'Sickened': Israel envoy, RJC, ADL condemn Kanye West interview praising Hitler

'I am sickened by the conversation that Alex Jones had with avowed antisemites Kanye West and Nick Fuentes...It is alarming that such vile rhetoric is given a platform and legitimized," Israel envoy

While journalists awaited a joint press conference from US President Joe Biden and visiting French President Emmanuel Macron at the White House this afternoon in which the two leaders largely re-affirmed US-French alignment on key global security issues from the war in Ukraine, to Iran, and the Indo-Pacific, an alarming spectacle was unfolding in a separate streaming interview that evinced the growing normalization and reach of virulent anti-Semitism and far-right extremism by Donald Trump and his US political allies.

The rapper Kanye West, accompanied by his Holocaust-denying, white supremacist sidekick Nick Fuentes, told far right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones over the course of a three-hour interview that he liked Hitler and the Nazis, and falsely asserted that six million Jews had not been killed in the Holocaust.

“I see good things about Hitler,” West said on Jones’ InfoWars show. “Every human being has value…especially Hitler.”

“We’ve got to stop dissing the Nazis all the time,” West, who now goes by Ye, said.

Trump had hosted West and Fuentes at a dinner at his Mar-a-Lago golf club last week, later saying that he appreciated the nice things West had said about him on the Tucker Carlson show, and claiming not to be aware of who Fuentes was (one of the organizers of the white supremacist unite the right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017).

West’s latest comments on the Jones’ show today, however, elicited widespread condemnations, including from the Israeli ambassador, Republican Jewish Coalition, and Anti-Defamation League, and stark warnings that giving a platform to such views could incite violence.

Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Herzog said he was “sickened” by the conversation that Jones had with “avowed antisemites Kanye West and Nick Fuentes,” and deplored that, “at a time when antisemitism is on the rise, such vile rhetoric is given a platform and legitimized.”

“They engaged in hateful incitement, which could lead to violence and the death of Jews in horrifying incidents,” Herzog wrote on Twitter.

West’s repeated praise of Hitler and the Nazis on the Alex Jones’ show today was sufficiently shocking that the House Judiciary GOP Twitter handle deleted a tweet from October in which it had said: “Kanye. Elon. Trump,” as first noted by writer Matt Fulton, and seemingly captured by another Twitter user in real time.  

The Republican Jewish Coalition also condemned the InfoWars interview, calling Jones, Fuentes and West “a disgusting triumvirate of conspiracy theorists, Holocaust deniers, and anti-Semites” and “messengers of hate” who should be relegated “to the dustbin of history,” the RJC said in a statement.

“Given his praise of Hitler, it can’t be overstated that Kanye West is a vile, repellent bigot who has targeted the Jewish community with threats and Nazi-style defamation,” the RJC statement continued. “Conservatives who have mistakenly indulged Kanye West must make it clear that he is a pariah. Enough is enough.”

The RJC statement, however, did not mention that Trump himself had hosted those it called “messengers of hate” at dinner at Mar-a-Lago last week.

The Anti-Defamation League also condemned the interview. “Saying you ‘like Hitler,’ ‘love the Nazis,’ and spending all your time with a white supremacist makes one thing clear: Ye is a vicious anti-Semite,” the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt wrote on Twitter. “His comments today on InfoWars are not just vile and offensive: they put Jews in danger.”

The Israeli ambassador indirectly seemed to rebuke new Twitter owner Elon Musk who recently restored Kanye West’s Twitter account, which was suspended in October after West tweeted a threat of violence against Jewish people to his over 32 million followers.

“Free speech does not extend to incitement of violence and demonization of the Jewish community, which faces the highest levels of religious-based violence in the United States,” Herzog tweeted.

Musk, for his part, today affected to be entirely unbothered by West’s praise of Nazis and Holocaust denial, and showed no inclination to reconsider his decision to restore West’s use of Twitter to communicate his anti-Semitic views to his millions of followers.

Replying to a tweet from West’s account praising him and Jesus, Musk wrote that he now saw the “profound wisdom” in forgiveness and “turning the other cheek.”

Update: Later Thursday night, Kanye West tweeted an image of a swastika inside a star of David, saying he loves everyone, e.g. Nazis and Jewish people. Twitter owner Elon Musk subsequently said he suspended West’s Twitter account, but did not indicate for how long.

Before his account was suspended, West posted screen pics of private communications to him from Musk telling him that West had gone too far.

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