“I see good things in Hitler. » Then : “I love Jews, but I also love Nazis. » Saying those words in a hilarious new three-hour interview, American rapper Kanye West – now nicknamed Ye – managed to make his host, Alex Jones, just slightly uncomfortable.
The latter, an influential figure in the conspiracy world and the far right, received the rapper on Thursday 1is December, on his show “Infowars,” with white supremacist Nick Fuentes. The pair had made headlines a week earlier when Donald Trump hosted dinner at his Florida residence in Mar-a-Lago. An appointment that caused a stir within the Republican Party.
Alex Jones himself was at the heart of legal news in October and November. He was convicted twice – for a total amount of 1.4 billion dollars (1.3 billion euros) – to pay compensation to the families of the victims of the massacre which occurred in the school of Sandy Hook (Connecticut), in 2012. He had claimed it was a hoax. On Friday, he declared himself in personal bankruptcy before the courts so as not to have to pay a single penny. But these annoyances did not encourage him to keep a low profile.
By receiving Ye, the host knew and hoped for the echo that the rapper’s anti-Semitic drift – evident for months – would arouse. “You are not Hitler. You are not a Nazi. You don’t deserve to be called that and demonized.”, he tried. The rapper, who was fully masked with a robber’s balaclava, did not grab the friendly hand. “Every human being has something of value to contribute, especially Hitler. » Meanwhile, in the studio, Nick Fuentes was smiling.
Freedom from Online Hate
This hateful one-upmanship continued on Thursday evening, when Ye tweeted an image of a swastika embedded in a Star of David. The new boss of the social network, Elon Musk, much appreciated in the MAGA world (“Make America Great Again”, Donald Trump’s slogan) as a fearless defender of freedom of speech, himself judged that the rapper was going a little far. Kanye West’s account has been suspended for “incitement to violence”.
In recent weeks, however, the new editorial line imposed by Elon Musk on Twitter has provoked an outburst of racist and xenophobic speech, as explained in an article by New York Times Friday. Kanye West is, in a way, the darkest precipitate of a general trend, that of a release from hate online without euphemisms or make-up. Many accounts associated with the QAnon conspiratorial movement have been so certified, while advertisers have fled Twitter.
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