The Nazi dictator has gone from being the worst embodiment of evil in human history to just another meme to be exploited in our social media and petty political skirmishes.
We could try to just dismiss people such as Ye, the celebrity formerly known as Kanye West, as unhinged. After all, American talk shows – like the one on which Ye slavered his latest drivel from underneath the black ski mask he was wearing – teem with bigoted twaddle. Nobody takes that stuff seriously, right?
But ask yourself how one of the few remaining Holocaust survivors would hear the words Ye uttered. Or, for that matter, how one of the many Holocaust deniers will now use them. No, we can’t just call Ye and his ilk deranged and move on. We’ve got a problem.
Ye’s topic was Adolf Hitler. The rapper apparently sees the Fuehrer as yet another right-wing victim of the woke and lamestream media’s fake news. “Every human being has something of value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler,” Ye insisted. “There’s a lot of things that I love about Hitler, a lot of things.” He clarified: “I am a Nazi.” More generally, Ye added, “we got to stop dissing the Nazis all the time.”
A few days earlier, Ye and another anti-Semitic Holocaust denier, Nick Fuentes, had dined with Donald Trump at the former US president’s resort in Florida. But it’s not only the odious bully pulpit that comes with celebrity that makes these haters dangerous. It’s the way they simultaneously propagate and embody a preexisting trend toward general ignorance and bad faith, the preconditions for a resurgence in anti-Semitism, racism and hate.
Read the article by Andreas Kluth in the Financial Review.