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In "holy shit" culture war moments, Kanye has lashed out at (((us))) on Twitter. He came out of the gate swinging by stating that:
Please note that Kanye is using double-spaces instead of periods for some reason.
This comes shortly after he was pictured wearing a White Lives Matter shirt, and shortly before he asked rhetorically
As always, the reaction is worse than the action, and causes the story to explode. In response to accusations that Jews control the media and invented cancel culture, Jewish organizations have loudly declared that such accusations are anti-semitic and inherently untrue, and then demanded Kanye be cancelled. The irony appears lost on them. To the surprise of I'm sure absolutely no one, Kanye was quickly locked out of his twitter account.
Social media reactions have been mixed, to say the least. /pol/ has apparently decided that Kanye is one step removed from goose stepping his way down the isle at the Grammys, and is almost /theirguy/. Of course there's also a substantial faction who just spam n****r so I'm going to stop short of saying that Kanye has struck a blow for unity within the racist community.
/r/Kanye, which is dedicated to exactly what you think, is in full melt-down mode understandably.
I really don't have anything else to add to this monumental pile of flaming garbage. There is no redeeming anything buried here. Only more decay and hatred seeping into public spaces. I leave you with only this thought that has been said by far smarter men than I. Twitter delenda est.
The thing I find interesting (and which Freddie DeBoer has commented on extensively) is the vicious denials that mental illness can in any way be considered a factor when an obviously crazy person starts spouting crazy shit.
The mantra now is "mental illness doesn't do that," but mental illness clearly can make people say and do things they wouldn't if their illness was under control. That doesn't mean Kanye isn't genuinely an antisemite, and we can't know for certain he's having a BPD episode when he tweets stuff like this, but it's clearly another culture war angle. If Kanye started spouting rants about how black people should kill all whites, I suspect the same people outraged now would say "You have to understand that he is mentally ill and his words shouldn't be taken at face value; I hope he gets the help that he needs."
His behavior is suggestive of bipolar disorder. There are similarities to Elon musk in this regard, like making grandiose or outlandish statements or stunts (such as Elon's Twitter purchase) and then walking back on them as the dust settles. It's possible they have the same disorder and these acts are part of the manic phase.
Elon didn't walk back his twitter purchase out of bipolarity, he did it because his net worth crashed when the tech stocks did. No mental illness required as an explanation.
In my opinion.
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I don't think this is quite right; mental illness wouldn't have to be invoked as an excuse/justification at all. The justification would simply be that this is the righteous anger of a black man born in a White Supremacist society that has oppressed him throughout his life. Sure, he may appear a little overenthusiastic in his quest for justice, but it is not our place to judge the way an oppressed person reacts against his oppressors.
At least, that's my belief based on how I've seen chants like "kill all men," "kill all whites," "kill all cis" supported throughout the years.
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I mean, ‘Jews control the world for (insert nefarious purpose here)’ and ‘Jews aren’t real Jews because black people are instead’ are both beliefs that may be false, but they’re factual beliefs that are expounded by many not-obviously crazy people, so it doesn’t seem like you have to be mentally I’ll to believe them.
Sure, but Kanye West is known to be mentally ill, and when he rants about Jews, it's pretty incoherent and crazy-sounding. I'm not saying you have to be crazy to believe this stuff, or that Kanye only believes it because he's crazy, but his specific behaviors do map to someone having bipolar episodes. Which neither excuses nor explains everything he does, but I was pointing out how the current bluecheck party line is basically "No, he's just a bad person, do not even suggest that mental illness might be a factor."
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And the argument "The CIA/NSA are malicious and spying on everyone" are often expounded by sane people, but "The CIA/NSA put a camera in my bagel" isn't, and "death con 3" seems more the latter than kevin macdonald or ron unz
"Death con 3" seems deliberate and funny to me. The man clearly has a knack for language, and I think it's more likely this is deliberate.
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I do not like this argument, it seems to be a middle class view of the world which insists verbal or written errors like death con 3 demonstrate flawed thinking - except when they happen to a middle class person, then they are usually just brushed off as an amusing mistake. "Reverend blue jeans", "curve your enthusiasm" "all intensive purposes" - are these signs of a troubled mind?
Edit: Def con 1 through 5 in common parlance means a full mobilisation of the government's forces, usually against a threat, possibly even resulting in nuclear war. It is a five alarm fire, the rhetorical equivalent of this. In the world of rapping, def means cool, fly, streets ahead. Why would a rapper think the US government is using the word def to refer to a potential nuclear threat and not death, the likely result of a potential nuclear threat?
Sort of true, but not making verbal or textual errors, whether spelling, grammar, or just strangely constructed sentences, are very correlated with being at least moderately intelligent. But yes, good points can be made with poor spelling, and one should still pay attention to those when they exist.
I was just using 'death con 3' as a somewhat funny stand-in for the general incoherence of kanye's statement.
People make those errors because they are smart?
To me the way some people - especially on social media - tend to focus on screwed up words celebrities have uttered strikes me as similar to someone on reddit dismissing an argument because the arguer spelled a word incorrectly. A way to avoid dealing with the substance of the argument. You didn't mean it that way, and I'm sorry I implied you did, but you have to admit the way you worded it looks similar to "lol he said death con 3, he is as crazy as someone who thinks the cia is bugging their bagel".
I made an edit and fucked it up, I meant people who are smart make fewer errors.
When focused on celebrities it's dumb yeah, but anything focused on celebrities is dumb. But if you're talking to someone in the SSC comments vs someone who's a normal person on facebook, the former makes many, many fewer errors in spelling or sentence construction than the latter.
oh it doesn't matter at all in that sense, please do imply anything disparaging or demeaning so long as it's correct!
Yeah it is correlated with intelligence - and sanity - but I think the correlation is centred on repeated errors. How many albums has Kanye written now? Albums jam packed with some of the best wordplay this side of the 20th century no less. I know I am predisposed to think well of him, but I think it's more likely this was one of those situations where someone uses a term they have heard but not used before, and fucks it up because they misunderstood some part of it.
Outstanding response to my apology btw, high fives all round.
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One doesn't need to be crazy to believe that some leftist journo guy is a sexual abuser, but that doesn't mean a crazy person can't have that as a crazy-induced/influenced belief. See, for example, Freddie's really bad craziness episode.
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