“I speak for a living, so I’m very sure of what I’m saying whenever I’m saying it,” Wiley said.
By Josh Plank, World Israel News
British rapper Wiley again doubled down on the anti-Semitic comments that got him barred from Twitter, during a YouTube interview with the 1 Po Show on August 21.
When asked about his comments, which included calling Jews “cowards” and “snakes” and comparing them to the Ku Klux Klan, Wiley acknowledged that he “would have worded it differently.”
“But here’s the thing,” Wiley said, “When you say words, you have to be very sure of what you’re saying and what you’re doing. I’m an MC. I speak for a living, so I’m very sure of what I’m saying whenever I’m saying it.”
He said that his comments were meant to draw people out so that others could see what they are really like.
“My thing was just to show my people, you know what? You know that unfair world that you kept talking about? It really does exist. And you know what? Once I say this, they’re going to try and shut me down,” he said.
After days of anti-Semitic rants, Wiley was eventually barred from Twitter and Facebook.
The protests against him escalated into a 48-hour boycott of Twitter on July 27.
“Twitter and Instagram have consistently failed to act promptly, proportionately, and transparently against Jew hatred. Wiley is just the straw that broke our back,” said Brooke Goldstein, executive director of The Lawfare Project.
Wiley told the 1 Po Show, “Twitter, shut down. Who owns Twitter, do you reckon? Instagram, shut down. Who owns Instagram, do you reckon? Facebook, shut down. We all know who owns Facebook. YouTube, shut down. Google, who owns that do you reckon?”
“So that’s the first lot of people who have shown who they are,” he said.
Wiley offered an apology of sorts in an interview with Noel Phillips of Sky News on July 29.
“I want to apologize for generalizing, number one, and I want to apologize for comments that were looked at as anti-Semitic,” Wiley said.
However, Phillips reported that during the interview, the rapper “repeated similar comments to those posted on his Twitter, much of which is too inflammatory to broadcast.”
When asked about his Sky News apology, Wiley told the 1 Po Show, “My apologies like for the generalizing and stuff, yes, they’re in place and stuff, but like my view and what I think without the ignorance, I’m right. I’m right.”
He said, “The Jewish community do own a lot of s**t on this planet, and they do, with other societies, run the earth. They own everything.”