The presence of the rapper, a few days earlier, at a dinner at the home of Donald Trump, in the company of the supremacist Nick Fuentes, had already caused a stir in the conservatives.
By Piotr Smolar (Washington, correspondent)
“I see good things at Hitler.” Then: “I like the Jews, but I also like the Nazis.” By pronouncing these words during a new delirious interview of three hours, the American rapper Kanye West – Now nicknamed Ye – has managed to make his host very slightly uncomfortable, Alex Jones.
The latter, influential personality of the conspiracy world and the extreme right, received the rapper, Thursday 1 er December, in his program “Infowars”, in the company of the white supremacist Nick Fuentes. The two men had made the headlines a week earlier, being welcomed for dinner by Donald Trump in his Floridian residence in Mar-A-Lago. An appointment that caused strong swirls within the Republican Party.
Alex Jones was himself at the heart of legal news in October and November. He was sentenced twice – for a total amount of $ 1.4 billion (1.3 billion euros) – to pay compensation to the families of the victims of the killing in the Sandy Hook school (Connecticut ), in 2012. He claimed that it was a bogus. Friday, he declared himself in personal bankruptcy in court so that he did not have to pay a single penny. But these annoyances hardly encouraged him to make a low profile.
By receiving Ye, the host knew and hoped for the echo that the rapper’s anti -Semitic drift – obvious for months – would arouse. “You are not Hitler. You are not a Nazi. You do not deserve to be called like this and to be demonized,” he tried. The rapper, who was entirely masked with a robber’s hood, did not grab his hand friend. “Each human being has something of value to bring, especially Hitler.” Meanwhile, in the studio, Nick Fuentes smiled.
Liberation of online hatred
This hate bidding continued on Thursday evening when Ye published on Twitter an image of a swastika inlaid in a David star. The new boss of the social network, Elon Musk, much appreciated in the world Maga (“Make America Great Again”, the slogan of Donald Trump) as a intrepid defender of freedom of speech, himself judged that the rapper was going a bit far. Kanye West’s account has been suspended for “incitement to violence”.
In recent weeks, however, the new editorial line imposed by Elon Musk on Twitter caused a racing and xenophobic speech, as explained by a New York Times article on Friday . Kanye West is, in a way, the darkest precipitate of a general trend, that of a release of online hatred without euphemism or makeup. Many accounts associated with the Qanon Conspiracy Movement were thus certified, while advertisers fled Twitter.
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