Kanye West Suspended From Twitter For Posting Swastika

Paras Griffin/Getty Images

Kanye West Suspended From Twitter For Posting Swastika

Paras Griffin/Getty Images

Look, we didn’t want to get into it. Kanye West’s ongoing downward spiral has been an ugly spectacle and a tragic one. As West digs deeper into reactionary rhetoric and outright fascism, he seems to be begging for attention, and we at Stereogum have been loathe to give him that attention. In the month since various major companies — Adidas, Balenciaga, Foot Locker, TJ Maxx — ended their relationships with Kanye West, West has put on weirder and weirder displays. And now Kanye West has seemingly alienated even his allies in the idiot right-wing attention-junkie universe. Case in point: Kanye West has once again been banned from Twitter.

Last week, Kanye West took white nationalist Nick Fuentes with him when he had dinner with Donald Trump. Trump then attempted to distance himself from West and Fuentes, and various other Republicans have called on Trump to apologize. Yesterday, West and Fuentes did an on-camera interview with Alex Jones, and West seemed to shock even Jones by speaking out in praise of Hitler and Nazis. (He literally said, “I like Hitler” and “I love Jewish people, but I also love Nazis.”) Later that night, Kanye posted a picture on Twitter: A swastika inside a Star Of David. The Associated Press reports that new Twitter owner Elon Musk, a longtime Kanye West friend, finally made the call to suspend West’s account.

Kanye West’s swastika post came during a tweet-storm last night. During that storm, West claimed that his ex-wife Kim Kardashian had an affair with basketball star Chris Paul. West also posted apparent screenshots of text exchanges with Elon Musk and an unflattering photo of Musk with William Morris Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel. In response to that photo, Musk tweeted, “This is fine.” Replying to the swastika, Musk wrote, “This is not.” Later, in response to a Twitter request to “fix Kanye,” Musk wrote:

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

Just clarifying that his account is being suspended for incitement to violence, not an unflattering pic of me being hosed by Ari. Frankly, I found those pics to be helpful motivation to lose weight!

Back in October, before Musk bought Twitter, Kanye West was suspended from the platform for announcing his plans to go “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.” Elon Musk publicly welcomed West back to Twitter last month. Today, The New York Times reports that there’s been a massive and unprecedented rise in Twitter hate speech since Musk took over.

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