Kanye West news: Holocaust Museum invites rapper as alt-right champions ‘dangerous’ anti-semitic tweets

Last week, Lizzo responded to Kanye West after the rapper made offensive comments about her weight during an interview with Fox host Tucker Carlson.

“When Lizzo loses 10 pounds and announces it, the bots… on Instagram, they attack her losing weight because the media wants to put out a perception that being overweight is the new goal when it’s actually unhealthy,” West, who legally changed his name to Ye, told Carlson.

Now, the “Truth Hurts” singer is opening up in a new cover story for Vanity Fair about how the body-shaming comments she’s received from critics over the years have “really hurt her”.

“And if one person says it, then another person says it, it multiplies like a f**king virus. If enough people on the internet start echoing sentiments about you, it becomes part of your public persona and it’s out of your control,” she said in the new interview.

Read the full story from Meredith Clark here:

American actor, playwright and screenwriter Harvey Fierstein tweeted on Tuesday, just a couple days after Kanye West unleashed a series of antisemitic posts on the same platform and was later locked out, to ask: “Why no response to Kanye West’s threats against Jews?”

“Don’t try to hide behind, ’You know he’s nuts,’” the Hairspray star tweeted on Tuesday morning. “He threatened death. His excuse was that Jews held him back. Does he strike you as someone who has been held back? Ignore hate speech & you are partly responsible for it.”

While most took to condemning Kanye West after he blasted off a series of anti-Semitic posts over the weekend, the message he championed quickly took hold in alt-right circles where he was lauded as a warrior of “cancel culture” gone awry.

Andrew Torba, the CEO of the alt-right microblogging platform Gab, took to Twitter to beckon West to his platform after users had begun calling for a permanent ban on his account.

“How do we get Kanye on Gab?” tweeted Mr Torba, referring to his platform which is well-documented as a gathering space online for neo-Nazis, white supremacists and conspiracy theories such as QAnon.

Candace Owens, a 33-year-old conservative commentator, made her feelings about West’s posts very clear on her Monday podcast and claimed the media was overreacting to his posts, which have since been denounced by the Anti-Defamation League and the Black-Jewish Entertainment Alliance.

“If you are an honest person, you did not think this tweet was antisemitic. You did not think that he wrote this tweet because he hates or wants to genocide Jewish people,” she said, adding that “this does not represent the beginning of the Holocaust”.

Keep reading the full briefing from The Independent here:

Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who aired two explosive interviews with Kanye West last week, dedicated another segment on his Monday night show to the rapper without mentioning the remarks he made over the weekend that earned him a lockout on Twitter and Instagram.

“Like Tiananmen Square, Ye West and Candace Owens, standing there in front of the tank which is the international media,” said Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday night, referring to the incident last week where the pair of controversial figures attended a Paris Fashion Week event dressed in “White Lives Matter” t-shirts.

The right-wing pundit interviewed Owens on the segment and discussed the fallout from Paris Fashion Week, but deftly avoided discussing the social media posts that have triggered a chorus of outrage from across the political spectrum.

“No group – no group – no matter what they look like or what they believe should be put up with being singled out on the basis of immutable characteristics,” Carlson said, after the pair had discussed how there was an “undeniable” hate towards white people in America.

The Holocaust Museum of Los Angeles extended a public invitation to Kanye West to visit their California-based facility, noting that the musician’s words “reach millions” and he had the choice to either “incite or inspire”.

“Words matter and words have consequences Ye. We urge you to come visit us at Holocaust Museum LA to understand just how words can incite horrific violence and genocides,” the Holocaust Museum L.A. wrote in a statement, first reported by Page Six.

The statement arrives after a chorus of celebrities and political figures across the country have condemned the musician’s comments over the past weekend, which earned him a lockout from his accounts on both Instagram and Twitter.

“The Holocaust started with only words that sadly begat stereotypes, racial and religious tropes and blaming others and led to the murder of six million Jews,” the museum wrote, adding that it was the museum’s mission to commemorate people killed in all genocides from around the world – including the one perpetuated against the Armenian people.

“Of which your children would be included,” the museum noted, highlighting how West’s ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, and their children are of Armenian descent.

“Your words reach millions and you can choose to incite or you can choose to inspire. We are located at 100 The Grove Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90036 and welcome you any time,” the museum wrote.

Kanye’s enthusiastic, undeniable embrace of antisemitism shows that antisemitism is central to, and an inevitable consequence of, the GOP’s embrace of a politics of division and intolerance, writes contributor Noah Berlatsky.

Read the full opinion piece for The Independent here:

ICYMI: Jack Antonoff took to Twitter on Monday and wrote, “kanye a little b**ch.”

Antonoff, who is Jewish, is a frequent collaborator with Taylor Swift, who has had her own high-profile run-ins with Kanye over the years.

In 2009, West stormed the stage at the VMAs when Swift went up to collect her award for Best Female Video, beating Beyonce in the process.

The rapper grabbed the microphone from her and said, “Yo, Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’mma let you finish,” he said. “But Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time! One of the best videos of all time!”

Elon Musk has revealed he has spoken to Kanye West, who remains embroiled in controversy for posting antisemitic messages.

The world’s richest man said in a tweet that he spoke to the rapper to express his concerns about his recent tweet and he believes West took his concerns to heart.

“Talked to ye today & expressed my concerns about his recent tweet, which I think he took to heart,” wrote the Tesla chief executive on Tuesday.

Mr Musk’s second tweet over the controversy came in reply to his earlier tweet welcoming the rapper-fashionista and his “friend” back to Twitter after nearly two years.

Shweta Sharma has the full story here:

Kanye West took issue with a figure he’d previously professed his love for in his wide-ranging interview with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson: Jared Kushner.

Throughout the explosive Thursday night sitdown between the pair, Kanye addressed a number of topics, including his pro-life stance, his decision to don a red MAGA cap, labelled the body positive moment “demonic” and admonished the fashion industry for encouraging his ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, to “stick her a** out” for magazines.

In one of the more zany and unexpected exchanges, Kanye sharply criticised Mr Kushner, a former senior White House adviser to his father-in-law, Donald Trump, insinuating that he was a person solely motivated by financial gain.

“I just think it was to make money,” he told Mr Carlson of Mr Kushner’s work facilitating the Abraham Accords, a deal that sought to normalise ties between Israel and Arab nations.

Though it seems relations between the two men have soured recently, the pair of Trump-loyalists were not always at odds with one another. Here, we chart the chummy-turned-hostile relationship between Mr Kushner and Kanye and explain why the recent tensions have unfolded.

American pop artist Ariana Grande shared the since-viral clip of Jamie Lee Curtis tearfully addressing Kanye West’s most recent anti-Semitic social media posts, during which she called them “abhorrent”.

In the clip, where Curtis is being interview by NBC Today host Hoda Kotb, she explains how when she saw the anti-Semitic post from West, she “burst into tears”.

“Death con three on Jewish people? What are you doing? I mean, it’s bad enough that fascism is on the rise around the world, but on Twitter, on a portal, to pour that in as if Jewish people haven’t had it hard enough?” said Curtis, who’s of Hungarian Jewish descent on her father’s side.

Grande also shared a post from Saint Hoax, a pseudonymous name for a Syrian artist and Instagram influencer, where they had photoshopper a collection of tweets that discussed West’s post’s and his mental health.

“It is possible to both recognize Kanye’s mental health challenges and vehemently condemn his foul and dangerous anti-Semitism,” read one of the tweets used in the collage, reshared by Grande.