KANYE WEST'S DOWNFALL

 Ye is an American rapper, songwriter, record producer and fashion designer. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential hip hop artists and producers. Born in Atlanta and raised in Chicago. Husband to reality star Kim Kardashian and father to four kids one being the TikTok icon North West.

The hip-hop legend made headlines for all the wrong reasons when he showed up at Paris Fashion Week to stage a guerrilla fashion show related to his own YZY clothing line. Ye invited his friend of some years, controversial conservative pundit Candace Owens, to attend the event, which the New York Times characterized as a messy “experience” that was more about celebrating the aura of Ye than the clothes on the runway.

Ye and Owens used up every bit of media attention on themselves by wearing matching “white lives matter” shirts, which she proudly shared on social media. The phrase originated with extremist white supremacist groups in response to the Black Lives Matter movement and is closely associated with white supremacist ideology.

The ensuing outrage this stunt provoked might have quickly faded like most Ye-related outrage, had he not quickly followed it up with an even more shocking appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show. The interview, a two-hour pre-taped conversation with Carlson, was filmed in response to Ye’s fashion show and aired over two nights on October 6 and 7. In the interview, Ye explained that he thought wearing the shirt would be “funny” and a mark of both his “brilliance” and his connection to God. “The answer to why I wrote ‘white lives matter’ on a shirt is because they do,” he said. Carlson inserted commentary throughout, reminding viewers to observe how sound of mind and rational West appeared.

Throughout the interview, Ye made provocative insinuations about Jews and money and went on unprovoked tangents. His unsettling statements suggest he is growing increasingly paranoid, adopting a range of bizarre conspiracy theories and delusions, and harboring growing antisemitic tendencies. As disconcerting as the interview itself was, Vice later reported that Carlson’s show strategically edited it to make Ye’s remarks appear more coherent and less antisemitic than they apparently were. Even the broadcast footage was striking, however.

At various points, Ye did seem to be his old trenchant self. He indicated he’s still, at least nominally, thinking about the impact of racism, regardless of what T-shirts and hats he wears. “For politicians, all Black people are worth is an approval rating,” he told Carlson, in a direct criticism of Trump. “The Democrats ... and the Republicans feel that they don’t owe us anything.”

But he also seemed fixated on the idea that Blackness itself is an identity that Black people need to distance themselves from. The concept of Blackness was, he alleged, created by white people. Instead, he offered up Black community power — through the form of real estate development and financial control — as an alternative, bizarrely adding, “The people that make money and the powers that be, I am your true Nikola Tesla.” It’s not clear what he meant by this, but it sums up the interview as a whole: some sharp observations colliding with a fixation on power, characterized by incoherence, grandiosity, and conspiracy rhetoric.

Ye’s conspiratorial thinking was on display at several moments that made it to air — like when he accused the media of conspiring to keep fellow rapper Lizzo fat in order to promote “clinically unhealthy” lifestyles. (Lizzo seemed unfazed by the shade.) He explained the media’s motive as “the genocide of the Black race.”

Ye also claimed to Carlson that “the people at The Gap” knew about the Uvalde mass school shooting before it happened, a statement Carlson smoothly finessed into Ye suggesting that it was a “coordinated message” from the media. (It’s not clear what the connection was, but given Ye’s recent contractual disputes with The Gap, it seems possible that Ye’s reference to “78 specific outlets” that he implied had coordinated a shooting-related message was a reference to Gap outlets that Carlson misinterpreted as media outlets.)

Unsettlingly, Ye accused Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner of orchestrating Middle East peace treaties in order “to make money” for himself. Then he added, “I think that’s what they’re about. I don’t think that they have the ability to make anything on their own. I think they were born into money.”

At the time of the interview airing, you could be forgiven if you interpreted Ye’s use of “they” here as a reference to Trump’s relatives. But it would soon become alarmingly clear that Ye was being straightforwardly antisemitic here, embracing one of the oldest, most bigoted conspiracy theories — that Jewish people secretly control the world’s systems of finance.

This became rapidly apparent once Ye blasted out more antisemitic remarks via Instagram and his only recently revived Twitter account, in posts that both platforms have since removed. Ye first posted to Instagram, sharing a long series of screenshot texts between himself and fellow rap legend Sean Combs, after Diddy apparently tried to reach out to share his concern for Ye promoting the “white lives matter” slogan. Ye, clearly angry, told Diddy he was focused on selling his merch. Then he added, “Ima use you as an example to show the Jewish people that told you to call me that no one can threaten or influence me.”

The outcry over Ye’s antisemitism was immediate and sustained, and his Insta posts were quickly deleted. But Ye then tweeted into the ensuing wave of backlash. He revived his account by linking a Forbes article about likely future Twitter owner Elon Musk welcoming him back to the platform following his Instagram cancellation. In the same tweet, however, he abruptly threatened the world’s 15 million Jewish people: “I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I’m going death con 3 [sic] on JEWISH PEOPLE,” he wrote, an apparent reference to going on “defcon” military alert.

Though this tweet was deleted — and Ye’s Twitter account was briefly locked in response, though it was quickly unlocked — another, in which Ye seemed to rhetorically suggest Jewish people invented cancel culture, initially remained online. It was also eventually deleted.

The statements drew a wave of backlash from fellow celebrities and Jewish organizations. LA’s Holocaust Museum invited him to visit; the Anti-Defamation League strongly condemned him and began tracking his hateful statements. Musk tweeted that he’d talked to Ye and expressed his concerns, which he indicated vaguely “I think he took to heart.”

Incredibly, all of this happened before Vice revealed on October 11 that Carlson had strategically edited his interview with Ye, and that the parts that didn’t air were even more offensive and conspiratorial in nature.

Some of the edits were directly political, like Fox’s omitting Ye’s offhand comment that he received the Covid-19 vaccine. But most fully undermined his credibility and claim to rationality. Most of the unaired antisemitism regurgitated the “Jews control finance” conspiracy theory, but some was convoluted and difficult to parse, like when he claimed that Black people were the real “12 lost tribes of Judah,” a claim that seemed to be linked to an extremist religious sect that believes Black people are really Jewish.

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