Rapper/producer Kanye West has spent the past two weeks doubling and tripling down on a series of anti-Semitic comments he has made that have lost him endorsement deals, his agents at CAA, and have gotten his Twitter and Instagram accounts locked. And it appears that Ye’s insistence on continuing these public tirades may have lost him a large percentage of fans.
According to a recent Variety article, in the weeks since Kanye began his self-styled Crusade against the Jews, streams of his music have dropped among American listeners across streaming services by 23 percent, causing one to wonder about the remaining 77 percent who are apparently perfectly okay with what the rapper has been saying. In addition, his airplay on traditional over-the-air radio has dipped 13 percent, with stations like Los Angeles’ KIIS taking him out of their rotation entirely.
West’s public defamation tour began with a lengthy interview on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, with some of the rapper’s more inflammatory comments cut out of the final two-parter that made it to air. On the tape of outtakes obtained by Vice, West ranted about subjects including his assertion that “fake children” were placed in his house to “sexualize” his kids, and also said, among his many comments on Jews, that “I prefer my kids knew Hanukkah than Kwanzaa. At least it will come with some financial engineering.” This being a play on the long-debunked myth that Jewish people secretly control the world’s banks.
Since then, Kanye has continued his tirades, asserting on social media that he would soon “go Death Con 3” on the Jewish people. World opinion has turned so far against West’s bigoted statements that even former President Donald Trump, who once said about a clash at a White Supremacist rally that “there were very fine people on both sides,” distanced himself from West.