In the last week and a half, Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, has appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News, been photographed with far-right provocateur Candace Owens wearing a “White Lives Matter” shirt, and tweeted that he was going “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE” (which landed him in social media jail). Redacted footage from the Fox interview revealed that Ye made a number of antisemitic comments there too, referring to Hannukah as a vehicle for “financial engineering” and casting Black people as the real Jews, with non-Black Jews as imposters. In the wake of these comments, Jewish organizations have raised the alarm about worsening antisemitism; meanwhile, tensions have been rising online between some Black and Jewish people, playing out familiar grievances about acknowledgement and allyship. What, if anything, can we learn from this instance of high-profile antisemitism and this latest round of Black–Jewish discourse? And is there any path to solidarity between those targeted by Ye’s anti-Black and antisemitic ideas? Jewish Currents contributing writer Rebecca Pierce, Atlantic staff writer Adam Serwer, and Currents editor-in-chief Arielle Angel discussed Ye’s antisemitism.
Note: This episode was taped on Friday, October 14th, before it was announced that Ye plans to buy the right-wing social media platform Parler. Stay tuned at the end of the episode for a postscript from Pierce and Angel on this new development.
Articles and Tweets Mentioned:
“https://www.vice.com/en/article/3ad77y/kanye-west-tucker-carlson-leaked-footage-antisemitism-fake-children (Watch the Disturbing Kanye Interview Clips That Tucker Carlson Didn’t Put on Air),” Anna Merlan, Vice 
“https://johnganz.substack.com/p/musk-and-west-inc (Musk and West, Inc.),” John Ganz’s Substack
“https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/63433940fb1fdd003629c72c/kanye-jews-anti-semitism-twitter/ (What Kanye Can Teach Us About Anti-Semitism),” Yair Rosenberg, The Atlantic
Kimberly Nicole Foster’s https://twitter.com/KimberlyNFoster/status/1580327175575998464?s=20&t=QF2dL0ceJMYh0lTKSca0fQ (tweets) about https://twitter.com/KimberlyNFoster/status/1580632026608463872?s=20&t=Fd2693sClHwzW_VS1bk7Gg (antisemitism)
“https://jewishcurrents.org/black-antisemitism-is-not-inherently-left-wing (Black Antisemitism Is Not Inherently ‘Left Wing),’” Rebecca Pierce, Jewish Currents
“https://jewishcurrents.org/beyond-grievance (Beyond Grievance),” Arielle Angel, Jewish Currentshttps://jewishcurrents.org/beyond-grievance ( )
Sarah Silverman’s https://twitter.com/SarahKSilverman/status/1579179927848759298 (Jewish grievance tweet)
“https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/17/tech/kanye-west-ye-parler (Kanye West to acquire conservative social media platform Parler),” Brian Fung, CNN Business
“https://jewishcurrents.org/an-antisemitic-judge-a-white-supremacist-system (An Antisemitic Judge, a White Supremacist System),” Rebecca Pierce, Jewish Currents
 
Thanks to Jesse Brenneman for producing and to Nathan Salsburg for the use of his song “VIII (All That Were Calculated Have Passed).”