Kanye West's Blood Libel

The rapper is antisemitic. He also accused Black women of committing genocide against their own children.

Image via Wiki Commons.

Kanye West has been in the headlines this month for spewing some truly outrageous antisemitic garbage, not long after donning a “White Lives Matter” t-shirt. He tweeted that he was going to go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE” and that Jews “have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda.” This idea — that Jews control the media, banks, entertainment, etc, and can ruin the life of anyone who opposes them — is an old antisemitic trope. And it’s also an unfortunately difficult one to fight, because when right-thinking people condemn it, that in and of itself confirms the paranoia of the antisemite. Kanye’s comments were so disgusting that Twitter and Instagram booted him; while most of us would call this “consequences,” he no doubt sees it as confirmation that he was right and is being blackballed by some all-powerful Jewish cabal. As a result, he’s reportedly decided to buy the right-wing social media site Parler, where antisemitism goes largely unchecked.

Democrats and liberals renounced him. Donald Trump called him up for a friendly chat. I wrote about the Republican embrace of West for CNN last week, and that column is here if you missed it.

But while West’s antisemitic comments (rightly) grabbed headlines, he’s engaged in another kind of dangerous, conspiratorial, racist libel that social media companies, mainstream media outlets, and the general public have largely ignored, perhaps because it’s also a standard right-wing anti-abortion talking point: That Black women are engaging in genocide.