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Fans on Reddit have turned against Kanye West, turning a subreddit dedicated to him into a site promoting Holocaust education within hours of Ye’s latest anti-Semitic comments.
r/Kanye, a 700,000-member section on Reddit where fans once discussed Yes’s music, fashion and other ventures, has been inundated with posts containing information about the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust and denouncing anti-Semitism.
The site offered an impromptu show of support for Jewish Americans and a visual representation of resistance to West, who legally changed his name to Ye after weeks of anti-Semitic remarks. It came after Ye said Thursday he likes Adolf Hitler and later tweeted a picture of a swastika.
“As a Jew and an early Kanye fan,” one commenter wrote, “I never looked inside that sub[reddit] until this morning and I’ve seen all the Holocaust memorial plaques. I’m in… tears right now. Thank you for standing up for us.”
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The posts contain Holocaust-related photos and information intended to raise awareness of Nazi Germany’s persecution and murder of 6 million Jews. People also post educational book and film recommendations, photos of visits to Holocaust memorials and museum sites, and photos they say are of family members who were persecuted under the Nazi regime.
“Photos I took when I visited Auschwitz. That is real. This has happened to millions of innocent men, women and children as a result of uncontrolled dehumanizing rhetoric against them,” one person wrote, attaching photos of the Nazi death camp grounds. “Never again.”
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Throughout these posts is another symbol of fans rejecting Ye: memes praising Taylor Swift, who has been seen as Ye’s – and his fans’ – nemesis ever since he delivered her acceptance speech for the MTV Video Music Awards interrupted in 2009. “Hi guys! I’m just getting into Taylor but don’t know where to start. Any suggestions?” wrote one person who posted a photo of Swift.
Some posts make it clear that even fans who have remained loyal to Ye despite his repeated anti-Semitic remarks and erratic behavior have now chosen to leave him.
“I looked up to you. And now you’ve ruined everything,” wrote one commenter. “I am ashamed that you were once my favorite artist. I’m ashamed I called you GOAT. … I am done with you.”
The shift on the subreddit began Thursday after Ye praised Hitler and the Nazis in an interview with right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. It came just over a week after Ye had dinner with former President Donald Trump and white nationalist Nick Fuentes, an event some Republicans blamed Trump for. Fuentes also appeared on Jones’ show with Ye.
Wearing a full-face mask, Ye told Jones he liked Hitler, then said, “I love Jews, but I also love Nazis.”
Thursday evening, Ye tweeted a photo of a swastika combined with the Star of David. His Twitter account was suspended after the tweet. Both incidents were widely condemned by politicians, Jewish groups and others.
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The criticism included users on the subreddit, where Thursday afternoon one person posted, “This is now a Taylor Swift subreddit. We had a good run guys.” Hours later, after the swastika tweet, another user declared the thread “officially a Holocaust awareness sub,” and Holocaust-related posts began pouring in.
Reddit users post anonymously. A message sent by the Washington Post to the moderators of r/Kanye was not returned. Information posted on Reddit, like elsewhere on social media, is not checked by fact-checkers.
Attempts to reach Ye were unsuccessful.
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Hate speech and anti-Semitism online can contribute to violence in the real world, experts say, and the current political climate has heightened fear among American Jews. An April review by the Anti-Defamation League, an organization that fights antisemitism, found that the US was seeing a record number of antisemitic incidents in 2021, averaging more than seven a day.
Pamela Nadell, director of American University’s Jewish Studies program, said she believes the United States is approaching a second “tide of American anti-Semitism,” referring to the period between World War I and World War II, which historians commonly describe as the marked the peak of anti-Semitism in the country.
That makes learning about the Holocaust and the Jewish experience of antisemitism “of great value” to all Americans, she told the Post.
“What happened from October through late November … we’ve reached a point in American life where we now know that antisemitism is completely normal,” she said, referring to Yes comments, his meeting with Trump and Fuentes and antisemitism – Allegations were also recently settled against basketball player Kyrie Irving. “There is certainly a growing sense of fear, justifiable fear. And I would almost say horror.”
Nadell recommended that people who want to learn more about the Holocaust start by looking at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website, which contains an encyclopedia.
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Ye’s actions have sparked weeks of outrage, from his wearing a WHITE LIVES MATTER t-shirt at his Paris Fashion Week show to an anti-Semitic tirade and false information about the murder of George Floyd on the Drink Champs podcast . A leaked portion of an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News also sparked condemnation, as did an October tweet from Ye saying he was going to “JEWISH PEOPLE” on “Death con 3.”
Dropped by Adidas, Gap, Balenciaga and other companies, Ye was temporarily suspended on Twitter. On Thursday, right-wing social app Parler announced that a deal for Ye to buy the company had been canceled. A spokesman said this was “mainly due to his recent and publicized business difficulties.”
While some Redditors posted messages of thanks for the Holocaust footage on r/Kanye, others questioned why it had taken some fans so long to denounce Ye. Urging people to educate themselves about Jewish culture beyond the Holocaust, one person who described himself as a “Jewish former Ye fan” said: “Anti-Semitism is not a thing of the past. … We need your allies!”
Another person asked for reading material and movie recommendations, saying, “Thanks to Kanye, I will learn more about the history of the Holocaust.”
Even discussing Yes’s antisemitism presents a dilemma because it creates more publicity for his harmful statements, said Leonard Saxe, director of the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University.
“I don’t know if this Reddit approach of posting a lot of recollections and information about the Holocaust will work, but it’s probably better than talking directly about him and how heinous his views are,” Saxe told the Post.
“It’s a terrible situation at this moment when hate and distrust and other social forces seem to be stronger than ever, but educating people about the Holocaust is important,” he said, adding, “The focus on the to judge people, their lives [Hitler] destroyed and remembering them is a good thing.”