Kanye West’s Anti-Semitic Social Media Blackout Skewered by Stephen Colbert

Kanye West‘s recent string of anti-Semitic remarks has drawn near-universal condemnation and, on Monday night (Oct. 10), a new cold open rap parody from the team at The Late Show with Stephen Colbert skewering the artist’s latest controversy.

The bit opened with a news reports about Twitter locking West (who goes by Ye) out of his account after the rapper/entrepreneur posted hate-filled remarks, before pivoting to the outrage spawned when Kanye, who is Black, wore a “White Lives Matter” shirt at his Paris Fashion Week show last week. It also included a scene from his interview with Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson in which West bizarrely claimed that he believed executives at his former retail partner, The Gap, knew about a Texas high school shooting “before it even happened.”

Cued to Ye’s 2007 Graduation hit “Stronger,” the parody posted one of his anti-Semitic tweets before re-tooling the lyrics to better represent his current tenuous social media standing. “Tweet it, share it, scream it, wear it, post it,” the video opened over images of the MC in his “White Lives” shirt, modeling his red MAGA hat and revisiting a 2016 tweet in which he proclaimed “BILL COSBY INNOCENT!!!!!!!!!!”

“‘Gram it, banned/ Oh damn it!,” the song continued as the screen filled with a photo of red hat Ye awkwardly hugging former president Donald Trump in the White House. “Pro-Trump chatter/ White Lives Matter/ Rave reviews from MAGA voters/ Fresh hell tonight/ I’m about to go full Mel [Gibson] tonight/ Lots of wild stuff gettin’ yelled tonight/ And all these tees about to sell to whites/ Bow in the presence of wackness/ Cuz right here I’m free of fact-checks/ My claims don’t hold water like a cactus.”

While the light-hearted video included joking references to private school founder Ye’s recent claim that he’s never “read any book,” then slipped in a mention of embattled conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, whom Kanye compared himself to during the Carlson interview. “I heard Rabbis are intergalactic,” it continued. “And Jewish stoplights are causing traffic/ New t-shirts, you can have six/ Promocode: bats–t.”

The bit wrapped with fake Kanye lamenting that now that he’s been banned on socials his only way of sharing his thoughts is by going on Tucker’s show. On Monday, Ye was invited to visit the Holocaust Museum LA to learn about the deadly consequences of hate speech just days after Twitter removed West’s tweet on Saturday for violating the platform’s rules after the rapper wrote that he was going to go, “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE… The funny thing is I actually can’t be Anti Semitic because black people are actually Jew also You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda.”

The comment followed Meta’s removal of Instagram posts by West for violating that platform’s policies after he posted text messages between him and fellow rapper P. Diddy claiming he would “show the Jews that told you to call me that no one can threaten or influence me.” In April, the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks anti-Semitic behavior nationwide, reported a 34% rise in anti-Semitic incidents in 2021 (to 2,717), which averaged out to more than seven such incidents per day.

A spokesperson for West had not returned multiple requests for comment at press time.

Watch the Late Show bit below.