Here\u2019s a surprise. For over two years the Mayor of London has maintained a Trappist vow over the regular hate marches which have defiled the streets of his city. There\u2019s been not a peep out of him criticising the anti-Semitic slogans, banners or chants.<\/p>\n
When people tell you who they are, as West has done repeatedly over many years, it\u2019s best to believe them<\/p>\n
Now it seems that Sir Sadiq Khan has found his voice. Well, it\u2019s more of a croak than a full-on holler, but small mercies and all that. He still can\u2019t bring himself to say anything about the hate marches, but he\u2019s come out with a statement criticising the booking of Kanye West to headline the Wireless festival in north London over three nights in July. Sir Sadiq says the rapper\u2019s past comments are \u2018offensive and wrong\u2019, and \u2018simply not reflective\u2019 of London\u2019s values.<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t say. There\u2019s not much room for ambiguity about West \u2013 who now calls himself Ye. One of his singles was called \u2018Heil Hitler\u2019, with the lyrics \u2018All my n****s Nazis, n***a, heil Hitler.\u2019 He has described himself as a Nazi, sold merchandise with swastikas, praised neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, and made a series of anti-Jewish statements. Anti-Jewish, to be clear \u2013 not for West the attempted cop-out of calling himself \u2018anti-Zionist\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Not surprisingly, almost all the sponsorship and business deals he had secured over his years in the public eye collapsed as corporations decided being associated with a self-declared Nazi wasn\u2019t a great look. And so, even less surprisingly, in January West issued an apology via a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal, titled \u2018\u2018To Those I\u2019ve Hurt\u2019. A man\u2019s got to earn, after all.\u00a0<\/p>\n
West wrote: \u2018I am not a Nazi or an antisemite. I love Jewish people\u2019. That \u2018Heil Hitler\u2019 title was obviously a slip of the pen, those lyrics a slip of the tongue. And just in case we doubted his sincerity \u2013 as if! \u2013 West offered the get out of jail free card adopted by those who find that their racism and bigotry isn\u2019t getting a free pass. He wasn\u2019t right in the head. Specifically, he hurt his head in a 2002 car accident and it was only in 2023 that his bipolar disorder was diagnosed. I see. That\u2019s all okay then.<\/p>\n
The thing is, when people tell you who they are, as West has done repeatedly over many years, it\u2019s best to believe them. So West should be treated as the racist and bigot he has shown he is.<\/p>\n
But the questions around this aren\u2019t really for West to answer. He is what he is. The focus of this should be on the organisers of the Wireless festival, who saw West\u2019s words and deeds \u2013\u00a0such as the \u2018Heil Hitler\u2019 song or the interview in 2018 in which he said because there had been slavery for 400 years, it must have been \u2018a choice\u2019\u00a0\u2013 and decided \u00a0he was just the man they wanted to showcase for three nights. To date, they have not only refused to act to change this, they have refused even to comment. At a time when Jew hate is at record levels, and rising, the organisers have decided that now of all times they want to give a platform to one of the most notorious anti-Semites on the planet.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s a surprise. For over two years the Mayor of London has maintained a Trappist vow over the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509637,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-509636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}