You’d be forgiven for thinking Ye’s antisemitic tirade over the weekend — in which he expressed admiration for Hitler, literally called himself a Nazi, praised Diddy, and took out a Super Bowl ad pointing to a web store selling Swastika t-shirts — was the reason his X account was deactivated this week. Even by the standards often too gracefully afforded to Ye, his behavior seemed so beyond the pale that someone must’ve stepped in to stop it.
Except, from the looks of it, Ye deactivated his account of his own volition, and he’s free to reactivate again if he so chooses. This is despite a days-long barrage of unhinged posts aimed at everyone from former Vice President Kamala Harris to Drake, Kendrick Lamar, and even X owner Elon Musk. Not to mention, he uploaded straight-up pornography to his page at one point.
Of course, Ye’s behavior didn’t come without consequences. Ty Dolla $ign, among the last of his collaborators, released a statement this week condemning antisemitism and removed all mentions of Ye on his Instagram. His talent agency, 33&West, announced this week they’d be severing ties with the musician, and Shopify, which hosted the Yeezy webstore, shut the site down for violating its terms of service. But Ye’s enormous platform remains more or less intact. Up until the site was shut down, his Yeezy brand — which sold an assortment of basics as well as questionable merch for his album Vultures, featuring artwork similar to the right-wing hardcore musician Burzum — was undeniably popular. For all of the uproar over Kanye’s 2022 Twitter meltdown when he declared he’d be going “death con 3” on Jewish people, he was able to repurpose his Yeezy brand into a direct-to-consumer business that, by his own accounts, made the once iconic musician a billionaire.
Ye’s posting spree revealed a dark undercurrent present on social media platforms in whatever you might call this era after Trump’s election, with the elevation of controversial figures, many of whom share beliefs not too far from the extremes Ye posted. Last week, President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance took to X to advocate for a twentysomething working for Elon Musk’s DOGE who resigned after racist posts online were discovered. The 25-year-old staffer named Marko Elez briefly left his role at the agency after a report in The Wall Street Journal revealed posts from a pseudonym he used on X declaring that “just for the record, I was racist before it was cool” and advocating to “normalize Indian hate.”
Editor’s picks
“I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life,” Vice President Vance wrote on X. “We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever. So I say bring him back.” After Elon Musk posted a poll on X asking whether or not he should be rehired, more than 200,000 users submitted votes, and before long, Velez had his job back.
Much of the right’s fixation on so-called “wokeness” boils down to what they believe to be a heightened scrutiny of what’s deemed acceptable language. In New York’s much-discussed profile of the new generation of millennial and Gen Z Maga faithful, much of their disdain for progressives boiled down to no longer being able to say certain slurs. And so it would seem the pendulum has swung towards a new extreme. Where even at its most excessive, neoliberalism’s biggest sin was the occasional performative gesture of solidarity with marginalized groups from politicians, this new era outwardly rewards bigoted behavior. The vice president stepping in to get a kid their job back after people found their racist tweets is as clear an endorsement of that type of language as we can get.
The past five years of noxious online discourse has been filling the air like smoke in a burning building, slowly at first, but now with terrifying velocity. Scanning X, Instagram Reels, TikTok comments, or just about any other corner of the internet reveals a new world of open-faced bigotry — multiplying like neighborhood gentrifiers or, more aptly, colonizers. In just the past few days, users have found sponsored posts on X that expressly celebrate Hitler. Since taking over the platform in 2019, Elon Musk, who faced basically zero consequences for doing an actual Nazi salute on live television after Trump’s inauguration, has ushered in an era of unfettered hate speech under the guise of being “anti-woke.” In April, an NBC News investigation found hundreds of paid, Verified accounts spreading Nazi propaganda on X and thousands more unverified accounts doing the same.
Related Content
The free-for-all ethos introduced on X is spreading across social media platforms, too. In January, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg announced sweeping changes to the company’s content moderation policies, all but explicitly allowing transphobic language on the platform. Zuck also added UFC CEO Dana White, a Trump loyalist and staunch anti-woke crusader, to the company’s board.
So, while Ye’s reputation has once again taken a hit as he faces backlash for his posting spree, there’s an unshakeable sense that his latest antics are a sign of something larger. His posts suggest a number of things at once. Most evident is the fact that Ye, who has a history of mental health issues, including a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, is likely undergoing some sort of episode. But he also remains deftly perceptive of the zeitgeist. For years, the world has been drifting towards the far right, and it appears we’ve arrived at a frightening realignment in the culture — one that won’t easily or quickly be reversed.
