In an expanding new podcast interview with MIT research scientist Lex Fridman, Kanye West made a series of provocative and false statements about the Holocaust, abortion and the Jewish people.
West, now performing as Ye, is in an anti-Semitic tear through the right-wing media and podcast circuit, and his hate speech in recent weeks has led him to sign deals with talent agency CAA and fashion brand Balenciaga. Sportswear giant Adidas is under scrutiny. Kim Kardashian denounced her ex-husband’s antisemitic remarks on social media on Monday after a hate group referencing Western tirades staged a local demonstration on Sunday.
In a two-hour, 26-minute interview aired Monday that touched on topics ranging from engineering to the media to her relationship with Kardashian and her ex-boyfriend Pete Davidson, West appeared in a cheerful, though erratic, mood. She told me that the night before she had dinner at the Cheesecake Factory and was sitting next to a veteran with whom she was discussing politics.
But West never apologized to his Soviet Union-born Jewish host, Fridman, for his last words.
West echoed his statement in a previous interview, “We’re still in the Holocaust. A Jewish friend of mine said, ‘Go visit the Holocaust Museum,’ and my response was Let’s visit our Holocaust Museum: Planned Parenthood.”
He continued: “Fifty percent of today’s… Black people’s deaths today are abortions… That’s not racism, that’s a very broad term. It’s genocide and population control of Black people in America today. Black music and media make Jewish record companies money.” taking.”
Fridman, opposing West’s antisemitic allegations against Jewish-run media, said, “I grew up in the Soviet Union. I’m Jewish, part of my family perished in the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, I have to push it back… Say ‘Jewish media’, There’s an echo of a pain people feel.”
“You’re saying it’s unnecessary, right?” West said with a smile. said. “If the Jews accepted that I am a Jew, they would hear it differently.”
“The truth is not to say that the media is under Jewish control,” Fridman added.
“Still that’s wrong!” Ye shouted back. “That’s a lie. There is. And did they come and bully me and prove it?”
Later, West admitted that his far-right beliefs cost him his family and career. “I lost my family. I lost my kids. I lost my best friend in fashion. I lost the black community,” she said. “People said I lost my mind… I lost my reputation. And I’m here, I just want my family. But I don’t want my family to say what the left wants to say. I have to say what China wants to say. I have to say what China wants to say. Being an American and protecting my children and protecting my wife and raising my children as Christians and I want my wife to be a Christian too.”
West also spoke condescendingly about his ex-wife’s parents, commenting, “Some people have a high DNA. Ivanka Trump has a high DNA.” West later said that George Soros, a Jewish philanthropist and activist, would “use Black trauma economics to win the election.”
At one point, West suggests that a Jewish conspiracy led to him being diagnosed with mental illness. “There was a Jewish instructor who took me to the hospital. [the] Press that I’m going to the hospital. A Jewish doctor who diagnosed me…”
“Why do you keep saying Jewish?” Fridman intervened. “Because they were,” West said. He continued: “He diagnosed me with bipolar disorder and hit me with drugs. Then he put it in the press.”
West accused Ari Emanuel, CEO of William Morris Endeavour, of “trying to get food out of my children’s mouths” by writing a column in the Financial Times calling for companies to cut ties with the rapper.
When asked what he hopes his legacy will be towards the end of the interview, West replied, “Who designed the sidewalk, who designed the fountain, who designed the stop sign, who designed the traffic light? These are so common that whoever designed them is forgotten.”
He said what he wanted for himself was to be “forgotten”.
This story was originally published in the Los Angeles Times.