Deplorable: How Kanye West went from beloved generational rapper to far-right Hitler apologist
LOS ANGELES — In late November, Kanye West, the 45-year-old rapper now known as Ye, dined at Mar-a-Lago with former President Donald Trump and a neofascist.
Trump sat with West and his guest Nick Fuentes, a far-right influencer and white supremacist who attended the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Fuentes doubts the Holocaust’s existence, and has said progressive shifts in society are a “bastardized Jewish subversion of the American creed. The founders never intended for America to be a refugee camp for nonwhite people.”
Not long ago, West was surrounded by cultural luminaries like his ex-wife Kim Kardashian, his lifelong collaborator Jay-Z and Balenciaga’s creative director, Demna. His dinner companions were top executives from Adidas and Gap, eager to chat about their nine-figure partnerships.
After decades at the vanguard of music and fashion, West has descended into the far-right fever swamps, following months of antisemitic, Christian nationalist ravings on social media and podcasts. In the past, fans and peers showed some empathy for West’s erratic rants, given his struggles with bipolar disorder, as well as the latitude for “free thinking” often afforded wealthy creatives. But even his closest friends and associates have jumped ship after he made dangerous and hate-filled statements like “I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE” and described abortion to Tucker Carlson as “genocide and population control ... that is promoted by the music and the media that Black people make, that Jewish record labels get paid off of.”
Last week, West praised Adolf Hitler in an interview with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
On Friday, President Joe Biden, without mentioning West by name, took to Twitter to remind his 28 million followers that “The Holocaust happened” and “Hitler was a demonic figure.”
West has lost his management, his legal representation, his business partnerships and his reputation. He has no record label, no booking agent to help him earn money from concerts. He’s now planning a second farcical presidential run, helmed by Milo Yiannopoulos, the former Marjorie Taylor Greene intern banned from most mainstream social media.
West is now fully invested as a paranoid conspiracy trafficker, willing to burn down a life’s work to prove his ugly point.
