Remember when everyone was upset because Kanye West showed up to the Grammys with Bianca Censori in a completely sheer dress? Well, the rapper has created a fresh wave of news stories this week, and has found a way to look even worse. Less than a week ago, he shared a barrage of antisemitic posts, including one in which he claimed to “love Hitler” and another where he wrote, “I am a Nazi.” Not entirely new for him, but five days later, a new development emerged: West was selling shirts with swastikas on them on his website. If you are thinking this sounds bad, well, things have only gotten more chaotic from there. Here’s what’s happened.
When did West start selling swastika shirts?
On Sunday, West ran a Super Bowl commercial in Los Angeles and a few other regional markets that showed him laying back in a dentist’s chair. “So what’s up, guys, I spent, like all the money for the commercial on these new teeth. So once again, I had to shoot it on the iPhone,” he said in the ad, which certainly looked like he had filmed it on his phone. (He ran a similarly casual Super Bowl ad last year, seemingly shot inside a car.) “Um … um … go to Yeezy.com.”
Shortly after the ad aired, Yeezy.com began selling only one item: a $20 T-shirt with a swastika on the chest. A source close to West told TMZ that the shirts have brought in $2 million worth of sales, which translates to 100,000 shirts sold.
Oddly, the day before the shirts went live, West shared on X that he would never sell such a thing. “I would never sell a swastika tee because people could be physically harmed wearing it … I love my fans and supporters,” he wrote.
What has the fallout been for West?
It hasn’t been good for him, I’ll say that much. The Yeezy.com site has been taken offline, and instead leads to a page that says, “This store is unavailable.” In a statement to People, a representative for Shopify said that West’s site “did not engage in authentic commerce practices and violated our terms so we removed them from Shopify.”
West no longer has an X account, but it’s unclear if he deactivated it himself or if he was removed from the platform. Before the account disappeared, West wrote, “I’m logging out of twitter,” and followed it up with, “I appreciate Elon for allowing me to vent. It has been very cathartic to use the world as a sounding board.”
How have people been reacting?
The general sentiment seems to be, “Fuck him.” If you want to wear that on your chest, Hilary Duff’s husband has got you. On Tuesday, the musician Matthew Koma shared an Instagram post with a shirt of his own that reads “FUCK YE.” “Hey I can make a shirt too — link in bio, all proceeds to the blue card holocaust survivor charity,” Koma wrote in the caption.
In a really bizarre twist, this has also become a story about AI ethics. In the wake of the controversy, an AI-generated video of Jewish celebrities standing against West started making the rounds on social media. In it, actors and musicians like Scarlett Johansson, Lenny Kravitz, and Woody Allen are wearing T-shirts that feature a Star of David–branded middle finger above West’s name.
Well, Johansson was perturbed by this. In a statement to People, she came out against AI and urged politicians to pass legislation that would limit its use. “I am a Jewish woman who has no tolerance for antisemitism or hate speech of any kind,” Johansson said, “But I also firmly believe that the potential for hate speech multiplied by AI is a far greater threat than any one person who takes accountability for it. We must call out the misuse of AI, no matter its messaging, or we risk losing a hold on reality.” She urged the government to make legislation about AI a “top priority.”
Remarkably, West still has an Instagram account amid all of this, but it has no posts at the moment. Here’s hoping it stays that way.