Ye and Alex Jones on Infowars.
“I see good things about Hitler,” rapper Ye said casually during a conversation on Alex Jones’ Infowars on Thursday.
Ye, formerly Kanye West, dressed in a hooded jacket and wearing what appeared to be an executioner’s hood covering his face, went on Infowars alongside white nationalist livestreamer Nick Fuentes—with whom he’s recently formed an alliance around their shared antisemitic views.
From rants about the “Jewish Mafia,” to outright saying that he “likes Hitler,” Ye engaged in unbridled antisemitism in the hours-long conversation he had with Jones—at times doing a bizarre impression of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a high-pitched voice.
“They did good things too—we gotta stop dissing the Nazis all the time,” Ye said to Jones.
“I love Jewish people but I also love Nazis,” he added later.
Ye is in the middle of a months-long downward spiral seemingly triggered in early October, when he debuted his new Yeezy collection at Paris Fashion Week featuring shirts emblazoned with the slogan “White Lives Matter.” He refused to apologize, and instead shared a cryptic antisemitic statement on Twitter, which resulted in his account being suspended.
Since then, individuals have come forward detailing Ye’s history of making antisemitic comments, as well as allegations of abuse and harassment at Adidas. As Ye doubled down and refused to apologize, banks, retailers of his Yeezy line, top entertainment agencies, and eventually Adidas, cut ties with the once-critically beloved rapper. New reporting also shows serious allegations about Ye’s behavior to employees at Yeezy.
With his net worth plummeting and growing numbers of celebrities disavowing him, Ye announced he was running for president in 2024. To staff his “campaign” West reached deep into the sewers of the far-right figures and pulled out notorious troll Milo Yianoppoulos to be his campaign manager, and tapped Fuentes as an advisor.
As went on more fringe far-right figures are attaching themselves to Ye as his reputation implodes. And his celebrity status is helping to catapult them into national headlines and gain them access to powerful figures—including former president Donald Trump, who Ye and Fuentes dined with last week.
But Ye’s appearance with Jones—who now owes tens of millions of dollars to the families of the children killed in the Sandy Hook massacre due to his conspiracy theories—may be his lowest point yet.
To put it lightly, the show was an erratic mess. In addition to Ye’s prop comedy involving a small fishing net and a bottle of Yoo-hoo chocolate milk, he also took a call from far-right troll Laura Loomer. (“How does she have your number?” Jones asked in confusion.) Ye also claimed he was a vessel for God, led the room in long prayers he wrote, and read out antisemitic jokes about conservative commentator Ben Shapiro.
“No one in their high school knew what antisemitism was until Ye made it popular,” Ye proudly declared at one point.
Jared Holt, senior research manager at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told VICE News that “Kanye’s antisemitism is not a new development, but he appears to be speed-running his trajectory down a ‘red pill’ rabbit hole as of late.”
“As such, he has welcomed despicable hatemongers into his doomed presidential campaign, who are leveraging his star power to put antisemitism in front of audiences much larger than any of them could reach on their own,” Holt said. “At some point, this becomes a numbers game where there is a risk that some of his loyal fans will agree with some of his hate against Jews. I worry about the ramifications of that in the future.”
At times Jones—who regularly platforms antisemitic views through dog whistles like “globalists”—seemed uncomfortable with Ye’s full-throated embrace of Hitler and Nazis.
Jones lightly pushed back at times on Ye, saying he’s “not into the Jewish stuff,” but made zero effort to shut down the rapper’s tirades.
“You’ve got a little bit of a Hitler fetish going on,” Jones said at one point.
“It’s not a fetish! I just love information,” Ye responded.
At one time, Jones appeared suspicious that he was in the company of a Ye imposter, openly questioning “is this really Ye?” and demanding he remove his hood (to no success) to show his face.
But Jones also didn’t seem to be having a terrible time, declaring in the second hour of the show, “this is lit!”
Meanwhile, the worst corners of the internet celebrated his appearance. Multiple neo-Nazi Telegram pages spammed clips of the interview to their followers and lauded Ye for “challenging the narrative” on Jewish people. One even wondered if the rapper was going to push Fuentes, a notorious antisemite, to “finally” accept overt neo-Nazism.
“I have to give Ye credit for his performance in this interview,” one wrote. “Alex Jones is completely flummoxed that Ye is not cooperating with the usual alt-light script on the Nazis and Hitler.”
