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Musk allows antisemitic Kanye West to tweet again; ‘sickening,’ says ADL

Almost eight months after being kicked off Twitter for inciting to violence through antisemitic posts, the rapper is reinstated after promising to be good.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

After an almost-eight-month ban due to incitement to violence for antisemitic posts, rapper Kanye West, now known as Ye, has been allowed to tweet again.

Elon Musk, who has just rebranded the Twitter platform, calling it X, had shut Ye down after a series of tweets in October in which he said he’d “go Deathcon 3 on Jewish people” along with other negative statements about Jews, alleging that they control political and entertainment figures.

He also told then-Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson that Jared Kushner, former president Donald Trump’s son-in-law who is Jewish, worked hard to create the Abraham Accords that normalized relations between Israel and several Arab countries, “to make money.”

Ye claimed he couldn’t be antisemitic “because black people are actually Jew also.”

Twitter briefly restored the 24-time Grammy winner and clothes designer’s account the following month before suspending it yet again in December after Ye appeared on a conspiracy theorist’s show, praised Adolf Hitler and described himself as a Nazi.

Ye lost numerous huge cooperative ventures in the two intervening months, including with Adidas, fashion house Balenciaga and talent scouts Creative Artists Agency, which together downgraded him from billionaire status to a net worth of some $400 million, according to Forbes Magazine.

Ye will have some limitations on his reinstated account.

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He will not be able to monetize it, such as by having ads adjacent to his posts, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday, based on sources at X. The report said Ye also had to promise the platform that he would not share any antisemitic or harmful language in the future.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which had strongly condemned the rapper’s “white supremacist” comments in October, calling them “dangerous” due to the rapper’s huge popularity, was disgusted by the reinstatement.

“Absolutely sickening that antisemite Kanye West was unsuspended from Twitter/X and given a gold verification check mark,” tweeted ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. “He’s done absolutely nothing to make amends.”

The ADL reported in February that it had documented at least 30 hate acts against Jews that directly referred Ye’s comments, including, ironically, white supremacists who hung the slogan “Ye is right” over highways and used it on college campuses at events full of hate speech against Jews. The phrase was referenced thousands of times online, garnering millions of views.

In late March, the rapper, who has not made a secret of his having bipolar disorder, made the news for declaring on Instagram that seeing a Jewish actor perform had helped change his mind about Jews.

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“Watching Jonah Hill in [TV crime show] 21 Jump Street made me like Jewish people again,” Ye wrote. “No one should take anger against one or two individuals and transform that into hatred towards millions of innocent people.”

“No Christian can be labeled antisemite knowing Jesus is Jew,” he then added.

As of Sunday morning, Ye had yet to take advantage of his reinstated account.