Kanye West Compares Himself to Martin Luther King Jr., Then Bails on Interview After Challenge Over Antisemitism
Kanye West continued his bizarre alt-right media tour on Monday (Nov. 28) when he was joined by Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and professional troll Milo Yiannopoulos on Tim Pool’s Timcast IRL podcast. At first, West (who now goes by Ye), energetically defending himself against the media backlash spurred by his recent rash of antisemitic comments — while simultaneously doubling down by repeating hate language about Jewish control of the media and banking — but when Pool gingerly probed that line of questioning Ye quickly bailed.
“I just got to go to the heart of this antisemite claim,” West said as he dove into a monologue in which he accused former retail partners Gap and Adidas, as well as Vogue magazine, former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump and his personal trainer of being part of a Jewish-led conspiracy to destroy his career. “It’s the truth,” Ye said of his antisemitic claims, pointing to his rapid fall from grace as proof that he’s been targeted and brought low by a shadowy, citing former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner for no clear reason other than that they are Jewish.
When right-wing host Pool probed that area and noted that where West sees Jewish people and “associates” them with power, Pool doesn’t think that is not relevant to the discussion. Yiannopoulos then praised West for breaking the “biggest dam,” seemingly referring to the discussion of hateful tropes about alleged Jewish control of media and banking. “We were all wondering how this dam was going to break… what is the root of this hypocrisy? Why can people talk about white people a certain way, why can’t we talk about that group a certain way?,” he asked. “The wretched and wicked and prevailing orthodoxy of cancel culture… well, it turned out that the one thing that was going to break the dam was the biggest star in the world… and now the dam is broken.”
West complained that “they tried to put me in prison,” without going into specifics, discussing his “de-banking” and claiming he’s trying to start his own bank to avoid the traditional systems. When the conversation turned more directly to allegations of Ye’s antisemitism, the rapper tightened and threatened to bail before doubling-down on his anti-Jewish statements. “I feel like it’s a setup … I’m going to walk the f–k off the show if I’m having to talk about,” Ye said. “‘You can’t say Jewish people did it,’ when every sensible person knows — that Jon Stewart knows — what happened to me, and they took it too far.” Then, less than 23 minutes into the conversation, Ye walked out.
Trump has been widely condemned, by both sides of the political aisle, for hosting Ye and white nationalist Fuentes at his Mar-a-Lago estate last week, where, according to the disgraced rapper, he pitched the former commander-in-chief on being his vice president as West seemingly ramps up for a second long-shot White House bid.
Visibly angered by Pool’s antisemitism questions, West compared himself to Martin Luther King Jr., evoking the horrific images of the 1960s civil rights struggle as a metaphor for his feelings about the meltdown of his once-formidable fashion and music empire in the wake of his repeated slurs against the Jewish people.
“I thought I was more Malcolm X, but I found out I’m more MLK. As I’m getting hosed down every day by the press and financially, I’m just standing there,” West said. “When I found out they were trying to put me in jail, it was like a dog was biting my arm and I almost shed a tear. Almost. But I still walked in stride through it.” When Pool tried to commiserate with West by saying that “they” (which he identified as the “corporate press”) had been “extremely unfair” to Ye, Fuentes attempted to speak on the rapper’s behest before Kanye got fed up, pulled off his headphones and angrily left the set.
“Corporate press. I don’t use the word as the way, I guess, you guys use [it],” Pool said. “It is them, though, isn’t it,” Fuentes asked. “No, it’s not,” Pool replied. “What do you mean it’s not?” Ye said annoyed before leaving.
Speaking on a follow-up Timcast, Pool said he thought the walk-off was “staged” by Ye, even as he referred to Yiannopoulos as a “genius” for what he suspected was a secret plot by Milo to get revenge on Trump and ruin the twice-impeached real estate mogul’s chances for a third White House bid; Pool also noted that he finds Yiannopoulos and Fuentes’ statements on Jewish people to be “ridiculous” as he speculated that West’s aim all along was to walk off in protest to create a spectacle.
Fuentes has been called a “white supremacist” by the Anti-Defamation League and in February at the the America First conference, he was widely denounced for praising Adolf Hitler in his introduction to alt-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, saying, “And now they’re going on about Russia, and ‘Vladimir Putin is Hitler’ — and they say that’s not a good thing … Can we get a round of applause for Russia? Yes!”
Yiannopoulos, who has also been accompanying West lately and is reportedly his 2024 presidential campaign manager, is a well-known right-wing troll who interned for Greene earlier this year and has been blocked from most major social media platforms for his repeated comments about Islam and feminism and his embrace of antisemitic figures.
Gil Kaufman
Billboard
