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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."
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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