.

Shaun Maguire, a partner at venture capital company Sequoia, said on X that he debated whether or not he would post about West’s “attention-seeking meltdown.”

“In the end,” he said, “I think it’s important people know where he stands. Anyone who says ‘I’m a Nazi’ or ‘I love Hitler’ is deranged.”

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This is not the first time that West has gone on an antisemitic rant on social media. In 2022, he was dropped by sportswear company Adidas after a series of antisemitic posts online. Jewish advocacy groups called for the brand to stop doing business with the rapper.

“A German company, with a horrifying Nazi past, is in bed with one of the biggest antisemites in America today,” Stop Antisemitism said in a post on X in October 2022.

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West’s posts remain on X as of Friday afternoon.

The social media platform’s policy on hateful conduct says that users cannot “directly attack other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”

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