A little while ago I wrote a post about Kanye West and separating the art from the artist. At that point in time Ye, the antisemite formerly known as Kanye West, was saying a whole bunch of anti-semitic things and going down crazy street. Back then I was of the opinion that personally I could still separate the art from the artist. I hoped that after Adidas dropped him, he’d slowly become more and more irrelevant until he eventually would just disappear from the news.
Turns out that isn’t what ended up happening. Instead, Ye went on a number of podcasts and television shows ranging from Piers Morgan to Tim Pool to even Alex Jones. I’ve been watching his journey, mainly through clips and recaps, I don’t directly watch much right wing news. I consider myself very left wing, so I end up seeing their news through the lens of people bashing it. I’m well aware of my own biases when it comes to these kinds of things.
But I have reached a point where I’ve removed Ye’s songs from my spotify library. I can’t endorse this kind of stuff when it’s actively happening. If this blows over and something changes I might listen to it again, but with so much good music out there, I can live without Graduation.
When I was in high school, we went on a four day trip to Berlin, Germany. I live in the Netherlands, so Berlin was fairly close. We saw a bunch of historical stuff back then. From remnants of the Berlin wall to Checkpoint Charlie (which had a snackbar named Snackpoint Charlie and to this day that is the best named store I’ve ever seen) to the Holocaust memorial. You know, the big one with all the squares of different sizes. We even went to one of the camps. I’m not a very caring and empathic person and as a teenager I couldn’t care less about these kinds of things. I thought the Holocaust memorial looked impressive, but I was more interested in the Dunkin Donuts around the corner that was just flooded with wasps. But I do remember having an almost uncomfortable feeling walking through the former concentration camp. Seeing the actual ovens that were used, seeing the areas where people were being kept. It was haunting. Hearing people pretend this stuff never happened when you can go out and see for yourself that this horror existed is just crazy to me. Anyone who can unironically say “I do love Hitler” is clearly too far lost to us. I have no patience or respect for Holocaust deniers. I’d like to think even the most hateful rightwing capitalism lover will turn around and go “what Hitler did was fucked up.” But maybe that’s me being too optimistic.
I’m kind of at a loss about this thing. I talked about it with my brother the other day who said there should be legal consequences for saying this kind of stuff and to a point I agree, but then what happens when it gets turned around and the things I believe in are suddenly seen as bad? I don’t know. Maybe you all have the solution to this problem but for now I’ll end on this suggestion.
Please go back to bed Mr. West, Mr West,
Mr. by the nazis he’s so impressed.
Opal Kaharis 