Voice of London

Rapper Kanye “Ye” West, 45, had his account suspended on Twitter following an antisemitic post in which he shared a picture combining a swastika with the Star of David.

This is a follow up story on Kanye West: Is he really a Nazi sympathizer

After a rampage of antisemitism, with comments such as “I love Jewish people, but I also love Nazis” and statements glorifying Hitler, West’s tweet went too far even for the “free-speech absolutist” Elon Musk.

The rapper’s tweet promoting his 2024 presidential campaign said: “YE24 LOVE EVERYONE #LOVESPEECH”, a wordplay on the term “hate speech”, which according to the Council of Europe entails “any forms of expressions which advocate, incite, promote, or justify hatred, violence and discrimination against a person or group of persons for a variety of reasons.” In the tweet, West included a picture of a symbol combining a swastika and the Star of David.

The richest man in the world and recent owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, 51, had no choice but to suspend West’s account following his dangerous and antisemitic behaviour on the platform. Musk expressed his plans to kick the former billionaire rapper off the site to his followers on Twitter – reason being the incitement to violence:

“I tried my best. Despite that, he again violated our rule against incitement to violence. Account will be suspended”

The rapper’s shocking tweet provoked even the current US president Joe Biden, 80, to tweet out a statement against antisemitism, making it clear that “Hitler was a demonic figure” and “our political leaders should be calling out antisemitism wherever it hides.”

Before being suspended, West tweeted out screenshots of one-on-one texts with the new Twitter owner and finally a picture of Musk shirtless with text “Let’s always remember this as my final tweet.”

West was previously banned from the platform earlier this year for due to antisemitic comments and was welcomed back by Musk only a couple weeks ago.

On Reddit, some Kanye West fans have come together to condemn the unjustifiable statements made by the rapper, even sharing quotes and facts about the holocaust and the severity of antisemitic behaviour.

In 2021 the rates of antisemitic incidents reached a new high ever since they started being recorded in the UK, according to the CNN. According to the report by Community Security Trust (CST) the reason behind this could be the “loosening of Covid restrictions, coinciding with the war in Israel and Gaza.”

Words: Lumi Leinonen|Subbing: I. B. Beres