An explosive new investigation by the New York Times details how Adidas employees experienced frequent anti-Semitism from Grammy Award-winning rapper and Yeezy designer Kanye West for nearly a decade.
Adidas officially ended its partnership with the rapper and producer, who now goes by Ye, in October of 2022, after multiple virulently anti-Semitic remarks, including a tweet in which the rapper threatened to go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.”
However, West’s pattern of anti-Semitism dates back to at least 2013, according to the Times’ reporting.
At the start of her report, Megan Twohey detailed how, in his initial meeting with Adidas executives at their German headquarters in 2013, West expressed his dissatisfaction with a proposed shoe design by taking a marker and drawing a swastika — the display of which is banned in Germany — on the design. He also reportedly told Jewish Adidas executive Jon Wexler, who at the time was Adidas’ global director of entertainment and influencer marketing, to “kiss a picture of Hitler every day.”
Yes, I suffer from the exact same condition as Kanye, and while that may at times explain my erratic behavior, it never excuses it, not does it absolve me of the responsibility of dealing with the consequences of my words or actions. The way people treat Kanye’s mental illness is insulting and infantiling, especially when Kanye himself seems to take no steps to reconcile it with his responsibility for his own actions.
Fuck Kanye and fuck anyone who tries to excuse his bullshit because “he’s not well.”