The only little problem was that the concert was scheduled at the end of Yom Kippur, immediately after break-fast. Nevertheless, I really wanted to go: so when Yom Kippur services on campus came to an end, I quickly grabbed only the smallest bite to eat at the break-fast (a slice of challah and a sip of water), and made my way over to the basketball arena to go to the concert.
And in case you haven’t guessed it, the artist who was performing that night – the artist who, for the entire fall semester, had been all anyone could talk about, who I loved so much that I was ready to go to the concert while essentially still fasting, who had banners hung in his name all over the campus – was none other than Kanye West.
Over the past several weeks, Kanye – who now goes by the stage-name Ye – has once again been all that anyone can talk about, and has even had banners hung in his name. But this time, the banners are not because he’s playing a sold-out concert at the University of Florida. Rather, this time it is because Kanye has landed in the news for repeated public antisemitic statements and other hateful rhetoric.
For those who may not have followed these headlines, allow me to recount some of the contours of this news story.
Unfortunately, Kanye West has a proven track record of using hateful rhetoric – and not only against Jewish people. At a Paris fashion show a few weeks ago, he wore a jacket that he had designed bearing the phrase “White Lives Matter” – a phrase that, at the very least, is highly provocative, and at the very most, as the Anti Defamation League labels it, is an expression of white nationalism. Also this month, Kanye went on prominent podcast and made the false claim that George Floyd – whose death a jury found to have been a murder – had died not at the hands of the police, but rather, had died because of a drug overdose.
Over the past few weeks, Kanye has fanned the flames not just of racial hatred, but also of antisemitism. It began during a recent interview with Tucker Carlson of Fox News. Their conversation touched on the Abraham Accords, the historic agreement that normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. When Carlson asked Kanye what he thought of the Accords (an odd question to ask someone who is not an expert in geo-politics), Kanye said: “I think [Jared Kushner] was just out to make money.” (A leaked version of the full, unedited interview shows that Kanye made other, even more incendiary antisemitic comments, which were ultimately edited out of the final broadcast.)
A few days later, Kanye posted screenshots from his cell phone, evidently of a text message exchange he had had with another hip-hop star, Sean Combs. In the thread, Kanye writes to Combs: I’m going to “use you as an example to show the Jewish people that told you to call me that no one can threaten or influence me” – harkening to the antisemitic trope that Jews work through secret-back channels or in some unseen global network to wield hidden influence over the world.
When Kanye posted this text message exchange on social media, it was deleted for having violated Instagram’s content policies. Kanye then took to Twitter, where he criticized Mark Zuckerberg. Kanye wrote: “Who do you think invented cancel culture?” – presumably implying that Mark Zuckerberg and other Jews like him control the media, and are able to censor anyone who doesn’t fit with our supposed agenda.
Soon thereafter, the whole incident culminated when Kanye again took to Twitter, where he declared to his 31 million Twitter followers that he was going to “go death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.” He continued by implying that today’s Jews are interlopers who, thousands of years ago, stole the label of “Jewish” from people of color, who are the true Jews. The rant concluded with Kanye writing that the Jews “have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes [their] agenda.”
Troubling stuff.
This flurry of antisemitic activity quickly created waves. Kanye was soon dropped by several of the big-name brands that are his sponsors; the private K-12 school that he founded closed its doors “effective immediately;” and many celebrities who had formerly been Kanye’s associates quickly condemned his words and actions.
Unfortunately, Kanye’s actions created not only waves of condemnation, but also, waves of support. Two such instances stand out to me, although it is not entirely clear which of these is more troubling: the group that hung a giant banner over a Los Angeles freeway (like the banners that hung on my college campus advertising Kanye’s concert), but on this banner it said, “Kanye is right about the Jews,” and supporters stood by the sign making Nazi salutes at the cars that drove underneath.
Or, perhaps this is worse offense: a tweet published by the official account of the Republicans who sit on the House Judiciary Committee (a tweet that, admittedly, was published before Kanye’s antisemitic rants, but after he wore the White Lives Matter jacket – and, in any case, still hasn’t been taken down). The tweet reads: “Kanye. Elon. Trump” – linking the three controversial figures, and seemingly praising them as iconoclasts and heroes of free speech who will speak the truth, no matter the consequences.
Troubling stuff.
On two different occasions this past week, Cantor Robin, our religious school director (Laurence Holzman), and I discussed these news stories with the teenagers in our congregation. The conversations were broad and wide-ranging, approaching the story from a number of different angles. Many of these angles I have heard echoed in the wider public discourse.
There’s the question of free-speech: whether a social media platform like Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter has the responsibility to delete potentially hateful rhetoric from its site, or whether doing so violates the digital user’s right to freedom of expression. It is worth noting that earlier this month, Kanye announced that he would be buying the social media platform Parler – a site whose motto is: “Parler is where free speech thrives,” and is known for having minimal content moderation. Perhaps most famously, it was on Parler that much of the January 6 insurrection was planned.
Another popular angle from which to approach the Kanye story is the question of mental health. Kanye has been public about the fact that he suffers from bipolar disorder – which, as he describes it, causes him to sometimes feel paranoid. Given the wide range of bombastic and sometimes confusing statements that Kanye has recently made, should we perhaps take a broader view of his mental stability, and have compassion on a person who seems to be struggling? And yet, in the same breath, we might ask: does our compassion for his mental state give Kanye a pass to say anything that crosses into his mind, without concern for consequence, without considering his enormous popular influence? Kanye himself says that it would be “dismissive” to assume that all of his provocative statements are merely a sign of mental unhealth – that, to some extent, he does mean the things that he says: that, even if he shouldn’t be taken literally, then at the very least, he should be taken seriously.
There is also the question of how we should engage with artists when we like their art but do not like their behavior. I loved Kanye when I was in college. I went to his concert on Yom Kippur after only barely breaking the fast. I can easily name seven of his albums. Is it kosher, so to speak, in the light of his most recent comments, for someone like me to still stream his music on Spotify – where, even if I’m not directly paying for his music, I am nevertheless increasing his listenership and further contributing to his popularity? What if I have a CD of his? (Which, by the way, I don’t; I don’t even own a CD player any more.) Is it kosher to listen to a Kanye CD in the privacy of my own home, where I am increasing neither his financial success nor his public popularity – or do I need to boycott his music completely?
These questions – on free-speech, on mental health, and on artists and their behavior – swirl around this story. In the news media, these seem to be the common themes that have been repeatedly lifted up.
But of course, there’s another important angle as well – one that hasn’t gotten quite as much attention: one that we discussed with our teens this week, and one that I’d urge all of us to grow more attuned to. We asked our teens: what exactly is it that makes Kanye’s comments about the Jewish people not just mean-spirited or ill-informed, but rather, specifically antisemitic? Put differently: what exactly is antisemitism? Are we able to describe what anti-Semitism looks like – so that when it happens, we can easily recognize it and call it out? In some cases (although clearly not in this one) a person might unknowingly traffic in dangerous antisemitic tropes. Can we help others to understand what antisemitism looks like – so that hopefully we can defuse the harm before it happens the next time?
Kanye’s three comments – that the Abraham Accords were just about Jared Kushner making money, that the Jewish people were pressuring Sean Combs through some secret back-channels, and that Mark Zuckerberg and the Jews created control the media and created cancel culture – illustrate precisely how antisemitism works. Antisemitism is unlike many forms of bigotry and hatred. Other forms of bigotry seek to suppress the hated group: to make us think that the hated group is subhuman, that they are less than us, that they are morally repugnant, hopeless bottom-feeders. Antisemitism does the exact opposite. It causes people to imagine not that Jews are a lower class, but rather, are somehow a superclass – that we’re the the one-percent, the evil forces at the top of banking, government, and the media, the puppet-masters fiendishly controlling the unwitting masses down below.
This is part of what makes anti-Semitism so hard to spot – why certain comments that are so obviously offensive to us Jews are sometimes overlooked by others who don’t recognize the hurt that has been done. It is because anti-Semitism functions in a different way from many other forms of bigotry. It is, we might say, a mirror image of other forms of bigotry: two sides of the same coin, that often work in tandem. One form of hatred reinforces the other.
While it is certainly important to discuss the many different angles of the Kanye story – free-speech, mental health, artists and their behavior – it is imperative that our focus on these issues not overshadow the antisemitic content at the core of this story. Antisemitism can be hard to spot. It is easy enough to recognize it when it escalates into a celebrity threatening to go "death con 3" on Jewish people, or escalates into group of people giving the Nazi salute over a highway in Los Angeles. But in order to prevent those kinds of actions – and, God forbid, much worse – we need to be able to describe, recognize, and prevent the subtler forms of antisemitism that are a mere slippery slope away from those more egregious demonstrations.
When the public discourse about Kanye focuses only on free-speech, or mental health, or artists and their behavior, we Jews have the responsibility point out what antisemitism looks like, and why it is a pattern that is sometimes all too easily overlooked.
The Kanye concert that I went to during my sophomore year of college was part of a tour that he was doing, after he had released his second studio album. I have listened to that album more times than I can count. The very first song on the album opens by imagining a young Kanye West in school. He has fallen asleep in class, and is snoring as the teacher drones on. The teacher, recognizing Kanye’s drooping head at the back of the classroom, comes over to his desk and jolts him from his sleep – shouting, in the album’s memorable first lyrics: “Wake up, Mr. West!”
Today, we might say those very same words to him – and indeed, to ourselves, and to our entire society. If we are to root out hatred from our society, then we had better be able to describe what hatred looks like, even in its most subtle forms. The stakes are too high to be sleeping in class. It is time – as Kanye himself said on that memorable album – for all of us to wake up.
No comments:
Post a Comment