Kanye West latest: Biden says ‘silence is complicity’ as Elon Musk suspends rapper for posting swastika

“It’s becoming increasingly obvious that the Christian message Kanye West is spreading isn’t one of love, but of Christo-fascist dominance and control,” Noah Berlatsky writes for The Independent’s Voices.

Racist and antisemitic slurs, anti-gay comments and gender-based attacks have spiked on Twitter, according to new reporting from the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

In the first full week under his ownership, there were more than 26,000 posts mentioning the n-word – triple the average in 2022, according to the report. There were also more 50,000 posts mentioning transphobic and homophobic slurs, up by 53 per cent and 39 per cent, respectively, than 2022 averages.

Within his first two weeks at the helm, from 31 October to 13 November, there were more than 204,000 tweets and retweets using the gender-based slur “c**t” – up 30 per cent from the 2022 average – and more than 831,000 posts mentioning “sl*t,” up 75 per cent from the 2022 average. Posts mentioning “wh*re” were also up by 60 per cent.

The platform also saw significant spikes in antisemitic slurs and racist abuse towards Hispanic and Latino people, the report found.

More from The Independent:

President Joe Biden appeared to condemn Ye and others who have given him a platform for his virulent antisemitism.

“I just want to make a few things clear: The Holocaust happened. Hitler was a demonic figure. And instead of giving it a platform, our political leaders should be calling out and rejecting antisemitism wherever it hides,” he shared in a Twitter post from the office’s official account on Friday.

“Silence is complicity,” he added.

Extremism researchers and experts who have closely studied the spread of online hate and mis- and disinformation have warned that Elon Musk’s acquisition and the mass return of previously banned users could rapidly deteriorate the platform.

Under the disingenuous banner of “free speech”, Twitter could become one of the most toxic spaces on the internet for marginalised groups, they tell The Independent’s Alex Woodward:

White nationalist Nick Fuentes, who is joining Kanye West’s apparent presidential campaign, has accused far-right Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of seeking an audience with the antisemitic rapper. In a broadcast, Fuentes – who joined West during his appearance on InfoWars – lambasted the congresswoman, a far-right flamethrower in Congress who was voted out of her committees for her own offensive behaviour.

Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, has issued a statement condemning West’s remarks on yesterday’s InfoWars broadcast:

Despite an October statement hailing a world-changing deal to purchase the right-wing social media app, Parler will not be selling the platform to Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West.

The company announced that they reached a mutual termination agreement on 1 December, hours after the rapper and virulent antisemite praised Adolf Hitler and his love for Nazis on an InfoWars broadcast with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

They announced that the decision was made in mid-November.

Alex Jones has filed for personal bankruptcy weeks after the conspiracy theorist and the company behind his InfoWars platform were ordered to pay roughly $1.5bn in damages for defaming the families of victims from the Sandy Hook school shooting massacre.

He filed for bankruptcy on 2 December in Texas where his InfoWars site already is under chapter 11 bankruptcy protections.

One is an anti-Semitic superstar rapper running for president. The other is the richest man in the world who spends his days posting memes to the social media platform he purchased on a whim. And both have been friends for more than a decade.

Elon Musk and Kanye West don’t appear to have much in common at first glance, but the pair have a years-long relationship that may explain why the former is still backing the latter despite the rapper’s numerous anti-Semitic comments.

Mr Musk and Mr West first met in 2011, when the SpaceX owner gave the rapper a private tour of the company’s rocket factory.

“Kanye stopped by the SpaceX rocket factory today,” Musk tweeted at the time.

In 2020, Mr Musk recalled their friendship fondly, responding to a photo of the men together at the factory by calling it a “hell of a decade.”

The Independent’s Graig Graziosi delves into the bromance:

Piers Morgan has said that, when he recently spoke to Kanye West, it was clear to him that the disgraced rapper was “revelling in causing maximum offence”.

“I had a lengthy text exchange with Kanye ‘Ye’ West the other day which indicated he’s now revelling in causing maximum offence,” he tweeted on Friday morning.

“He wasn’t just racist, and anti-Semitic, but horribly homophobic too – and his latest pro-Hitler rant is sadly more evidence he’s lost the plot.”