Kanye West booted off Twitter over 'noxious anti-Jewish hate'

Kanye West’s Twitter and Instagram’s accounts have been suspended after the rapper published antisemitic posts.

Kanye West’s Twitter and Instagram’s accounts have been suspended after the rapper published antisemitic posts.

Kanye West’s Twitter and Instagram’s accounts have been suspended after the rapper published antisemitic posts.

West’s posts on Twitter on Saturday night marked the first time he returned to the platform in two years. He was welcomed back personally by Elon Musk, who is in talks to buy the social media company. “Welcome back to Twitter, my friend!” Musk tweeted.

Musk has stated that he wants less censorship on the platform and it is not clear if West’s posts would have been allowed under his ownership.

Elon Musk had welcomed Kanye West back to Twitter shortly before the rapper posted his remarks.

West, who now calls himself Ye, took to Twitter after first being suspended by Instagram for antisemitic posts. He was in a conversation with the rapper and producer Sean “Diddy” Combs, whom he then accused of being controlled by Jewish people.

“This ain’t a game. Ima use you as an example to show the Jewish people that told you to call me that no one can threaten or influence me,” West told Combs on Instagram. He captioned the post of the text exchange “Jesus is Jew”.

After Instagram suspended his account West turned to Twitter, posting a tweet alongside a picture of him singing karaoke with Mark Zuckerberg, the Meta chief whose company owns Instagram. “Look at this, Mark,” he wrote. “How you gone kick me off Instagram. You use to be my n***a.”

In a tweet sent late on Saturday, he wrote: “Ye said he would soon go death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.”

“You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda,” he wrote. A message stating that “this tweet violated the Twitter rules” has replaced the deleted post. West’s accounts are still active but he cannot post on them until the suspension is lifted.

West’s Twitter account was suspended after he made the remarks.

His outbursts marked the culmination of a row that started with him wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt at Paris Fashion Week last Monday for his fashion brand Yzy. It was condemned by anti-racism groups because the phrase has been used by white supremacists.

West wrote on Instagram that “my one t-shirt took allllll the attention.” But leading brands and sponsors started to criticise him, including his friend Diddy, who posted: “Don’t wear the shirt. Don’t buy the shirt. Don’t play with the shirt. It’s not a joke.”

Kanye West wears marchin ‘White Lives Matter’ shirt at the YZY Runway show with Candace Owens.

West then entered into an exchange with Diddy, ending with the antisemitic post on Instagram.

Adidas, which produces Yeezy sneakers for West’s fashion brand, has placed the contract under review because of the T-shirt. West, in response, has accused Adidas of stealing his designs.

A Twitter spokeswoman said: “The account in question has been locked due to a violation of Twitter’s policies.”

Dave Rich, head of policy for the Community Security Trust, which works to combat antisemitism, said: “It is telling that one of the first things Kanye West did when he returned to Twitter after a two-year break was to use it to tweet flagrant anti-Jewish hate to his 31 million followers. It is welcome that his account has now been locked but it was entirely predictable that West would use this platform for noxious purposes and Twitter ought to have shown greater responsibility in the first place.

“Those people advocating more widely for an open ‘free speech’ attitude to online safety, whereby only illegal posts are removed, need to understand that West’s antisemitism is exactly the kind of content they are arguing should be allowed to remain online. The dangers of this approach should be obvious to all.”