5mo ago

Kanye West sued, dropped by talent agency and retail platform over antisemitic slurs

www.theguardian.com

Kanye West has been sued and dropped by his talent agency after he posted a stream of antisemitic abuse, put T-shirts with a swastika on sale in his online shop, and was alleged to have described himself as Hitler to a Jewish employee.

Last week West, also known as Ye, wrote a barrage of antisemitic posts on X including, “I’m a Nazi … I love Hitler”.

The swastika T-shirt was placed for sale on the website of his fashion brand Yeezy, with the product line “HH-01”, assumed to be code for “Heil Hitler”.

Shopify, the company that provided the online platform for Yeezy, has now taken the store offline, stating: “All merchants are responsible for following the rules of our platform. This merchant did not engage in authentic commerce practices and violated our terms.”

92 comments

I have some bad news for Yeezy. Nazis ~~weren't~~ aren't very fond of brown people either.
- Or the mentally ill...
  
  Which is really ironic if you consider sociopathy to be a mental illness.
- Yeah, I'm not sure exactly where he thinks he fits in Hitler's idea of the übermensch.
  
  Unter it
- Forgive me if I have misunderstood something obvious, but wouldn't he be considered black?
  
  He's not considered white. Which is a problem in nazis circles.
Shopify only dropped him because they didn't think he'd actually ship the swastika shirts, not because he was selling the swastika shirts.
- The CEO of Shopify is a man named Tobias Lütke
  
  Apparently you can't read.
Shopify when this happened: No comment.
Shopify after blowback: This is an abhorrent abuse of our policies! We are all adither!
In conclusion: Fuck Shopify. And obligatory fuck ICE.
- Actually they fully allow the sale of explicit Nazi merch at Shopify. They just came up with a vaguely plausible excuse to get rid of Kanye's store specifically. The execs at Shopify are outspoken extreme right wingers. These are guys get along well with the Proud Boys (which is considered a terrorist group in Canada).
- Nothing to add except I've never seen "adither" written out. I've been saying "A tizzy" all my life. 🫣
I reported yeezy.com for being in violation of GoDaddy's Terms Of Use.
Doubt it was me that caused any of this, but we can all do our part 😊
- It says "This store is unavailable" which means it's probably not a DNS or webserver block and still uses the shop software to serve the page. So it's most likely a Shopify block.
  
  Welp here's hoping he loses the domain next.
Good riddance.
Let this be his only legacy.
- I worked with someone who defended Kanye for like a year after he went publicly apeshit. Probably up until at least 2019 when I last spoke to him on the topic. He just kept claiming that it was so unfair that Kanye was getting judged as an off-meds mentally ill person suffering. Which I would get, as long as he wasn't hurting other people. But that's been the motherfucker's raison-etre for a while now.
  
  Would they extend anyone else dealing with untreated mental illness the same benefit?
  
  As someone who's out of the loop may I ask what the story is?
  What I'm getting is that he's a wealthy has been who has some unmedicated mental health problems which manifest in these spectacular public brain farts.
  Is that all there is to it or is there some explanation for the antisemitism?
  
  Well now there's a ten dollar word if I've ever seen one.
  Slips scrabble back to the top...
The only thing that amazed me about this is that he had a “talent agent”.
- Nah, I'm surprised he has a talent agent, too, after his last outburst. I know talent agents aren't immune to bigotry but it's still a bit surprising that anyone would attach their name to his like that
  
  Dude has been out of it for years, and hasn’t put out anything of note during that time. He’s already made statements that should have alerted any reputable talent agency to stay the fuck away.
  
  Any note, no matter how sour, sounds like a song if you hold it long enough.
- I’m not sure, but I think he’s been dropped and picked up by someone else before.
  Talent agents choose money over ethics all the time. It’s practically their job. Regardless, things like this happen when the negative publicity makes a client a bad return on the agency’s investment (or a client hurts their reputation, which is to say, when a client hurts their chances of making money in the future). Their only concern is money, not antisemitism.
  Next, he’ll be contacted by an even less prestigious agency whose desperation outweighs their ethical concerns. He may already have been.
  
  I guarantee some PR-hack(s) reached out to him to offer a brilliant way they could spin this into a positive for his "brand."
- Not only that, but they only signed him last year.
Every time I see shit like this, where it’s framed as “THIS HORRIBLE THING IS NOW HAPPENING TO THIS RICH PERSON AND THEYRE SUFFERING THE CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR ACTIONS” I’m always like
So what?
They’re still billionaires. They’re still incredibly rich. There’s nothing you can actually do to these people with shit like this. We’re far past the “we can just not support their company” or the “we can just not vote for them and ruin their life” stage of this, gang.
- Yup. The time for alternative actions is now.
- I mean, apart from his money giving him a platform to really spread hate and hurt people, it really is pretty sad at an individual level. Dude is mentally unwell, and not just because he's an evil hateful person.
  There's plenty of evil people just as bad and just as loud that are in control of their mental state and understand what they're doing.
  Gutting your house and living in a utility closet is pretty messed up, rich or poor
  
  Wait, what? Did he gut his house and decide to live in a utility closet?
May his future be lit by the bridges he's burned.
- Never heard that before... it's very dark, but good.
"... assumed to be code for heil hitler."
The news really has got to stop with this "assumed to be" bullshit. It's as clear as day that it is code for heil hitler, as HH/88 has been a long fucking time. It's the whole "Elon made what looked to be a nazi salute" thing all over again. No it didn't look like a nazi salute, it was, and this HH is not maybe code for something, it is.
Get some fucking courage and call it like it is.
- “… assumed to be… looks like… could be construed as… according to a source…”are all weasel words and phrases to avoid litigation, to give a little leeway if it got to court.
  Reporting - with a nod and a wink; and a little protection.
  My favourite euphemism for “drunk/drugged and aggressive” celebrities in newspaper stories is “tired and emotional”.
  Sometimes it’s best to say something without actually saying it if you want to stay in business. Granted, it’s not ideal.
- Libel lawsuits can be expensive, and you can bet your ass that without that ambiguity Ye's lawyers would be all over them.
He's really and truly lost it. Was bad before, but this.
- The last outfall was so bad that even Alex Jones had to argue that Hitler wasnt a good guy. I'm just wondering how he was able to get back into the spotlight to repeat this shit. I mean, I have an idea what convinced him now is the time to shine again.
  
  He said he was jealous of Elon and that it should have been him to do the salute
  I don’t think you have to wonder
  
  If he somehow manages to maintain any popularity even now, that'll tell us a lot.
- I mean who knows whats really going on in his head. I think he is trying to be shocking.
  
  I get the whole shock value thing, but this is more like shooting yourself in both feet, on purpose. I mean, he might as well just amputate them at this point. Like, that's some seriously messed up stuff he's doing now, he's gotta know a lot of people are gonna hate him for it. Unless, like I said elsewhere, he manages to still remain popular... and then anyone left who's sane might as well pack up and move to the mountains.
Yeah, I'm sure theyre all just absolutely shocked Kanye doubled down on the Nazi shit yet again.
He still had a TA after the last nonsense? Who is that TA and wtf is wrong with them?
- Money. Money is what was wrong with them.
Let's not forget the first time he got banned from Twitter when he put "the Jews" on "deathcon 5." This guy is broken. I hope he can get some help.
- He subscribes to the black hebrew conspiracy theory so to him, jews aren't the real israelites, they stole it all from the original israelites, who were all black.
  It's completely nuts and the cult has killed people before, including... MLK's mother
Not taking your prescription drugs is a hell of a drug.
- Mental illness doesn't make you a Nazi. Saying Ye is acting like this because he's off his meds is saying that those with diagnosed with bipolar or narcissism are just one step away from being a bigot. That's not true and it only furthers the stigma of those with mental health issues.
  Ye is the one choosing to be racist, that choice is on him alone.
  
  Saying Ye is acting like this because he's off his meds is saying that those with diagnosed with bipolar or narcissism are just one step away from being a bigot.
  Nah, it's just saying that a specific attention-seeking bigot with a personality disorder, which is marginally controlled with meds, is more likely to go on insane attention-seeking tears of bigotry when he goes off those meds.
  
  Exactly. I have autism and an anxiety disorder, and I don't go around seig heiling and doing Nazi shit, and it isn't JUST because the Nazis would have me killed.
  
  It's entirely possible that being off his meds is why he's acting like this...but it's not the reason he's a bigot, just a reason he isn't hiding it.
  I think it's just as likely that he's being loud about it because bigotry is back in fashion, though.
- I'm bipolar and I'm fucking tired of hearing that excuse for him. Even if I'm off my meds I'm not a fucking Nazi
  
  Not sure where I said or implied it was an excuse?
  He's some kind of weird bigot for sure, but he's also got a history of these random unhinged outbursts from time to time that are clearly a result of something more acute/immediate than being a nazi.
- Oh he's not taking any drugs except for nitrous
Give him a one way ticket to birkenau and see if he can feel more at home
Why is this guy still a thing? He dropped relevance in 2009
- I suppose this is exactly why..
  
  Yup, he's craving attention
- He dropped relevance in 2009
  He might be a Nazi asshole now, but he very much is still a thing. He has never released an album that didn't reach the number 1 or 2 position in the Billboard 200 rankings in the US, with same or similar success on ranking charts around the world, and that includes 10 albums released after 2009. The most recent was a collab in August 2024, and the most recent solo album was in 2021. Both were extremely successful and well received.
That guy had a talent agent? Any port in the storm I guess.
- And he'll probably have another one shortly. Plenty of assholes out there who will make money off of him until it becomes untenable... then someone on a lower tier will pick him up

92 comments