Topline
New allegations about Kanye West’s history of anti-Semitic remarks have surfaced amid a cascade of the rapper’s recent statements about Jews, with a former TMZ staffer claiming West said he loved Hitler and the Jews. Nazis in 2018 during a visit to the press society studio.
Kanye West (aka “Ye”) wears a Balenciaga boxing mouth guard during Paris Fashion Week … [+]
Highlights
Van Lathan Jr. — who confronted Kanye West during his infamous 2018 rant at TMZ’s office when West said 400 years of slavery “feels like a choice” — alleged on his podcast, Higher Learning, on Tuesday that West also said he loved Hitler and the Nazis, but those remarks were deleted.
Lathan, who previously worked for TMZ, said he was not surprised by West’s anti-Semitic posts on Instagram and Twitter over the weekend, as he knew of West’s alleged beliefs from their interaction with TMZ.
Lathan said West “said something like, ‘I love Hitler, I love Nazis’, something along those lines. And they took him out of the interview for some reason — it wasn’t my decision,” after some sort of conversation with West.
Lathan claimed that one of the producers in the TMZ offices stood up and confronted West, as Lathan did, and said, “I’m Jewish and it’s offensive to me what you just said. say.”
Lathan also claimed that TMZ videos showing his confrontation with West were edited out; producers reportedly removed Lathan’s mention of people dying “because of Nazism and Hitler” because “it wouldn’t have made sense if they hadn’t kept Kanye saying he loved Hitler and Nazis “.
West references Jewish people and the Holocaust in his conversation with TMZ, equating the association of the Holocaust with Jews to the association of slavery with black people, and saying that “prison is something” which unites “blacks and whites into one race”.
Forbes has reached out to TMZ and West for comment.
Tangent
Late Tuesday, talk show The shop said he would not air a recently taped episode with West, who allegedly used it “to reiterate more extremely dangerous hate speech and stereotyping.”
Key Context
West, who wore a “White Lives Matter” shirt at his Yeezy fashion show last week, had his Instagram account restricted when he posted a screenshot of a conversation with Sean “Diddy” Combs, in which he accused Combs of being controlled by the Jewish people. On Twitter, he said he was going to do “Death Con 3 against the Jewish people”. He gave an interview to Tucker Carlson on Fox News on Thursday, and Vice’s Motherboard reported Tuesday that several claims made by West have been changed. Clips obtained by the site showed West saying that Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger worked with the KKK to ‘control the Jewish population,’ and demanded that other anti-Semitic remarks he made be cut before they aired .
Further reading
Kanye West’s social media restrictions: Here’s where you still post after the lockdown for anti-Semitic posts (Forbes)
Kanye West made troubling claims in unaired interview footage (Forbes)
Twitter locks Kanye West’s account after post about Jews (Forbes)
Musk welcomes Kanye West back to Twitter after he was blocked by Instagram for an apparent anti-Semitic post (Forbes)
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