Kanye West condemned over vile new anti-Semitic song

Kanye West’s latest move has been branded his most vile act yet, fuelling calls for him to be wiped from all platforms.

OPINION

There comes a point when platform inaction becomes complicity.

Kanye West, one of the most influential musicians of his generation, has made no secret of his admiration for Adolf Hitler and his embrace of antisemitic ideology.

This is not a descent from subtlety into extremism — it is a continuation of a pattern that has grown only more overt and dangerous over time.

With the release of his latest single “Heil Hitler” — a title that leaves no room for misinterpretation — he has reaffirmed his role as a public propagandist for Nazi glorification.

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The question now isn’t what Kanye believes. It’s why he’s still being given a global megaphone to spread it.

Released on the eve of VE Day, a deliberate thumb in the eye of history. Marketed on social media. Repackaged as entertainment. A new product in the Kanye brand.

This is not an artist exploring difficult ideas.

This is a man using global platforms to spread Nazi ideology to a mass audience. And he is being rewarded for it, with views, with attention, and with power.

Kanye has shocked the world with his latest move. Picture: Supplied

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The video for “Heil Hitler” — which ends with actual audio from a Hitler speech — has received over six and a half million views on Elon Musk’s X.

It’s not buried. It’s trending.

Shared by influencers, played by Andrew Tate, circulated with hashtags, and pushed by the algorithm.

It features Black men in formation chanting a Nazi slogan. It is not hidden in the corners of extremism. It is being mainstreamed.

This is not the fringe. This is the front page of one of the world’s biggest platforms.

There is something especially perverse about a man who would not have survived the Reich’s first purge proudly aligning himself with the genocidal ideology that would have exterminated him.

Kanye West performs onstage in March 2025. Picture: Scott Dudelson/Getty Images

This is not just about one man’s descent. It’s about what we, as a society, are willing to tolerate.

What we’ve become numb to. What we are no longer shocked by.

X has become the staging ground for this collapse. It is where “Heil Hitler” has found its largest audience — where West is monetised and promoted to millions.

It has chosen chaos. It has stripped away guardrails under the banner of “free speech” while offering status and reach to a man using its infrastructure to spread Nazi propaganda.

But the rest of us do not have to follow him off that cliff.

This moment did not arrive without warning. Kanye West’s embrace of Hitler and Nazism is not sudden.

It is not isolated. In fact, it has been developing for years, in full public view.

The move has been dubbed Kanye’s lowest point yet. Picture: Rachpoot/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images

In 2022, during a now-infamous interview, he denied the Holocaust, praised the Nazis, revived centuries-old antisemitic lies dressed in 21st-century celebrity packaging and said, “I see good things about Hitler … Every human being has something of value … especially Hitler … I like Hitler.”

He sells swastika-emblazoned shirts. He says anti-Semitism is the path to freedom. He released a song called “Gas Chambers”. He wears KKK-style robes and dines with Holocaust deniers.

To their credit, Spotify, SoundCloud, and Apple Music have removed the track from their services. And yet, on Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, and TikTok, re-uploads and clips continue to spread.

No platform that claims to have a hate speech policy can justify his continued presence.

It raises a brutal, urgent question: Why is Kanye West still on your platform?

For those who operate these services — Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Meta — the answer cannot be silence.

His new song is still going viral despite being removed from major platforms. Picture: Grant Lamos IV/Getty Images

Kanye has expressed that he ‘loves Hitler’ in a former vile rant. Picture: Supplied

Kanye West is not “controversial”. He is not an “artist pushing boundaries.”

He has styled himself as a Hitler-worshipping racist who has made admiration for history’s greatest mass murderer a personal brand.

No company that believes in human dignity can pretend this is anything less than a moral emergency.

To the leadership at Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, Facebook, and Instagram: if Kanye West’s content violates your hate speech policy, then so does Kanye West.

Remove the song from the platform? Yes. But remove the platform from the artist, too.

Because what good is banning the product while leaving the factory open?

Deplatforming is not censorship. It is not about banning ideas. It is about refusing to host the intentional glorification of one of the darkest ideologies in human history.

While platforms such as Spotify have removed the song, many feel more needs to be done. Picture: Lionel Bonaventure / AFP

It is about drawing a line and standing by it.

We live in a time of spiralling moral confusion, where irony is weaponised to blur lines, and cruelty is laundered through performance.

When West says, “I became a Nazi,” and then insists it’s performance art, many pretend not to know whether he means it.

But this confusion is a feature, not a bug. It’s how hate thrives in modern form, not as a fist raised in uniform, but as a meme. A hook.

A clip engineered to go viral. Hatred has adapted to the algorithm.

We’ve been here before. History has taught us where antisemitic propaganda leads. It always begins with words.

Then it spreads — normalised by repetition, emboldened by silence. And eventually, it reaches the people who don’t understand that chanting “Heil Hitler” is not rebellion.

It is complicity in cruelty.

Kanye has previously expressed anti-Semitic views. Picture: X

We have laws against incitement. We have policies against hate speech. But more than that, we have a moral obligation to remember the cost of forgetting.

This is not just about the Jewish community, though it affects us most directly. This is about what kind of digital world we are building for our children.

About whether we believe that some values — basic human dignity, the memory of the Holocaust, the right to exist without being targeted — are worth defending.

Kanye West has made his position clear.

The only question now is: will the rest of us finally make ours?

Dr Dvir Abramovich is Chairman of the Anti-Defamation Commission and the author of eight books.