i commiserate with him for his mental health struggles, without defending his actions. it’s clear the man desperately needs mental health treatment he’s not getting (at his choice, i’m sure), and he’s ruining his life. i feel sad for the situation, but not the person — if you can disaggregate those, even. in any event, ultimately, all actions have consequences regardless of the cause or intent.

 

It's a great action of separating the artist from the art side of things. Ye definitely has his issues, but you put a bull in the china shop? What do you expect? Just wait until Ye, Musk and Trump just combine forces. Then it's over.

Ye and Musk

The poster formerly known as theAudiophile. Just turned up to 11, like the stereo.
 

Do you think he would have been treated this way if he had said identical things about white people? Why do you think it is that certain groups can be criticized viciously without real backlash while others (and one especially) can't be criticized at all? Does that double standard say anything about which groups have dominant institutional control?

This is a powerful group snuffing out criticism perceived as a threat to their power, nothing more, nothing less.

 
sneed and feed

Do you think he would have been treated this way if he had said identical things about white people? Why do you think it is that certain groups can be criticized viciously without real backlash while others (and one especially) can't be criticized at all? Does that double standard say anything about which groups have dominant institutional control?

This is a powerful group snuffing out criticism perceived as a threat to their power, nothing more, nothing less.

Jews are white.  May be try writing something a little less cryptic.  Let me try to summarize what I think you are getting at:  white people get viciously criticized while Jews do not get criticized at all.  I do not agree that Jews can't be criticized.  No one is immune to criticism.  You do have a point about institutional control.  The reason that Jews have power and influence is their disproportionate amount of wealth in the United States.  With that said, any group could achieve the same level of wealth by excelling at academics and networking.   Why shouldn't Jews use their wealth to their advantage?

 

Personally, I wish we could go back to the old days (funny for me to say this considering how young I am), when musicians were just musicians, athletes were just athletes, actors were just actors, etc. I'm not sure why (maybe social media?) but a lot of these public figures feel the need to comment on issues that they should not be commenting on (at least on their public account) and this wasn't the case 10 years ago. When I was younger you could watch sports, listen to music, etc. that was devoid of politics. I don't know what change, but this new obssession of being divisive (on both sides) isn't helping anybody and has made society worse off. There's a time and place for political debates / discussions, and entertainers talking in a public setting on their public account (or in game/concerts) is not the appropriate place. 

Kanye is really only one example of this. I could name several people who as a kid I used to respect who have gone down the road of politics, and I no longer respect. Entertainment is meant to entertain society regardless of who you are or what your beliefs are. Nothing more, nothing less. 

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IncomingIBDreject

Personally, I wish we could go back to the old days (funny for me to say this considering how young I am), when musicians were just musicians, athletes were just athletes, actors were just actors, etc. I'm not sure why (maybe social media?) but a lot of these public figures feel the need to comment on issues that they should not be commenting on (at least on their public account) and this wasn't the case 10 years ago. When I was younger you could watch sports, listen to music, etc. that was devoid of politics. 

I mean, I understand what you're trying to say, but this last bit is pretty laughable.  Some of the best music ever made is overtly political, and has been for decades.  Just went on Rolling Stone's 500 Best Songs of All Time - and a huge number of them are targeted at some perceived injustice or another, whether that's "What's Going On" or "Imagine" (not defending the list, merely naming some songs at the top of it).  Anyone who has read about the lead up to WWII knows about how heavily politicized the 1936 Olympic Games were.  Brando refused to accept an Oscar for The Godfather as a political protest against the treatment of Native Americans, in the film industry and in general.  Those are just off the top of my head.

So yeah, it would be great if actors and athletes could make the intelligent decision to keep their political opinions confined to their dinner parties and the voting booth, but the only real difference is that (a) social media has given everyone a megaphone with which to broadcast their opinions, and (b) the media's fascination with reporting on tweets or instagram posts as if they were actual news items and not just the masturbatory indulgence of people who, as you say, have confused being in really good shape with being an expert on anything else.

 

Just went on Rolling Stone's 500 Best Songs of All Time - and a huge number of them are targeted at some perceived injustice or another, whether that's "What's Going On" or "Imagine" (not defending the list, merely naming some songs at the top of it).

I'm not sure how well this argument holds because the Rolling Stones produced music that was part of a movement that was striving for ideals, and while these ideals were part of political movements, they in and of themselves were not political.

Let's look at the lyrics of "Imagine".

Imagine there's no heaven It's easy if you try No hell below us Above us, only sky

Imagine all the people Livin' for today Ah

Imagine there's no countries It isn't hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion, too

Imagine all the people Livin' life in peace You

You may say I'm a dreamer But I'm not the only one I hope someday you'll join us And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions I wonder if you can No need for greed or hunger A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people Sharing all the world You

You may say I'm a dreamer But I'm not the only one I hope someday you'll join us And the world will live as one

I don't see this song expressedly saying not to fight in Vietnam, or that LBJ is a fraud, or anything of the sort. Sure, you could argue that the song implies that, but I think it becomes a bit of a stretch. I wouldn't really consider singing about peace and love to be political at all. It's a song that serves as a backdrop to the listener, and as the saying goes "if the shoe fits wear it!".

There really is no comparison to a song like this, and today where we see very explicit political endorsements, or positions expressed on very specific topics, such as Kanye advocating people not to get vaccines or as teddythebear pointed out, Lebron commenting on a very specific case.  

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You just happened to grow up during a relatively peaceful time (the post-Cold War era of "The End of History"), there was plenty of musicians, athletes, actors, etc. who were outspoken about the political issues of their time. Casablanca was seen as a propaganda film to get American's invested in fighting the Nazis, Woody Guthrie's guitar famously has "this machine kills fascists", Bob Dylan got his start singing protest songs, all the singers/actors protesting Vietnam (and those on the other side, like John Wayne), the punk movement of the 80s was incredibly political, etc. etc. 

That's also to say nothing of the celebrities who spoke up about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which did happen within your lifetime. 

 
jarstar1

That's also to say nothing of the celebrities who spoke up about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which did happen within your lifetime. 

Every critic of "cancel culture" seems to forget that one of the first modern examples of it was conservatives "cancelling" the Dixie Chicks for their anti-war stance in the mid-aughts.

American Idiot by Green Day, Let's Impeach the President by Neil Young, Sweet Neo Con by the Rolling Stones, New Killer Star by David Bowie... that's just a short list of ones I know from well known artists.  Even more or less apolitical musicians like Bowie occasionally produce content with an explicit political motif.

 

Agree with this so much. Kind of like when Lebron posted a picture of an officer who actually saved a young black girl by shooting the other black girl that was about to stab her. Lebron posted the officer's picture and said something like "your next". I'm all for celebrity/athlete activism if it brings real issues to light. But when they just start posting nonsense, they need to understand that lots of young kids look up to them.

Array
 

I read that Yeezy and its direct products and/or supplements account for a liquid 8% of the entirety of Adidas' net revenue. That's fucking insane. I have a pair of Yeezys myself, the cloud white ones that my wife got me a couple of years ago. I'll admit, they're comfy as hell, but they look mediocre - I have multiple shoes that cost $350+, and they did not stack up to the "$350+ quality" that I'd hope from 'em. I guess with the 'hypebeast' trend still breaking weight plus the general 'buzz' of Kanye stuff just make them a hot topic. 

So, without this, does Kanye lose 'billionaire' status? I only ask this due to the number of other brands that have dropped him recently may seem like small holes in the bucket, but they were considered 'small' only because he always had Adidas as his main scoop to back him up. I'm not sure what the revenue share is, but if Yeezy alone accounts for 8% of Adidas, where did that put Kanye pre-rift? I saw a lot of reports say $2-3b, but quick math tells me that 8% of $30b (Adidas unleveraged valuation) is $2.4b alone, not to mention all the other ventures he's involved in. Definitely interesting. 

I wish the man gets the help - I've said before, he and Lil Wayne were my childhood and he is still one of my favorite artists of all time. Pretty clear that he needs some rapid treatment, even as much as I won't attempt to defend any of the shit he's spewed over the past month. Still gonna bump Graduation in my stereo, though

 
Memberberries

I'll never understand this un-ending, unbroken chain of anti-Semitism going back 2,500+ years other than it's truly inspired by the demonic. 

Interesting take.  I think there is a distinct difference between the anti-Semitism of the pre-Christian era and that which came afterwards.  A lot of the ire directed at Jews in the Classical Era was founded in some legitimate political grievances which were only partially connected with Judaism.

 

Modern grievances are rooted entirely in factual power dynamics and clear patterns of behavior. Classical grievances were just typical imperialist conqueror nonsense, with the Jews being no different than any other "tribe" that the Romans subjugated. Modern grievances are much more sensible than the classical ones. Of course a group wouldn't want to be conqured. Of course once conquered, they would agitate for self rule. That's why Zionism is easily the most morally justifiable expression of Jewish power in the modern period. Centuries of diaspora and then you get a chance at a land all your own? You take it and you run with it.

Attacking the host population that opened their doors to you after the most brutal and horrific genocide in history? Somewhat less justified.

 
Most Helpful

Obviously this doesn't relate to most of the history of antisemitism, but the relationship between Jews and Black people in America has been very complicated over the years. Yes, there were slave traders/owners who were Jewish but nothing really disproportionate to their wealth (a good indicator of if someone was a slaveowner at the time), the really complicated part of the relationship starts after Abolition. In the south there were a decent amount of Jews, but they weren't allowed to own land ("allowed" is a loose word here, it mostly refers to people refusing to sell land to Jews, loan money to buy land, etc.) so a lot of them became store owners, and since they were some of the only stores open on Sunday (since we would close up shop on our sabbath, Saturday) and Black people were only able to shop on Sunday, they were too busy working the rest of the week sharecropping, they would go to the Jewish-owned stores. They were also the only stores that would typically extend credit to Black people, so this opened up an interesting dynamic, they were the ones who sold them goods they couldn't have gotten at the non-Jewish stores, but that also meant it was a Jew who was chasing them for payment. This dynamic played out throughout America once the Great Migration took hold and the Black urban population skyrocketed. Malcolm X famously tried getting Black people to spend their money at Black-owned business to keep the money in their community and saw Jews as leeching off of them, not realizing (or potentially intentionally ignoring) the fact that a) Jews often had no other choice since people wouldn't associate with Jews much before the 1940s and b) the Black population wouldn't have been serviced otherwise. 

But the connections run deeper than just economics, the famous Green Book that helped Black people navigate areas that would be safe for them or establishments that would serve them was based on an earlier book that Jews used for similar purposes. Jews were often redlined in just the same ways as Blacks were so they couldn't move to the suburbs (though a lot did ultimately participate in the White Flight, it just happened a few decades after the suburbs started) and they lived in the same urban neighborhoods, often as landlords. One of the co-founders of the NAACP was Jewish (Henry Moskowitz), Jews were very involved in the Civil Rights movement in the middle of the 20th century, one of the co-owners of Sears Roebuck (Julius Rosenwald) started the Rosenwald fund which donated millions of dollars to create Black schools throughout the South, and many other stories like these. The famous Billie Holiday song "Strange Fruit" about a lynching was written by a Jewish man (and later covered by Nina Simone, which was then sampled by Kanye West on his album Yeezus, interestingly enough). 

And then you get into modern issues between the communities, where groups like the Nation of Islam and people like Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan have publicly made antisemetic statements and hold antisemetic views. The big one that has taken hold apparently on Kanye is the Black Israelite movement, which states that white Jews are imposters and that Black people are the actual descendants of the people of Israel and therefore the "true" Jews. Not only is this incredibly ahistorical, it completely ignores the existence of non-white Jews (all the non-European Jews of North Africa and the Middle East, India, and Ethiopia). Kanye has referenced this ideology in his latest tweets, posts, and conversations on podcasts and TV programs, albeit in a bit of an oblique way because he cannot seem to say anything straight. Kendrick Lamar has also spoken about this extensively on his album Damn, though it seems less that he identifies with it and more that he has family who do and he's "keeping an open mind", while not as offensive is still pretty insulting to Jews (it would be like a white person saying they're not racist but they have an uncle who is in the KKK and thinks they have some good ideas). On top of this, Kanye is layering on typical antisemetic conspiracy theories and the usual attacks (we control the media, we control banking, we control xyz).

I don't really have a point in all of this, other than it's a complicated history (and that's without even touching Israel and Zionism and how the Black community has reacted to that, which I won't go near with a 10 foot pole on this (or any, tbh) website). And it's really a bummer, I love Kanye, I think he's the most important and greatest artist of the 21st century so far. He completely revolutionized the hip hop industry, multiple times, and has put out some of the best music and production we've ever seen over the last 20 years. As a bit of a data point, his albums have topped the Pazz and Jop awards 4 times, a feat only matched by Bob fucking Dylan (another Jew, and one of the best artists of the 20th century). I am not going to stop listening to his music, but I'm also not going to see him in the same light as I once did. 

 

Interesting background. Thanks for this.

This kind of gets back to my original thinking--everyone seems to have some loose, bizarre justification to hate the Jews. The Jews lost us the Great War, the Jews are usurpers who aren't even really true Jews, Jews killed Jesus, Jews control [insert conspiracy].

For example, I've genuinely tried to understand the Nazi origin for the intense, insane, diabolical, endless, deep hatred for the Jewish people--a hatred so deep that the most civilized nation on planet Earth at the time lost its mind and committed (at least arguably) the worst genocide in human history--and there is just no there there, so to speak. Just baseless conspiracy theories that, even if true, wouldn't normally inspire people to take Jewish children by the feet and bash their heads into stone walls.

How do deranged conspiracy theories turn into some of the worst mass murders in history? As a conservative Christian, my perspective is that it's demonic in origin. This is from chosenpeople.org: "When God called Abram out of Ur of the Chaldees and promised that his seed would become a great nation, possess the land of Israel and that God would use the nation of Israel to bless the world, the Jewish people became public enemy number one in the kingdom of Satan." Israel seems to be the fulcrum in Biblical eschatology, where demonic forces will seek to exterminate the Jewish people once and for all at the battle of Armageddon (or a series of extermination attempts). Speaking purely for myself (though many people have also put forth this idea), the holocaust seems to have been an attempt by the demonic to destroy the Jewish people and stop God's plans for the end times. If that's the case, the plan, quite ironically, led to the creation of Israel, a fulfillment of Biblical prophesy, and a huge leap toward the end times.

As to Kanye West, his anti-Semitism--to me--appears to be just another in a long series of deranged conspiracy theories inspiring anti-Semitism. Martin Luther (of the Protestant Reformation) is one of my great heroes, yet he was a fire-breathing anti-Semite. In a similar way one has to separate the art from the artist with Kanye West, I have to separate the amazing courage of Martin Luther from his wicked hatred for the Jews. May God forgive Luther for his ignorance. 

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Saying this as someone who has been on Birthright but doesn't personally identify as Jewish, it bothers me that a black man can mention this particular group in an unsavory way and suddenly have most of his business relationships destroyed but if he'd just swapped out that group with "white", "asian", "men", etc. he'd have been totally fine... 

It doesn't really help combat conspiracy theorists who say Jews control the media and banking if after any person of prominence says the same thing they are immediately attacked by the media on all sides and kicked off of banking services... I'm dating a black chick right now and these latest hits from JP Morgan and Adidas have basically convinced her and her friends that Ye's right.

Edit: This might come as a surprise, but go ahead and listen to Louis Farrakhan or rappers all throughout the 80s and 90s - Black culture on both the right and left have featured antisemitism in some form or fashion for a long time. Not saying that's good/acceptable, just that it's stupid to act as though Kanye is crossing some unspoken line that only just became unpopular.

Here's a good take. 


 
"The obedient always think of themselves as virtuous rather than cowardly" - Robert A. Wilson | "If you don't have any enemies in life you have never stood up for anything" - Winston Churchill | "It's a testament to the sheer belligerence of the profession that people would rather argue about the 'risk-adjusted returns' of using inferior tooth cleaning methods." - kellycriterion
 

PrivateTechquity 🚀GME+BBBY🚀

Saying this as someone who has been on Birthright but doesn't personally identify as Jewish, it bothers me that a black man can mention this particular group in an unsavory way and suddenly have most of his business relationships destroyed but if he'd just swapped out that group with "white", "asian", "men", etc. he'd have been totally fine... 

It doesn't really help combat conspiracy theorists who say Jews control the media and banking if after any person of prominence says the same thing they are immediately attacked by the media on all sides and kicked off of banking services... I'm dating a black chick right now and these latest hits from JP Morgan and Adidas have basically convinced her and her friends that Ye's right. 

Leftists control the media and large banking institutions. They aren't after Kanye because of his anti-Semitism (which I utterly deplore)--they are after him because he's expressed non-left views and anti-Semitism is their convenient (though, for once, entirely justifiable) pretext for "cancelling" him. I have little doubt that the Kanye of 2005 making the exact same anti-Semitic comments would very much get a free pass by these organizations. 

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This is such a boomer-tier take that you probably now qualify for early retirement lol. No, Kanye is being cancelled because he's attacking the one group that essentially can't be criticized by anyone without being destroyed. Obviously worth noting that Kanye is a black man - a group that generally gets very wide leeway in public statements for progressive stack reasons. If instead you cut and paste "white" into Kanye's statements ("white media", "old white men in entertainment exploiting black people"), he wouldn't have faced any meaningful pushback.

In fact, you would almost certainly be reading articles in the New York Times, Washington Post etc. applauding Kanye for calling out "white supremacy" written by white people with curiously Polish/German sounding last names.

 

There is no conspiracy involved. It's not a conspiracy to point out that certain institutions are dominated by people of a certain background - we hear that daily, it's usually just "white people" instead (or sometimes "WASP elite", which is either intentionally deceptive or said by someone who forgot it's not the 50s). Here's what's going on:

  • People of Jewish descent (largely secular) do dominate the upper ranks of most news media organizations, Hollywood production companies, and financial institutions
  • These individuals are extremely sensitivie to criticism of Jewish people for very obvious historical reasons (really, even just pointing out that these institutions are dominated by people of Jewish descent is treated as an attack). Even the most trivial of criticism is taken as a small step on a path to another genocide or pogrom. Again, I get why.
  • Kanye has a mass audience, went wayyy farther than anyone I can recall in recent memory, and has basically tripled down. 
  • Combine those factors and the Jewish community (already hypersensitive to any criticism) goes into overdrive. 
  • Jewish people in positions of power with the ability to act drop the hammer in an exceptionally blunt way

It's just people with the power to act reacting to the incentives they've been given. That said - I agree that it's probably not a great response and will convince many people that he was basically correct. "Shut it down" works until it doesn't, creating a very fragile situation. People are like two Elon Musk era frog twitter infographics away from noticing the composition of billionaires, news media organizations, Hollywood etc. And if their first and only exposure to those fact patterns (because they are facts) is from HitlerLover95 on the internet, then they're just going to be anti-semitic. 

I've always thought that Jewish community outreach to ward off anti-semitism should be less focused on destroying people who point out that they're overrepresented in X, Y, Z bad thing, and instead pointing out all of the positive contributions. For every Soros or Sackler or Adelson doing sketchy nonsense there are 1000 Jewish people making incredibly meaningful contributions in physics, medicine, technology, philanthropy, etc. There's a ton of stuff to point out that would help contextualize things for people. 

Maybe the ADL can hire me as an outside consultant

 

The reason why the groups "white", "asian", and "men" don't have the same stigma is because they haven't been murdered and attacked over the last two thousand years for that characteristic. Even excluding the obvious one, this type of rhetoric has led to Jews being killed in the Russian progroms, Italian blood libels, the Spanish Inquisition, and many more smaller attacks. The Crusades wiped out half of the world's population of Jews; there have never been these types of attacks on white people, Asians, or men as a categorical group. 

 

So your argument is that Jews can't ever be criticized because they were mistreated in the past? So we're in a situation where the single most disproportionately powerful group in the world is also alone in being completely protected from any criticism at all, or even from pointing out their fortunate position? You're of course right that their hypersensitivity is due to their past run-ins with angry majority populations, so it's fairly natural and understandable behavior. But do you not see why the group with a ton of weight to throw around setting the standard that "criticizing white people great, criticizing my people unacceptable" might piss off a ton of people? Why should other groups just sit back and accept being treated differently? That's not a stable social equilibrium - it won't last because people will not accept it long-term.

This is the sort of stuff that fuels the cycle of antisemitism. You mentioned a few,  but there are literally several dozen more instances throughout history. My point is that if the same strategy failed 100+ times, maybe try something different instead?

 
jarstar1

The reason why the groups "white", "asian", and "men" don't have the same stigma is because they haven't been murdered and attacked over the last two thousand years for that characteristic. Even excluding the obvious one, this type of rhetoric has led to Jews being killed in the Russian progroms, Italian blood libels, the Spanish Inquisition, and many more smaller attacks. The Crusades wiped out half of the world's population of Jews; there have never been these types of attacks on white people, Asians, or men as a categorical group. 

Man when are we going to stop categorizing “Asians” as a privileged group? Asians have been treated like dogwater by whites for centuries. There is still plenty of discrimination to go around (not even to mention a spike…see the hate crimes rampant over the past two years in western countries).
 

And when people like you do talk about the ones who supposedly have privilege (high-income, well-educated, English-speaking, light skinned), you’re talking about a maybe 10% of the entire population. How is it OK to bash Asians like this monolith group when so much of the continent has been brutalized by white colonialism over the past few centuries? Many Jews in the west at least get to be white-passing. Asians do not.

 

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