Kanye West news – Biden says ‘silence is complicity’ as Elon Musk suspends rapper for posting swastika
As it happened - Kanye West’s shocking antisemitic tirade and comments on Adolf Hitler
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President Joe Biden and prominent US officials have condemned recent remarks from the rapper formerly known as Kanye West after his latest antisemitic tirade, Holocaust denialism and praise for Adolf Hitler and Nazis.
“Instead of giving it a platform, our political leaders should be calling out and rejecting antisemitism wherever it hides,” the president shared on the office’s Twitter account. “Silence is complicity.”
Elon Musk suspended the rapper from the platform after Ye shared an image of a swastika within the Star of David. He shared the offensive image on Thursday night just hours after he professed “I like Hitler” and “I am a Nazi” while joining far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on on his InfoWars programme.
“I tried my best,” Mr Musk said. “Despite that, he again violated our rule against incitement to violence. Account will be suspended.”
He also wrote “FAFO” – short for “F*** Around and Find Out.”
Who is Nick Fuentes?
By now, at least, Trump must surely know who Nick Fuentes is, and the outsized influence he has on the far-right, large numbers of whom have turned out to support Trump in both his efforts to become president and to hang on to power after having lost to Joe Biden.
The Independent’s Andrew Buncombe writes:
Who’s Nick Fuentes - the notorious white supremacist Trump says he’s never heard of?
By now - at least - former president must know who his infamous guest was, writes Andrew Buncombe
'Inside the long-term bromance between Kanye West and Elon Musk’
One is an antisemitic superstar rapper running for president. The other is the richest man in the world who spends his days posting memes to a social media platform he now owns.
Elon Musk and Kanye West don’t appear to have much in common at first glance, but they have a years-long relationship that came under intense scrutiny this fall when the tech tycoon continued backing the rapper despite countless antisemitic comments.
The Independent’s Graig Graziosi writes:
How Elon Musk and Kanye West’s decade-long bromance came crashing down
The two moguls have adored each other for more than a decade
Hate speech is rising on Elon Musk’s Twitter, report finds
Racist and antisemitic slurs, anti-gay comments and gender-based attacks have spiked on Twitter, according to new reporting from the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
In the first full week under his ownership, there were more than 26,000 posts mentioning the n-word – triple the average in 2022, according to the report. There were also more 50,000 posts mentioning transphobic and homophobic slurs, up by 53 per cent and 39 per cent, respectively, than 2022 averages.
Within his first two weeks at the helm, from 31 October to 13 November, there were more than 204,000 tweets and retweets using the gender-based slur “c**t” – up 30 per cent from the 2022 average – and more than 831,000 posts mentioning “sl*t,” up 75 per cent from the 2022 average. Posts mentioning “wh*re” were also up by 60 per cent.
The platform also saw significant spikes in antisemitic slurs and racist abuse towards Hispanic and Latino people, the report found.
More from The Independent:
QAnon, racism and ‘informational anarchy’: Experts on how Elon Musk changed Twitter
Those who specialise in monitoring the spread of disinformation say ‘trust and safety are dead’ on the social media platform. Alex Woodward reports
ICYMI: Reddit’s Kanye West board is turning into a page for Holocaust awareness and Taylor Swift
The subreddit dedicated to the rapper formerly known as Kanye West has transformed into a tribute to Taylor Swift and as a page to raise awareness of the Holocaust.
Top current posts on the page include discussions of Auschwitz concentration and death camps; Krystyna Chiger, who hid in the sewers of Lviv to avoid Nazi capture; or images of Taylor Swift.
“This is officially a holocaust awareness sub,” one post reads, accompanying charts from a study about public awareness of Nazi-led genocide.
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