In 'Unhinged' Interview, Kanye Says 'I Love Nazis'

Rapper's Infowars interview widely condemned
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 2, 2022 12:33 AM CST
Kanye West to Alex Jones: 'I Love Nazis'
Kanye West arrives at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party on Feb. 9, 2020, in Beverly Hills, Calif. The rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, is no longer buying right-leaning social media site Parler, the company said Thursday, Dec. 1, 2022.   (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)

Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, is being widely condemned after an Infowars interview in which he told Alex Jones, among other things, "I like Hitler." After he added, "I love Jewish people, but I also love Nazis," Jones laughed before saying he "ha[d] to disagree with that," the Washington Post reports. White nationalist, Holocaust denier, and antisemite Nick Fuentes, whom Ye recently brought along to a dinner with Donald Trump, sat for the Thursday interview with the rapper, and the Post notes Jones seemed to "revel" in the attention swirling around the show. "This is absolutely lit. This is lit, lit, lit, lit, lit, lit. Number one show in the world right now," Jones said. More:

  • "Deranged." Calling Ye's comments "virulently antisemitic," Politico notes the interview sparked wide condemnation on the right. New York Rep. Lee Zeldin, a Jewish Republican member of Congress, called the rapper "deranged." The House Judiciary GOP Twitter account deleted a tweet from October reading, "Kanye. Elon. Trump." The Republican Jewish Coalition called the sitdown a "horrific cesspool of dangerous, bigoted Jew hatred." And there was plenty more where that came from.

  • Weird details: France24, which uses the word "wild" to describe the interview, notes that the livestream went on for hours. Ye was wearing a full, hooded black facemask with neither eye nor mouth holes for the whole thing. Jones at one point took Ye's cellphone and posted a tweet from it that appeared on the rapper's account, seeming to confirm it was in fact him. At one point Ye said he planned to give Jones and Fuentes control of his Twitter account, the Independent reports.
  • His justification for liking Hitler: "I see good things about Hitler also," Ye explained, per the Hill. "This guy... invented highways, invented the very microphone that I used as a musician, you can't say out loud that this person ever did anything good, and I'm done with that. I'm done with the classification, every human being has something of value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler. Also Hitler was born Christian."
  • Jones pushes back: Jones pointed out that "the Nazis were thugs and did really bad things," prompting Ye to reply, "But they did good things too. We gotta stop dissing the Nazis all the time." At one point Ye referred to himself as a Nazi, reports the Times of Israel, which calls the interview "unhinged."
  • An impression: Indicating he was mimicking Benjamin Netanyahu, Ye said in a high-pitched voice, “We have to control the history books. We have to control the banks. And we have to go and kill people.”
  • Dangerous: "Saying you ‘like Hitler,’ ‘love the Nazis,’ and spending all your time with a white supremacist makes one thing clear: Ye is a vicious antisemite. His comments today on InfoWars are not just vile and offensive: they put Jews in danger," tweeted the head of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt.
  • Parler deal is off: Hours after the interview, far-right social network Parler announced that a deal for Ye to purchase the site was now off, USA Today reports. It's not clear whether the interview had anything to do with the decision, as the deal has long been rumored to be precarious.
(More Kanye West stories.)

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