HATE WATCH | MARCH 27, 2025

Ye Equals Hate

Kanye West, or Ye, or “the person formerly known as Kanye West” has apparently decided that the way to even greater fame, higher fortune and some sort of spiritual perfection is to advertise hate in the most grotesque manner possible.

Following the Super Bowl, he marketed a T-shirt with a swastika on it. Of course he did: He is a “cutting-edge” fashion designer in addition to being a rapper and record producer, after all.

But according to Ye, despite his brilliance, he’d considered this revolutionary new product for eight years.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) counted at least 30 instances of vandalism and harassment after the 2022 tirade.

It’s difficult to imagine how it can take eight years to figure out how to slap a plain black swastika onto a cheap plain white T-shirt, put a $20 price tag on it, and proclaim its sordid existence to the world. But the thinking of such a great talent as Kanye/Ye is unfathomable to mere mortals, so I really can’t say. Ye can’t either. He’s inscrutable. He’s also loud.

So inscrutable and yet loud that he proudly puts hate messages on X (Twitter), then takes them off, then cancels his account, then reinstates his account, tweets more hate, then apologizes, then takes the apology down, and then the account disappears again. (“Deactivated,” it says.)

You have to admire a man like that. (I’m doing an experiment here to see if sarcasm can actually physically drip from a page.)

There’s more: These hate messages are viciously attacking Jews. He’s been doing it for years—as I said, he’s proud of it. But it has repercussions: Others latch on. In parallel with a Kanye West/Ye hate tirade in 2022, an antisemitic group sent a tour around to college campuses promoting “Ye is right about Jews, change my mind,” along with a hashtag to spread the hate further.

And spread it does. It spreads to other antisemitic groups, to white supremacist groups, and, from there, into every nook and creepy violent cranny that the internet can get into. And here’s where the sarcasm stops.

People get hurt. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) counted at least 30 instances of vandalism and harassment after the 2022 tirade. In 2025, the fallout has the potential to get much, much worse, because hate speech on social media has been on a steady increase for several years and shows no sign of abating. And, as we know, it’s a small jump from the internet to the real world, where people suffer real harm.

And Ye/Kanye? Oh, he’s cool. For him, it’s just expansion of his brand. A marketing exercise.

So let’s help him along with that, with a new hashtag: #YeEqualsHate.

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