Kanye West's antisemitic rants are the tip of a much longer spear
insider@insider.com (Tal Lavin)
On Sunday, when I logged onto Twitter, the first thing I saw was someone calling me a lampshade made of human skin. Then, a comment saying I'll be first in line when they get the ovens up and running again. Over on Instagram, where I'd posted a picture of me cuddling a goat, someone commented: "Kanye West was right about you people."
Over on the opposite coast, I saw that the neo-Nazi group the Goyim Defense League had dropped a banner over the 405 highway in Los Angeles: "Honk if you know Kanye is right about the Jews." Beside it was a citation of Revelations 3
. ("Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie."
For weeks, Kanye West's media tour has drawn on a plethora of very old and very lethal antisemitic stereotypes, the kind that sometimes lead to synagogue massacres: It's the Jewish media, the Jewish record execs, and "certain businessmen" he can't trust that have malformed his life. All of this has had some predictable consequences — suspension from Twitter and Instagram, stern condemnations from the Anti-Defamation League, canceled collaborations. It's also led to yet more invitations from media has-beens for West, who now goes by Ye, to continue explaining himself, followed by more coverage of every new antisemitic utterance.
It may be tempting to dismiss Ye's comments as the blather of a blowhard. Were this the extent of American animus against its tiny Jewish minority, those shrugging their shoulders might be right. But these sentiments are just the tip of a much longer spear. Ye's comments come at a time of escalating right-wing violence, a delicate tipping point that takes little to tilt into chaos.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/entertainment-celebrity/kanye-west-s-antisemitic-rants-are-the-tip-of-a-much-longer-spear/ar-AA13lstB
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