In an extensive podcast interview with MIT researcher and moderator Lex Fridman, Kanye West, also known as “Ye”, once again bluntly pulled the trigger. The US rapper, who is currently making mainstream headlines because the sports equipment manufacturer Adidas in Herzogenaurach has terminated his (marketing) friendship due to allegations of anti-Semitism, apparently cannot walk past a microphone without performing something borderline.
Various US media picked up a two-and-a-half-hour interview in which he continued his hate trip. With business consequences: In addition to Adidas, the US artist agency CCA and the Italian fashion label Balenciaga also pulled the plug. Ex-wife Kim Kardashian strongly condemned Ye’s anti-Semitic remarks on her socials on Monday (October 24).
In said interview talk there were also topics such as technology, media or his relationship with Kardashian. “Ye” West also showed his lighter side here, chatting about having dinner at chain restaurant The Cheesecake Factory – while sitting next to a Vietnam vet with whom he discussed politics.
However, echoing a statement he made in an earlier interview, West also said:
“We are still in the Holocaust. A Jewish friend of mine said, ‘Visit the Holocaust Museum,’ and my reply was, ‘Let’s visit our Holocaust Museum: Planned Parenthood.’
And further: “Abortion is about 50 percent of black deaths today from abortion. (…) It’s not about racism, that’s too broad a term. Rather, it is genocide and population control that black people in America face today. All of this is fueled by music and media that produces black people – and from which Jewish record labels benefit.”
In the following dialogue, the online edition of the “Los Angeles Times” partially documents the text of the conversation with Fridman, a Russian-born and Jewish moderator and scientist. He countered his anti-Semitic objections combined with blanket media scolding:
“I grew up in the Soviet Union. I am Jewish, part of my family perished in the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. When someone says ‘Jewish media’, it inevitably triggers an ‘echo of the pain’ that these people are feeling.”
“You think that statement is superfluous, right!?” West replied and smiled. “If Jewish people accepted that I’m also Jewish, they would understand it differently, wouldn’t they!?.”
“It would be correct not to claim that there is Jewish control of the media,” says Fridman.
“But that’s wrong!” “Ye” exclaimed. And it became clear: “This is definitely a damn lie! Those same people bullied me and proved exactly my point of view.”
The rapper later admitted that his extreme beliefs cost him both his family and his future career.
“I lost my damn family, lost my kids. The best friends in the fashion industry. And those in the black community too…”
“They say I’ve lost my sanity, all credibility and reputation. (…) I just don’t want my family to have to say what the left wants, to say what China wants. I want to be an American and protect my children and my wife—and raise my children as Christians and my wife as Christians.”
To the background
As early as 2006, Fridman began his series of talks on YouTube. In 2018, he turned it into a podcast, initially under the title “The Artificial Intelligence Podcast”. Later “The Lex Fridman Podcast”. In addition to future topics such as computer science, technology and AI, Fridman’s talk series, which always features A-listers – from Musk to Zuckerberg – also deals with philosophical, economic, political and historical questions.