Kanye West could face arrest in Brazil if he “makes any kind of apology for Nazism” while on stage.
- READ MORE: With his “White Lives Matter” stunt, has Kanye West finally hit the point of no return?
The rapper has launched many anti-Semitic tirades online over the past few years, and been banned from X/Twitter and Instagram multiple times over comments which violate their policies on hate speech.
He recently met up with a prominent New York rabbi called Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto to “take accountability” for the hurt caused, and apologise for his bipolar disorder allegedly causing him to lash out at the Jewish community.
Now, he has been warned that any comments defending Nazism in Brazil could lead to an immediate arrest.
West, who now goes by Ye, is set to perform live in São Paulo on November 29. According to a new report by Metrópoles, the State Public Prosecutor’s Office in São Paulo (MPSP) will have Riot Police on standby during the show, and officers have been given instructions to arrest the rapper “if he sings a song or makes any kind of apology for Nazism.”
Outlets including Metrópoles and Consequence have shared that the threat of arrest also extends to Guilherme Cavalcante and Jean Fabrício Ramos (Faublous Fabz), who are the show promoters, and the order has been done in the hopes of preventing Ye from performing his song ‘Heil Hitler’, which he shared in May.
The gig was originally set to be held at the Interlagos racetrack, but this was cancelled last month. Since then, the mayor of São Paulo, Ricardo Nunes, said that the city would not provide a public space for the show.
While West is set to perform in the city at the end of the month, it is worth highlighting that there has still not been any venue confirmed yet, meaning that it may not go ahead at all.
As well as tirades on social media, Ye also began selling a white T-shirt with a large swastika on the chest earlier this year, leading to Shopify shutting down his Yeezy website. West would then hit out at the move, and claim that he had the idea for the shirt for years.
Before then, he said in a 2023 documentary that he believed Jewish people were working together to “hold him back”, and the year before, he provoked widespread backlash after telling Jewish people to “forgive Hitler”.
That same year West said that he “doesn’t believe” in the term anti-Semitism, and sparked backlash from the likes of many including Piers Morgan, who told Ye that he didn’t “think you understand the pain you’ve been causing with some of these comments.”
Others to have hit out at the comments are Jamie Lee Curtis, voice actor John DiMaggio, Diane Warren, and Bleachers frontman Jack Antonoff. After the widespread condemnation of his tweets, West would then go on to say that he wanted to “hug every Jewish person,” and explained that he was jealous of several aspects of Jewish culture.
