Cancelling Kanye West Validates His Worldview

Over the past week, most of you have probably read something about multinational corporations and institutions trying to “cancel” the artist formerly known as Kanye West because of his alleged anti-Semitic views. These corporations have ranged from clothing and footwear marketing corporations such as Adidas and Balenciaga to banks such as JP Morgan Chase. I am not going to bore you with the list of corporations who are boycotting him since most of them are doing it for virtue display and have basically zero exposure to his branded products. All of this had reduced his alleged calculated wealth by more than a billion, but let us be honest- Kanye has hundreds of millions in assets, so this is unlikely to crimp his lifestyle. It has also been fascinating to watch a multitude of self-anointed media “experts” blame his alleged anti-Semitic views on everything from mental illness (mania) to serious moral deficiencies.

As usual, I do not care about what the media and its lackeys say and will give you my thoughts on this situation. Some of what I will point out might make a few of you unhappy, but reality cannot be ignored. With that out of the way, let us get into the topic, by starting with whether Kanye’s expressed views are really anti-Semitic.

1] To the best of my knowledge, Kanye has thus far not made any threat of physical violence towards people who are culturally or religiously Jewish. Nor has he claimed that the Holocaust was fake or “it was deserved”. I have not heard him say that people of that religio-cultural background are irredeemably evil. He is not blaming the death of Jesus on Jews, nor is he claiming that they are all part of some conspiracy to bring down western civilization. In other words, his public views (thus far) do not satisfy the criteria of overt anti-Semitism, as it is commonly understood. Mel Gibson has a far more legitimate claim to being a real anti-Semite.

So what are the most controversial comments that Kanye has made thus far? Well.. he claims that Jewish people are over-represented in positions of senior executive power in the media and entertainment industry in this country. Kanye then goes on to say that these executives act as an incestuous clique and steal from the potential earnings of artists and actors, many of whom are Black. Here is a thought experiment- replace every instance of “Jewish” with “White” in the last two sentences and tell me if that statement still would sound controversial to liberals. Is it really controversial to say that senior executives in any sector of the economy are greedy, dishonest and often incompetent assholes? So what is so special about people in that sector?

Let us move on the claim about Jewish people being over-represented in the media and entertainment industry in this country. Is that true? Of course it is, and has been the case for a century. And it is not just as senior corporate executives and owners. They are also overrepresented as famous actors, comedians, writers, directors, producers and much more. Have you noticed that almost nobody, including Kanye, have any issue with that? His issues with Jewish executives in entertainment and media corporations seem to be largely due to them being senior executives rather than Jewish. If the film industry was still WASPish as it used to be in the first decade of its existence, Kanye would have been accused of anti-WASPish views.

2] Kanye West is not the first star to express profound dissatisfaction with how talent is treated by senior executives and entertainment corporations. Famous comedians such as Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock, among many other, have expressed similar sentiments in some of their interviews and comedy specials over the years. It is just that they did not explicitly connect this to those people being Jewish. Still other such some famous rappers such as Ice Cube etc have expressed sentiments similar to Kanye in the past. Therefore, the idea that Kanye West is somehow unique in his beliefs is laughable. Anybody who has followed the public views of many famous black singers and musicians, over any extended period of time, will know that the views expressed by him are actually quite common within those groups.

And it gets worse.. the 2016 and 2020 runs by Bernie Sanders for the Democratic party presidential nomination were sunk because many older black people did not vote for him since he was Jewish and supposedly reminded them of their Jewish landlord or some other unpleasant figure of authority. To put it bluntly, anybody who has lived in this country for some time knows that Black people don’t have a flattering view of Jewish people- especially ones in positions of power over them. We can certainly talk about the possible reasons for this worldview in another post, but doing so won’t alter it. But why stop there.. ask Black people what they think of East Asians or Hispanics about how they see Black people. My point is that this is all part of a much more complex and fundamental problem in this country.

3] It is interesting to note that JPMorgan Chase has no problems doing business with Jeffrey Epstein even after his first conviction for you know what.. Nor did they stop doing business with him even after his second conviction which ended in his alleged suicide. Then again, banks and other financial instructions have never displayed any real “moral compass” with clients involved in large scale drug running, massive levels of corruption or even modern day slavery. And you know what.. policing the “morals” of other people is not their business of banks or other similar institutions. Similarly Adidas, Nike and every other clothing and footwear seller in the West are dependent on products made in sweatshops by poorly paid and exploited non-white people. Have you ever seen them pay more than lip service to these far more serious abuses?

Have you seen a similar movement to boycott the films produced in full, or part, by Harvey Weinstein? And there are many other powerful people with similar behavioral issues in the entertainment and media sector. They have not yet seen such a “public reckoning” and will almost certainly never seen one. And this brings me to the most likely outcome of the present situation with Kanye West. Let us be brutally honest about something.. the reactions to Kanye’s statements validates his worldview to a degree even he probably thought was not possible. The guy has sufficient fame and assets to survive this attempt to “cancel” him. So how are you going to deal with this successful martyr one year from now, what about two years.. do you have a plan?

It does not help that this is happening at the same time that the general public in this country is rapidly losing faith in institutions, many of whom are often headed or represented by people from that same religio-cultural background. Also, long-term socio-economic downturns tend to cause rapidly rising levels of public dislike for minorities who happen to be more successful than average. Nothing good can from the overwrought and very poorly though reactions to Kanye’s brain farts.

What do you think? Comments?