The American rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, deleted this Tuesday all the content of his profile on the social network Instagram and published an apology in Hebrew to Jews after years of anti-Semitic comments. “I sincerely apologize to the Jewish community for any inadvertent outburst caused by my words or actions. “It was not my intention to hurt or disrespect, and I deeply regret the pain I have caused,” he wrote in Hebrew, a language many of his fellow Jews do not understand.
Two delicate controversies converge in the figure of the rapper: his proven history of anti-Semitic statements, which caused him to lose millions of dollars in advertising contracts a year ago, and now the reactions to the war in Gaza and, in particular, to the Israeli military offensive. on the edge.
“I commit to starting with myself to learn from this experience to ensure greater sensitivity and understanding in the future,” Ye added in the message. Earlier this month, the rapper was filmed making anti-Semitic comments, including lines about Jewish ownership of major institutions. He also compared himself to Hitler. High-voltage comments for a debate about stopping the anti-Semitism hate speech that has multiplied exponentially across the United States, particularly during campus demonstrations.
In Yes's case, his anti-Semitic boasts come from afar. A year ago, Ye attended conspiracy theorist Alex Jones's InfoWars show to praise Hitler and proudly declare himself a Nazi. A day after he posted a photo of an intertwined Star of David and a swastika, he was banned from the social network Twitter, now called X. Jones was convicted by the judiciary for spreading the false news that the Sandy Hook school massacre was a theater and that its victims were actors. Elon Musk, owner of this social network since the tycoon took over.
Multi-platinum Grammy winner Ye will release his new album in the coming weeks. The album's title track, titled “Vultures,” is the result of a collaboration with Ty Dolla $ign and was released as a single last month. He was also criticized for lyrics in which Ye brags about sleeping with Jewish women. The launch has been postponed several times since October and quite a few believe that the apology published this Tuesday in Hebrew on Instagram and X is a response to the recent delay.
Incidents are increasing
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Just days before the anti-Semitic tirade earlier this month, Ye was also seen wearing what appeared to be a black Ku Klux Klan hood at a party in Miami to introduce his new work to a small circle. Nothing scandalous for someone who sparked outrage a year ago by posting a series of anti-Semitic messages on social media, including one in which he appeared to accuse musician Sean Diddy Combs – who is also facing multiple allegations of sexual abuse and rape is – controlled by the “Jewish people”. Ye is not the only public figure to confess to anti-Semitism; At that time, Brooklyn Nets basketball player Kyrie Irving was suspended for several games for posting anti-Semitic content on Twitter and, like Ye, lost a successful advertising partnership.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which documents anti-Semitism and confirms the exponential rise in hate messages, described the musician's comments as inflammatory and conspiratorial at the time. According to the ADL, Ye was directly mentioned in 59 anti-Semitic incidents recorded by the group in 2022. From October last year to mid-February this year, the ADL documented at least 30 additional anti-Semitic incidents that directly mentioned Ye, according to the group tracker.
Last spring, the White House unveiled a national strategy to combat anti-Semitism, with particular attention to virtual platforms. The war in Gaza has once again highlighted the thunderclap, and the debate over anti-Semitism in universities has far from died down, but has taken on a political dimension, with direct intervention from Congress through its Education Committee and a two-week federal investigation into universities to determine whether their rectors' response to expressions of hate was lukewarm, as the House committee once found in a hearing against the rectors of the universities of Pennsylvania, Harvard and MIT. Ye's Echo Chamber, as a public figure and particularly popular among the younger public, further increases the controversy.
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