Kanye West has been sued and dropped by his talent agency after he posted a stream of antisemitic abuse, put T-shirts with a swastika on sale in his online shop, and was alleged to have described himself as Hitler to a Jewish employee.
Last week West, also known as Ye, wrote a barrage of antisemitic posts on X including, “I’m a Nazi … I love Hitler”.
The swastika T-shirt was placed for sale on the website of his fashion brand Yeezy, with the product line “HH-01”, assumed to be code for “Heil Hitler”.
Shopify, the company that provided the online platform for Yeezy, has now taken the store offline, stating: “All merchants are responsible for following the rules of our platform. This merchant did not engage in authentic commerce practices and violated our terms.”
I have some bad news for Yeezy. Nazis
weren’taren’t very fond of brown people either.Or the mentally ill…
Which is really ironic if you consider sociopathy to be a mental illness.
if you consider sociopathy to be a mental illness.
Nah, because that’s just Antisocial Personality Disorder, which basically boils down to trusting your own judgement over society’s.
That can be very bad, or very good.
Like, Harriet Tubman put her own values over society’s laws, so she broke a shit ton of laws with zero remorse. Hard to say she had a mental illness. But her actions we celebrate today, met a lot of the diagnosing criteria.
It’s just human variation, but it’s likely incredibly undercounted because regardless of if the person is more on the “good” or “bad” side, they all think they have a better line of thinking than society. And fuck man. Take a look around.
Society as a whole isn’t doing too hot lately, it’s a pretty low bar to say you trust your own morals than society’s.
Nah, because that’s just Antisocial Personality Disorder, which basically boils down to trusting your own judgement over society’s.
I am not here to attack people with Antisocial Personality Disorder, but it’s definitely not just ‘trusting your own judgement over society’s’, it also " is a personality disorder defined by a chronic pattern of behaviour that disregards the rights and well-being of others." The ‘societal judgment’ they’re in conflict with is often the rights and well-being of others. I have an ex with it, and they had an extremely difficult time up until their early 40’s, when they did improve a bit. We’re still not sure if that’s ASPD decreasing over time, or them getting used to dealing with it.
Again though, this isn’t to attack people with it (who will suffer far more at the hands of others than themselves) but to hand-wave it as ‘trusting your own judgment over society’s’ is… not accurate. From your own link:
People with antisocial personality disorder tend to purposely make others angry or upset and manipulate or treat others harshly or with cruel indifference.
Feeling no guilt about harming others.
Doing dangerous things with no regard for the safety of self or others.
I say all of this as someone who lived with someone else with ASPD. The one that caused our breakup was “Aggression toward people and animals.” as they hurt me and attempted to hurt our cat in order to hurt me emotionally. This was a reaction caused by PTSD from their truly traumatic childhood, but I’d appreciate it not boiled down to some sort of Chaotic Good interpretation.
s a personality disorder defined by a chronic pattern of behaviour that disregards the rights and well-being of others
That is one of the diagnosis criteria…
But it’s not a checklist where you gotta score 100%.
And to keep the Harriet Tubman example, legally under society’s laws she wasn’t freeing people. At the time and place she was at she was stealing property from people, relatively expensive property, and in large amounts.
Most people’s experience with someone diagnosed with ASPD are because they have the real bad ones in addition to the others, and someone without them would also almost never go see a shrink of their own free will, because they still have the other parts where they think (maybe rightfully) that they know more than everyone else.
This also skews what the medical community sees.
If someone doesn’t give a fuck about others, they still may realize the benefit of social nicities and benefits from being part of a community.
This ain’t an idea I just had, people have been talking about this undercount since way before we stopped using outdated terms like “sociopath”, and that was decades ago.
There are people who legit do not care about any other person than themselves. This isn’t a question of legality, but morality.
The question you have to ask is “who do these actions benefit the most?”
Harriet Tubman absolutely cared about other people, otherwise she wouldn’t have done what she did to help free slaves or advocate for women’s sufferage.
How much did Robin Hood personally benefit from stealing from the rich and giving to the poor? If he was truely selfish, wouldn’t he have kept all the riches to himself? Sure, he got fame and notoriety, but I think we all know that riches = power, and it has always been that way ever since large civilzations began.
Also a counterpoint: Following the law does not make you just if the laws you follow are unjust laws, especially if they hurt other people. The obvious example here would be Nazi Germany. Nazis were just following orders, and anyone who rightfully resisted their regime were severely punished. Were the people who resisted bad people? Were the people who followed the law good people?
Now, take someone like Trump. Has he ever done something in his life to benefit another person over himself? Has he ever made a sacrifice in service to another person? I’m not counting tit-for-tat corrupt dealings here, but genuine actions of kindness. What about Elon or Zuckerberg?
I do t know why you’re trying to explain to me how someone with ASPD could be “good” or “bad”…
That’s the point I’ve been trying to make, at least you got there I guess.
Just super weird you’re acting like you’re explaining it now
And to keep the Harriet Tubman example, legally under society’s laws she wasn’t freeing people. At the time and place she was at she was stealing property from people, relatively expensive property, and in large amounts.
I have no idea what you’re trying to say here; are you saying that my grandmother, a Dutch Communist, had Antisocial Personality Disorder because she broke laws by helping people escape the Nazi’s? ASPD isn’t ‘person breaks laws like theft or whatever’ it’s that they have no regard for any laws, and:
Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) is an adult diagnosis characterized by a persistent pattern of disregard for and violation of others’ rights, beginning in childhood or early adolescence.
No evidence of this.
Individuals with ASPD often manipulate others for personal gain, lack empathy, and seldom feel remorse for their actions.
I feel like actively working while poor to help others for her entire life, at the cost of her own meagre savings and own body, and constantly putting herself in danger, precludes this.
I have literally no idea why you’re trying to do with this. It’s a nonsensical argument where you’re taking combing correlation and causation.
If you want to see what it’s actually like for people who have it, this is an excellent video of a woman who is both a diagnosed sociopath as well as a Clinical Psychologist explaining how it is to live with it (in this case Sociopathy and Antisocial Personality Disorder are used interchangeably.)
Yeah, I’m not sure exactly where he thinks he fits in Hitler’s idea of the übermensch.
Unter it
Forgive me if I have misunderstood something obvious, but wouldn’t he be considered black?
He’s not considered white. Which is a problem in nazis circles.
Shopify when this happened: No comment.
Shopify after blowback: This is an abhorrent abuse of our policies! We are all adither!
In conclusion: Fuck Shopify. And obligatory fuck ICE.
Actually they fully allow the sale of explicit Nazi merch at Shopify. They just came up with a vaguely plausible excuse to get rid of Kanye’s store specifically. The execs at Shopify are outspoken extreme right wingers. These are guys get along well with the Proud Boys (which is considered a terrorist group in Canada).
Nothing to add except I’ve never seen “adither” written out. I’ve been saying “A tizzy” all my life. 🫣
Shopify only dropped him because they didn’t think he’d actually ship the swastika shirts, not because he was selling the swastika shirts.
deleted by creator
The CEO of Shopify is a man named Tobias Lütke
OMG I totally thought this was supposed to be some weird reference to Tobias Fünke from Arrested Development.
Time for ANUSTART
Kanye -> Hitler -> Shopify -> Spotify -> Arrested Development -> …
Anyone else experiencing whiplash, or is it just me? I think I need to lie down for a bit.
-> seinfeld -> kramer
And we’re back
Could very well be, dude has a bit of never-nude energy about him.
Sure, but the CEO of Spotify (which I have no idea why we’re bringing in here)… Is a man named Daniel Ek, so the other part of that comment doesn’t make sense either.
They said Spotify, you say Shopify. I’m confused, who are we mad at now?
Ah, they did say Spotify.
The article and controversy are about Shopify, that’s where Kanye was selling his swastika shirt.
Apparently you can’t read.
“… assumed to be code for heil hitler.”
The news really has got to stop with this “assumed to be” bullshit. It’s as clear as day that it is code for heil hitler, as HH/88 has been a long fucking time. It’s the whole “Elon made what looked to be a nazi salute” thing all over again. No it didn’t look like a nazi salute, it was, and this HH is not maybe code for something, it is.
Get some fucking courage and call it like it is.
“… assumed to be… looks like… could be construed as… according to a source…”are all weasel words and phrases to avoid litigation, to give a little leeway if it got to court.
Reporting - with a nod and a wink; and a little protection.
My favourite euphemism for “drunk/drugged and aggressive” celebrities in newspaper stories is “tired and emotional”.
Sometimes it’s best to say something without actually saying it if you want to stay in business. Granted, it’s not ideal.
Libel lawsuits can be expensive, and you can bet your ass that without that ambiguity Ye’s lawyers would be all over them.
I reported yeezy.com for being in violation of GoDaddy’s Terms Of Use.
Doubt it was me that caused any of this, but we can all do our part 😊
It says “This store is unavailable” which means it’s probably not a DNS or webserver block and still uses the shop software to serve the page. So it’s most likely a Shopify block.
Welp here’s hoping he loses the domain next.
Good riddance.
Let this be his only legacy.
I worked with someone who defended Kanye for like a year after he went publicly apeshit. Probably up until at least 2019 when I last spoke to him on the topic. He just kept claiming that it was so unfair that Kanye was getting judged as an off-meds mentally ill person suffering. Which I would get, as long as he wasn’t hurting other people. But that’s been the motherfucker’s raison-etre for a while now.
Would they extend anyone else dealing with untreated mental illness the same benefit?
Yeah, if you aren’t ridiculously wealthy and you start crashing out like this, you usually just lose your job and get kicked out on the street.
Being a little stinky in public is enough to get most mentally ill folks harassed by cops.
Likely. Not sure.
I thought that kind of attitude was normal to have. I don’t think my literally insane coworker is an evil person just because the voices in his head tell him to be racist
As someone who’s out of the loop may I ask what the story is?
What I’m getting is that he’s a wealthy has been who has some unmedicated mental health problems which manifest in these spectacular public brain farts.
Is that all there is to it or is there some explanation for the antisemitism?
That’s the whole story. Kanye has been off his meds for the better part of a decade now and that started, continued, and is still continuing to manifest as rampant antisemitism. You can’t interview him for more than three sentences anymore without him bringing up the Jews about something.
Edit: Actually, I’m going to add on to this. I had a hunch and did a little research, and it seems I might be pretty on point. I remember Kanye first starting to seem kind of weird (well - weirder than expected from a rapper with more money than God) around the release of The Life of Pablo. The previous album, Yeezus, was pretty much a spot on killer, crisp, good album. TLoP was a mess in many ways, and at the time it was viewed as an interesting and out of the norm artistic endeavor and actually had pretty good reviews, but it’s universally regarded as messy, incomplete, and disjointed. Kanye stans will say that “the album is intended to sound unfinished” and that nobody else could have actually pulled that off except for Kanye because of his unique musical genius and status in the industry. And they could even be right. But that still means the album is choppy and strange and unfinished. And check this out:
Ray Rahman of Entertainment Weekly noted the album’s frequent meditations on matters of faith, family, and West’s own role as a cultural figure while observing that “Pablo frequently (some might say abruptly) toggles between Sad Kanye and the bombastic and celebratory Kanye”.[64] McCormick described West as “constantly veering between swaggering bravado and insecurity bordering on paranoia, smashing the sacred against the profane and disrupting his own flowing grooves with interjections”.[54] He claimed the interjections sound as if “they are spilling over from another studio altogether”.[54] Referencing West’s lyrical performance, Sheffield wrote that he “knows he’s got some issues to work on”.[52] The Life of Pablo features “gloomy, doomy” discussions of trust issues, antidepressants, and familial problems on tracks such as “FML” and “Real Friends”.[64]
Source: Wikipedia
And after he released the album he still continued to tweak and change things on it and release new cuts and new entire songs on the already released, triple plat album. Again, at the time seen as brilliant, striking, and strange artistry, in hindsight maybe signs of instability.
Somewhere between 2014, at the release of Yeezus, and 2016, at the release of TLoP, Kanye started losing his battle with whatever illness he struggles with. Since then he has slid down farther and farther with time. Kanye, once famously quoted saying “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” wholeheartedly endorsed Donald Trump in 2020. In 2024 Kanye West openly self identifies as a Nazi and sells swastika merch on a Super Bowl ad and invades an award ceremony he wasn’t invited to in order to force his wife to strip nude on camera.
Kanye West died in 2015, R.I.P. to a real honest to God hip hop legend. Whatever is left piloting his corpse around is no longer who he once was. I mourn the artist we lost and I hope he can find help to recover himself, but I find that unlikely given his attitude.
Well now there’s a ten dollar word if I’ve ever seen one.
Slips scrabble back to the top…
Dang I misspelled it. Raison d’etre, from French, meaning “reason for being”. Probably couldn’t use it in Scrabble.
Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do. You’re not my supervisor.
I did say probably
😋
May his future be lit by the bridges he’s burned.
Never heard that before… it’s very dark, but good.
He’s really and truly lost it. Was bad before, but this.
The last outfall was so bad that even Alex Jones had to argue that Hitler wasnt a good guy. I’m just wondering how he was able to get back into the spotlight to repeat this shit. I mean, I have an idea what convinced him now is the time to shine again.
He said he was jealous of Elon and that it should have been him to do the salute
I don’t think you have to wonder
If he somehow manages to maintain any popularity even now, that’ll tell us a lot.
Don’t worry, he will.
You really think he will, even after all this? Cause that would truly be insane… and scary.
Don’t underestimate the stupidity of people.
Take it from The Boondocks “The Trial of R. Kelly”:
“why do you still support him after all these allegations have come to light?” “Cause he sound good!”
I mean who knows whats really going on in his head. I think he is trying to be shocking.
I get the whole shock value thing, but this is more like shooting yourself in both feet, on purpose. I mean, he might as well just amputate them at this point. Like, that’s some seriously messed up stuff he’s doing now, he’s gotta know a lot of people are gonna hate him for it. Unless, like I said elsewhere, he manages to still remain popular… and then anyone left who’s sane might as well pack up and move to the mountains.
The only thing that amazed me about this is that he had a “talent agent”.
Yes, I too am shocked that one of the most successful musicians of the century had a “talent agent.”
The guy is a piece of shit but this is such an asinine comment. The only shocking part is he got dropped in the first place, considering he still somehow manages to make money hand over fist anytime he releases some half-finished album these days. The talent agencies will tolerate a hell of a lot as long as the money keeps flowing.
Nah, I’m surprised he has a talent agent, too, after his last outburst. I know talent agents aren’t immune to bigotry but it’s still a bit surprising that anyone would attach their name to his like that
Dude has been out of it for years, and hasn’t put out anything of note during that time. He’s already made statements that should have alerted any reputable talent agency to stay the fuck away.
The last recent things I remember of his are “you’re such a fucking ho” and fuckin “poopity scoop”
Which, what the actual fuck. How can someone look at those some and think “producer of all time”?
Any note, no matter how sour, sounds like a song if you hold it long enough.
I’m not sure, but I think he’s been dropped and picked up by someone else before.
Talent agents choose money over ethics all the time. It’s practically their job. Regardless, things like this happen when the negative publicity makes a client a bad return on the agency’s investment (or a client hurts their reputation, which is to say, when a client hurts their chances of making money in the future). Their only concern is money, not antisemitism.
Next, he’ll be contacted by an even less prestigious agency whose desperation outweighs their ethical concerns. He may already have been.
I guarantee some PR-hack(s) reached out to him to offer a brilliant way they could spin this into a positive for his “brand.”
Not only that, but they only signed him last year.
Not taking your prescription drugs is a hell of a drug.
Mental illness doesn’t make you a Nazi. Saying Ye is acting like this because he’s off his meds is saying that those with diagnosed with bipolar or narcissism are just one step away from being a bigot. That’s not true and it only furthers the stigma of those with mental health issues.
Ye is the one choosing to be racist, that choice is on him alone.
Saying Ye is acting like this because he’s off his meds is saying that those with diagnosed with bipolar or narcissism are just one step away from being a bigot.
Nah, it’s just saying that a specific attention-seeking bigot with a personality disorder, which is marginally controlled with meds, is more likely to go on insane attention-seeking tears of bigotry when he goes off those meds.
Exactly. I have autism and an anxiety disorder, and I don’t go around seig heiling and doing Nazi shit, and it isn’t JUST because the Nazis would have me killed.
It’s entirely possible that being off his meds is why he’s acting like this…but it’s not the reason he’s a bigot, just a reason he isn’t hiding it.
I think it’s just as likely that he’s being loud about it because bigotry is back in fashion, though.
I’m bipolar and I’m fucking tired of hearing that excuse for him. Even if I’m off my meds I’m not a fucking Nazi
Not sure where I said or implied it was an excuse?
He’s some kind of weird bigot for sure, but he’s also got a history of these random unhinged outbursts from time to time that are clearly a result of something more acute/immediate than being a nazi.
Oh he’s not taking any drugs except for nitrous
Every time I see shit like this, where it’s framed as “THIS HORRIBLE THING IS NOW HAPPENING TO THIS RICH PERSON AND THEYRE SUFFERING THE CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR ACTIONS” I’m always like
So what?
They’re still billionaires. They’re still incredibly rich. There’s nothing you can actually do to these people with shit like this. We’re far past the “we can just not support their company” or the “we can just not vote for them and ruin their life” stage of this, gang.
Yup. The time for alternative actions is now.
I mean, apart from his money giving him a platform to really spread hate and hurt people, it really is pretty sad at an individual level. Dude is mentally unwell, and not just because he’s an evil hateful person.
There’s plenty of evil people just as bad and just as loud that are in control of their mental state and understand what they’re doing.
Gutting your house and living in a utility closet is pretty messed up, rich or poor
Wait, what? Did he gut his house and decide to live in a utility closet?
Yeah, I’m sure theyre all just absolutely shocked Kanye doubled down on the Nazi shit yet again.
Give him a one way ticket to birkenau and see if he can feel more at home
Why is this guy still a thing? He dropped relevance in 2009
I suppose this is exactly why…
Yup, he’s craving attention
He dropped relevance in 2009
He might be a Nazi asshole now, but he very much is still a thing. He has never released an album that didn’t reach the number 1 or 2 position in the Billboard 200 rankings in the US, with same or similar success on ranking charts around the world, and that includes 10 albums released after 2009. The most recent was a collab in August 2024, and the most recent solo album was in 2021. Both were extremely successful and well received.
He still had a TA after the last nonsense? Who is that TA and wtf is wrong with them?
Money. Money is what was wrong with them.
