Rapper’s fashion brand Yeezy taken offline by Shopify, after he sold T-shirt with swastika design and praised Hitler
Kanye West has been sued and dropped by his talent agency after he posted a stream of antisemitic abuse, put T-shirts with a swastika on sale in his online shop, and was alleged to have described himself as Hitler to a Jewish employee.
Last week West, also known as Ye, wrote a barrage of antisemitic posts on X including, “I’m a Nazi … I love Hitler”.
The swastika T-shirt was placed for sale on the website of his fashion brand Yeezy, with the product line “HH-01”, assumed to be code for “Heil Hitler”.
Shopify, the company that provided the online platform for Yeezy, has now taken the store offline, stating: “All merchants are responsible for following the rules of our platform. This merchant did not engage in authentic commerce practices and violated our terms.”
Actually they fully allow the sale of explicit Nazi merch at Shopify. They just came up with a vaguely plausible excuse to get rid of Kanye's store specifically. The execs at Shopify are outspoken extreme right wingers. These are guys get along well with the Proud Boys (which is considered a terrorist group in Canada).
The news really has got to stop with this "assumed to be" bullshit. It's as clear as day that it is code for heil hitler, as HH/88 has been a long fucking time. It's the whole "Elon made what looked to be a nazi salute" thing all over again. No it didn't look like a nazi salute, it was, and this HH is not maybe code for something, it is.
“… assumed to be… looks like… could be construed as… according to a source…”are all weasel words and phrases to avoid litigation, to give a little leeway if it got to court.
Reporting - with a nod and a wink; and a little protection.
My favourite euphemism for “drunk/drugged and aggressive” celebrities in newspaper stories is “tired and emotional”.
Sometimes it’s best to say something without actually saying it if you want to stay in business. Granted, it’s not ideal.
It says "This store is unavailable" which means it's probably not a DNS or webserver block and still uses the shop software to serve the page. So it's most likely a Shopify block.
I worked with someone who defended Kanye for like a year after he went publicly apeshit. Probably up until at least 2019 when I last spoke to him on the topic. He just kept claiming that it was so unfair that Kanye was getting judged as an off-meds mentally ill person suffering. Which I would get, as long as he wasn't hurting other people. But that's been the motherfucker's raison-etre for a while now.
As someone who's out of the loop may I ask what the story is?
What I'm getting is that he's a wealthy has been who has some unmedicated mental health problems which manifest in these spectacular public brain farts.
Is that all there is to it or is there some explanation for the antisemitism?
The last outfall was so bad that even Alex Jones had to argue that Hitler wasnt a good guy. I'm just wondering how he was able to get back into the spotlight to repeat this shit. I mean, I have an idea what convinced him now is the time to shine again.
I get the whole shock value thing, but this is more like shooting yourself in both feet, on purpose. I mean, he might as well just amputate them at this point. Like, that's some seriously messed up stuff he's doing now, he's gotta know a lot of people are gonna hate him for it. Unless, like I said elsewhere, he manages to still remain popular... and then anyone left who's sane might as well pack up and move to the mountains.
Yes, I too am shocked that one of the most successful musicians of the century had a “talent agent.”
The guy is a piece of shit but this is such an asinine comment. The only shocking part is he got dropped in the first place, considering he still somehow manages to make money hand over fist anytime he releases some half-finished album these days. The talent agencies will tolerate a hell of a lot as long as the money keeps flowing.
Nah, I'm surprised he has a talent agent, too, after his last outburst. I know talent agents aren't immune to bigotry but it's still a bit surprising that anyone would attach their name to his like that
Dude has been out of it for years, and hasn’t put out anything of note during that time. He’s already made statements that should have alerted any reputable talent agency to stay the fuck away.
I’m not sure, but I think he’s been dropped and picked up by someone else before.
Talent agents choose money over ethics all the time. It’s practically their job. Regardless, things like this happen when the negative publicity makes a client a bad return on the agency’s investment (or a client hurts their reputation, which is to say, when a client hurts their chances of making money in the future). Their only concern is money, not antisemitism.
Next, he’ll be contacted by an even less prestigious agency whose desperation outweighs their ethical concerns. He may already have been.
Mental illness doesn't make you a Nazi. Saying Ye is acting like this because he's off his meds is saying that those with diagnosed with bipolar or narcissism are just one step away from being a bigot. That's not true and it only furthers the stigma of those with mental health issues.
Ye is the one choosing to be racist, that choice is on him alone.
Saying Ye is acting like this because he's off his meds is saying that those with diagnosed with bipolar or narcissism are just one step away from being a bigot.
Nah, it's just saying that a specific attention-seeking bigot with a personality disorder, which is marginally controlled with meds, is more likely to go on insane attention-seeking tears of bigotry when he goes off those meds.
Exactly. I have autism and an anxiety disorder, and I don't go around seig heiling and doing Nazi shit, and it isn't JUST because the Nazis would have me killed.
Not sure where I said or implied it was an excuse?
He's some kind of weird bigot for sure, but he's also got a history of these random unhinged outbursts from time to time that are clearly a result of something more acute/immediate than being a nazi.
Every time I see shit like this, where it’s framed as “THIS HORRIBLE THING IS NOW HAPPENING TO THIS RICH PERSON AND THEYRE SUFFERING THE CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR ACTIONS” I’m always like
So what?
They’re still billionaires. They’re still incredibly rich. There’s nothing you can actually do to these people with shit like this. We’re far past the “we can just not support their company” or the “we can just not vote for them and ruin their life” stage of this, gang.
I mean, apart from his money giving him a platform to really spread hate and hurt people, it really is pretty sad at an individual level. Dude is mentally unwell, and not just because he's an evil hateful person.
There's plenty of evil people just as bad and just as loud that are in control of their mental state and understand what they're doing.
Gutting your house and living in a utility closet is pretty messed up, rich or poor
He might be a Nazi asshole now, but he very much is still a thing. He has never released an album that didn't reach the number 1 or 2 position in the Billboard 200 rankings in the US, with same or similar success on ranking charts around the world, and that includes 10 albums released after 2009. The most recent was a collab in August 2024, and the most recent solo album was in 2021. Both were extremely successful and well received.
And he'll probably have another one shortly. Plenty of assholes out there who will make money off of him until it becomes untenable... then someone on a lower tier will pick him up
He subscribes to the black hebrew conspiracy theory so to him, jews aren't the real israelites, they stole it all from the original israelites, who were all black.
It's completely nuts and the cult has killed people before, including... MLK's mother