By: Alex Dines
Political leaders and Jewish organizations are speaking out after rapper Kanye West’s latest anti-Semitic remarks, which he made Thursday on Alex Jones’s controversial Infowars podcast, have some fearing the hateful sentiments are being normalized.
During the interview, Jones, a far-right commentator, asked West about previous comments he had made, to which West responded with praise for the Nazi Party and its leader Adolf Hitler. The rapper also posted offensive content on Twitter.
The reaction to West’s latest behaviour has been swift and condemning.
NDP leader Jagmeet Singh wrote Friday in a tweet that “political leaders must take strong action to confront [anti-Semitism].” President Joe Biden also responded to West’s comments on Twitter, adding that “silence is complicity.” And the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto wrote “Kanye West is radicalizing countless people every time he speaks to millions. Violent hate always begins with violent ideas.”
West’s account on Twitter was suspended early Friday due to his tweets violating Twitter’s guidelines regarding inciting violence.
Regarding West’s comments on Infowars, David Sachs, the community relations and anti-Semitism specialist at the Jewish Federation of Ottawa, said the response to the Jewish community is “going to be much worse” than before.
“I think the Jewish community is largely horrified and scared of what [these comments] mean,” Sachs said in an interview Friday.
He said the community also recognized the danger posed by West’s comments and said they “knew immediately that this would be seized on by any number of groups.”
According to the Annual Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents published by the League for Human Rights, a division of the Jewish human rights organization B’nai Brith Canada, there were 2,799 incidents recorded last year in this country.
The report also noted there had been an over 733 per cent increase of violent incidents in 2021 compared to 2020.
“The biggest problem Jews have had with regards to anti-Semitism is that most of the world doesn’t realize that it’s a problem and it’s a danger,” Sachs said.
Ian Boyd, the owner of Compact Music in the Glebe, said he does not agree with West’s statements. However, he said his store will continue to sell the rapper’s albums.
“I’m going to sell what I have,” Boyd said when speaking about the few remaining Kanye West records he had in stock. “It’s not my place to ban him from the store.”
Boyd also mentioned the store’s hip hop section is popular, particularly with young people who gravitate towards other artists such as Travis Scott, Tyler, the Creator and Kid Cudi, among others.
The streaming service Spotify reported Kanye West was the fourth most streamed artist in the United States in 2022. West did not appear on Spotify’s most streamed artist list globally.
Sachs said West’s previous comments “normalized talking about Jews as an ‘other,’ as a suspicious community.”
He added the most recent wave of anti-Semitism began about two and a half years ago and was inflamed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Gaza conflict in May 2021 and anti-Israel protests.
Sachs also spoke about how anti-Semitism is not only online, but also happening locally in Ottawa.
As part of his job, Sachs is in contact with parents whose children have experienced anti-Semitic hate at school. He said this week alone he received three separate emails from concerned parents regarding “horrific incidents of kids joking about Nazis, killing Jews and setting up swastikas.”
“That should show how serious this is right now in our community,” he said.
