The web page supplied a spontaneous present of assist for Jewish Americans and a visible illustration of pushback towards West, who has legally modified his identify to Ye, after weeks of his antisemitic remarks. It got here after Ye on Thursday mentioned he preferred Adolf Hitler and later tweeted a picture of a swastika.
“As a Jew and an early Kanye fan,” one commenter posted, “I never looked in this sub[reddit] until this morning and I saw all the holocaust remembrance posts. I’m in … tears right now. Thank you for standing up for us.”
The posts embody Holocaust-related photographs and data meant to unfold consciousness about Nazi Germany’s persecution and killing of 6 million Jews. People are additionally posting instructional e book and film suggestions, photographs from visits to Holocaust memorial and museum websites, and photographs they are saying are of relations who have been persecuted underneath the Nazi regime.
“Photos I took when I visited Auschwitz. This is real. This is what happened to millions of innocent men, women and children as the result of unchecked dehumanizing rhetoric against them,” one particular person wrote, attaching photographs of the location of the Nazi demise camp. “Never again.”
Sprinkled all through these posts is one other a logo of followers’ disavowing of Ye: Memes praising Taylor Swift, who has been seen as a nemesis of Ye — and his followers — since he interrupted her 2009 MTV Video Music Awards acceptance speech. “Hey guys! Just getting into Taylor but don’t know where to start. Any suggestions?” wrote one one that posted a photograph of Swift.
Some posts make it clear that even followers who maintained allegiance to Ye regardless of his repeated antisemitic remarks and erratic conduct have now determined to desert him.
“I looked up to you. And now you ruined it all,” one commenter wrote. “Ashamed that you were once my favorite artist. Ashamed that I called you the GOAT. … I am done with you.”
The shift on the subreddit began Thursday, after Ye praised Hitler and Nazis in an interview with right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. It got here a little bit greater than per week after Ye dined with former president Donald Trump and white nationalist Nick Fuentes, an occasion for which some Republicans chastised Trump. Fuentes additionally appeared on Jones’s present with Ye.
Wearing a full masks, Ye informed Jones he preferred Hitler, then mentioned, “I love Jewish people, but I also love Nazis.”
Thursday evening, Ye tweeted a photograph of a swastika mixed with the Star of David. His Twitter account was suspended after the tweet. Both incidents drew vast condemnation from politicians, Jewish teams and others.
The criticism included customers on the subreddit, the place on Thursday afternoon, one particular person posted, “This is now a Taylor Swift Subreddit. We had a good run fellas.” Hours later, after the swastika tweet, one other person declared the thread “officially a holocaust awareness sub,” and Holocaust-related posts started pouring in.
Reddit customers put up anonymously. A message despatched to the moderators of r/Kanye from The Washington Post was not returned. Information posted on Reddit, like elsewhere on social media, shouldn’t be verified by fact-checkers.
Attempts to achieve Ye have been unsuccessful.
Hate speech and antisemitism on-line can contribute to real-world violence, specialists say, and the present political local weather has elevated concern amongst American Jews. An April assessment by the Anti-Defamation League, a corporation that fights antisemitism, discovered that the United States noticed a file variety of antisemitic incidents in 2021, with a median of greater than seven per day.
Pamela Nadell, director of American University’s Jewish Studies program, mentioned she believes the United States is approaching a second “high tide of American antisemitism,” referencing the interval between World War I and World War II that historians have typically termed the height of antisemitism within the nation.
That makes studying concerning the Holocaust and the Jewish expertise with antisemitism “of great value” for all Americans, she informed The Post.
“What has happened from October through the end of November … we have hit a point in American life where we now know that antisemitism is completely normalized,” she mentioned, referring to Ye’s feedback, his assembly with Trump and Fuentes and accusations of antisemitism which have additionally been just lately leveled towards basketball participant Kyrie Irving. “There is certainly a rising sense of fear, justifiable fear. And I would say almost horror.”
Nadell really helpful that individuals who need to study extra concerning the Holocaust begin by trying on the web site of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which incorporates an encyclopedia.
Ye’s actions have drawn outrage for weeks, from his sporting of a “WHITE LIVES MATTER” T-shirt at his Paris Fashion Week present to an antisemitic rant and false info concerning the homicide of George Floyd on the podcast “Drink Champs.” A leaked portion of an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News additionally elicited condemnation, as did an October tweet by Ye saying he would go “death con 3” on “JEWISH PEOPLE.”
Ye was dropped by Adidas, Gap, Balenciaga and different corporations and has been intermittently suspended on Twitter. On Thursday, right-leaning social app Parler introduced that a deal for Ye to purchase the corporate had been canceled. A spokesperson mentioned it was “mainly due to his recent and well-publicized business difficulties.”
While some Redditors on r/Kanye posted messages of gratitude for the Holocaust materials, others questioned why it had taken some followers so lengthy to denounce Ye. One one that recognized themselves as a “Jewish former Ye fan” urged individuals to study Jewish tradition past the Holocaust, saying, “Antisemitism is not a thing of the past. … We need your allyship!”
Another particular person requested for studying materials and film suggestions, saying, “Thanks to Kanye I’m gonna learn more about the history of the Holocaust.”
Even discussing Ye’s antisemitism presents a dilemma, as a result of it creates extra publicity for his dangerous remarks, mentioned Leonard Saxe, director of the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University.
“I don’t know whether this Reddit approach of posting lots of remembrances and information about the Holocaust will work, but it’s probably better than directly talking about him and how odious his views are,” Saxe informed The Post.
“It’s a terrible situation, this moment in time when hate and distrust and other social forces seem to be stronger than ever, but educating people about the Holocaust is important,” he mentioned, including, “Turning the focus on the peoples whose lives [Hitler] destroyed and remembering them, that’s a good thing.”