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So...more people have dropped Kanye West in the wake of his "anti-semitic comments" (it took more digging than it should have to actually see what he said - a few articles just leave it incredibly vague which is...problematic). In this case Anna Wintour/Vogue and CAA, both of which are hugely influential, even though CAA only repped him for touring.
To tie it into another recent trend: the Floyd family is allegedly thinking of suing him for suggesting Floyd died of fentanyl though I don't know on what grounds? I guess people have been emboldened by the Alex Jones verdict?
A while ago a rapper called DaBaby went through a similar thing where he refused to apologize until the consequences got too serious - I personally was interested in how far someone could take it. But the outcome proved that "cancel culture" isn't really a paper tiger that only works when people play along because they're too spineless. Nope, it'll work regardless.
This is an interesting test case because Kanye is basically as close to "uncancellable" as a person in a hugely PR-focused industry like music (and fashion) gets. He has a bunch of rabid fans who will buy his music or gear and he's already so vastly rich and famous that he'll likely always make waves. And , according to him, he has an ironclad contract with Adidas
Presumably he knew all this when he - once again - decided to say something he almost certainly knew would bring controversy. But, unlike the "slavery was a choice" or all of the other shit he did, this one is actually leading to the most serious consequences we've seen yet. Ironically for saying Jews cancel people who don't play by the agenda.
Recall also that Nick Cannon eventually was forced to apologize not for racist, Scientology-esque pseudoscience about white people, but specifically for annoying Jews.
It's a shame we don't have a way to see what the median person thinks about this (it's all just elite shunning and op-eds right now) because my first impression when I saw that happen to Cannon is "this is bad for everyone. White people are seeing this - they're basically seeing that anti-white racism is fine and the only whites you don't get to be racist towards are Jews". I wonder how black people will feel if this is what kills Kanye and not...y'know, going against the strongest racial partisan preference in the country.
Adidas has dropped Kanye West following growing agitation from organized Jewish groups. The move is expected to reduce Adidas revenue by about $250 million.
@freemcflurry is pessimistic that white people will wake up to what's going on. Maybe the prospect of the average person getting any sort of red-pill from this is overly optimistic. But I think there are smart, high-agency people closer to the fringes, and in communities like this one, that may increasingly realize they can't turn a blind eye to this dynamic in the culture war. I even think there are many good-faith Jews in communities like this one who may increasingly be willing to admit to this toxic dynamic between Jews and Gentiles in the West, rather than just dismiss it as the isolated behavior of a few fanatics and interest groups that they don't endorse.
In the past, highly public and economically costly sanctions like these were not even necessary. The fact that Jewish interests find it increasingly necessary to exercise hard-power to eliminate any sort of criticism of their behavior is a sign that these criticisms are not going away. These criticisms, which Jews call "anti-semitism", are anti-fragile. The more they tighten their grip in the form of economic sanctions, online censorship, social credit sanctions, and lawfare, the more they are validating the claims they are fighting against.
I can't remember which, but there's a mod around here who uses the "da Joos" thing to basically try to neutralize criticism of Jews in conversation. I have to think that he or she is going to think twice before dismissing criticism of Jewish influence as some insane conspiracy theory. This $250 million sanction against Adidas for having the unfortunate luck of having its influencer direct his criticism towards Jews instead of exclusively white people must make it harder for smart and honest people to dismiss those criticisms out-of-hand.
Would you not agree that "I'm going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE" merits a stronger noun than "criticism"? Perhaps "hatred"?
That tweet doesn't strike me as even coming close - within the same universe - to justifying the reaction to it. We are talking about costs in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Cancelled projects, dropped contracts, boycotts, calls to ban his music on Google and Spotify.
You can use the old 4chan trick of replacing "white" with "Jewish" and asking yourself if the reaction would be remotely similar if that had been his tweet instead.
Economically: There's a lot of money based on his personal brand, and he just dramatically reduced the value of the latter. I find it reasonable that the market would react accordingly.
Practically: "I'm going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE" (henceforth, "his words") aren't acceptable to - rough approximation - anyone, and he hasn't issued retractions or showed signs of backing down in any way (which would have been nice, I do like his music). The straightforward conclusion is thus that anyone would stop associating with him. Which includes people with a lot of money and power. Hence the reaction.
Morally: To misquote an old guy, his words lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value, so I don't know what he was expecting.
Regarding your "old 4chan trick": as a preamble, the fact that it's called an "old 4chan trick" tells me all I need to know about whether the people behind it were genuinely interested in collaboratively discovering truth through discussion (hint: hahaha; and to follow the rule on speaking plainly: not at all). Anyway:
if white people had been persecuted since before the first Crusades in 1096, yes, I think the reaction might be similar
if you go through Wikipedia on "Racism against Black Americans" and switch "black" and "white", and if the resulting text were historical fact, yes, if we lived in that world then again the reaction might be similar.
But we don't live in either of those two alternate realities.
Who says I find the market response unreasonable? Adidas for example is responding to market forces. It's the market forces that are the problem. On the contrary, I find it to be a useful quantifier for demonstrating the market cost of criticizing Jews.
There is a gigantic market cost to criticizing Jews. At the same time, there is a giant market benefit to criticizing white identity- with Jews themselves often investing the most money and influence in signal-boosting those criticisms of Gentile culture within popular culture.
This behavior of influential Jews- wherein they invest heavily in patronizing all manner of criticism Gentile culture, history, and morality, and then act hysterically when any measure of criticism is directed towards themselves, is on full display for everyone to see. You can do what Fridman did and just invoke history to try to justify the behavior. And you can try to justify it, but there is no longer any room to deny that this behavior exists and is a powerful undercurrent in the culture war.
I must admit I'm not seeing the distinction, if you're intending any, between market response, market forces, market cost, etc.
What I mean to say is if someone says "I'm going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE", this will piss people off, and they'll stop doing business with that person. Which part of that do you think should not be happening?
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