Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, has been suspended from Twitter after sharing a design blending a swastika with the Star of David, just hours after he praised Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in an interview.
Ye was one of several high-profile Twitter users whose accounts were banned or restricted on the platform who then had their accounts reinstated after tech billionaire Elon Musk took over as owner.
Ye returned to the platform on November 21st, having previously been restricted for tweeting an anti-Semitic message.
Musk has previously described his approach to content moderation as: “If in doubt, let the speech exist.”
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On Thursday night, Ye shared the image of the swastika over the Star of David, a symbol of Judaism. The tweet was soon deleted.
“Let’s always remember this as my final tweet,” Ye wrote, posting an unflattering image of Musk half-naked on a yacht.
“That is fine,” Musk replied. “This is not,” he wrote on the deleted swastika tweet.
The rapper then began posting on Truth Social, the social media platform started by former US president Donald Trump, sharing text messages purportedly from Musk, in which the billionaire appeared to attempt to reason with him about the tweet.
“Sorry, but you have gone too far. This is not love,” Musk wrote.
“Who made you the judge,” Ye wrote back. He then shared a screenshot of his Twitter account showing he had been banned from tweeting for 12 hours for violating the platform’s rules.
Musk confirmed Ye’s suspension. “I tried my best. Despite that, he again violated our rule against incitement to violence. Account will be suspended,” he wrote.
Shielded behind a face mask, Ye appeared alongside white supremacist Nick Fuentes on InfoWars, a show hosted by far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, in an episode posted online on Thursday.
The rapper said: “I see good things about Hitler … Every human being has something of value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler.”
Jones replied: “The Nazis were thugs.”
“But they did good things too,” Ye said. “We gotta stop dissing the Nazis all the time.”
“Oh my goodness … just because you don’t like one group doesn’t mean – " Jones said, clearly uncomfortable. Ye interrupted: “I love Jewish people. But I also love Nazis.”
“I don’t think Hitler was a good guy,” Jones stated later. Ye replied: “There’s a lot of things that I love about Hitler. A lot of things.”
[ Kanye West’s chaotic rally: God, abortion and better acousticsOpens in new window ]
Norm Coleman and Matt Brooks, leaders of the Republican Jewish Coalition, condemned Ye’s comments, saying: “Given his praise of Hitler, it can’t be overstated that Kanye West is a vile, repellent bigot who has targeted the Jewish community with threats and Nazi-style defamation. Conservatives who have mistakenly indulged Kanye West must make it clear that he is a pariah. Enough is enough.”
After the interview aired, a Twitter account run by Republicans in the US Congress deleted a tweet that had seemingly expressed support for Ye. – Guardian News and Media
