Kanye West’s poisonous anti-semitism seems to have come home to roost.
Kanye West has responded to being dropped by several major partnerships, including Adidas, CAA, MRC and Balenciaga.
Ari Emanuel. I lost 2 billion dollars in one day. And I’m still alive. This is love speech. I still love you. God still loves you. The money is not who I am. The people is who I am,West wrote on Instagram. The post comes days after Emanuel, CEO of Endeavor, urged companies to stop doing business with West.
He was “worth” $2.5 billion last week, now he’s “worth” half a billion dollars. Was he actually worth that much? Is he worth that much now? Is anyone? This tells me that all those wealthy people are actually much more fragile than they’d like you to think.
Also, a ‘death-to-Jews’ speech is not love speech.
I’m to the point where I’m no longer trying to guess at the motivations of my political and religious opponents. I don’t care if they actually believe the crap they spout or that’s it’s just a cynical grift for money and/or power. All I know is that their demonstrably wrong “speech” is damaging civilization and they need to be opposed.
Can Tucker Carlson face similar financial consequences next?
@specialffrog:
Sadly, Ye’s support came from companies that actually want to continue doing business in a way that requires them to sell more goods, and one that has to deal with competition; thus they consider PR problems to be problems that affect their bottom line.
Carlson’s support comes indirectly from companies that are in active coalition against the government so they care less about competition than about propaganda that makes sure they all continue to make their ill-gotten gains,;and more directly from the company actually performing the propaganda, so PR problems simply mean he hasn’t been lying hard enough yet.
I truly wonder exactly how much of a wealthy person’s wealth is actually tangible, and how much is like “Crypto-Millionaires” that can’t offload due to a failure to find a bigger fool, and who becomes destitute the instant the rug gets pulled.
A lot of a company’s value is based on expectations of future performance. Likely that’s extra true of companies that are largely based on image, such as celebrity prestige projects.
specialffrog @#2 — Sure, Carlson could face similar financial consequences if he got fired. It’s unlikely that he would say something that would push his sponsor…Rupert Murdoch…into firing him. However, if it came out that he was engaging in shenanigans a la Bill O’Reilly or Roger Ailes, then he would be out the door and fade into obscurity.
Getting at the root of the problem, Rupert Murdoch and his kids, is a more difficult problem. They are quite wealthy and powerful, and their wealth isn’t that dependent on advertisers. To financially punish the Murdoch’s you have to get at their cable deals and other major sources of income.
see, he wasn’t sayin’ “death to jews” he was just sayin’ “death con,” because he didn’t understand the term “def con” that he’d heard in films. that’s all, see. see?
i still remember when he was congratulating another rapper for getting a girlfriend under 18 on some radio show. this guy fucking sucks.
I suspect Kanye West has mental/emotional problems.
I’ve scraped things off the sole of my boots that were “worth” more than Ye.
“Love” for the in group is often linked to hate for out groups.
Even for people that are less messed up than this stable genius.
Having accumulated $X does not make you worth $X.
chritoph @ #8 — I gather it’s common knowledge that he has mental/emotional/cognitive issues. Apparently he says so himself. I don’t think that excuses him, but perhaps it helps understand. And of course, there are people around him that want to exploit his notoriety.
Money Is a social construct. Even if you are using Krugerrand or other gold coins, the value is not constant.
If you watched Stephen Colbert recently, you heard about those super-rich preppers that will rely on mercenaries after the apocalypse, and worry about how to maintain their loyalty if money becomes worthless.
He could easily make at least half of that money back by marketing his “White Lives Matter” shirts to the MAGA crowd. Maybe even start his own ,Blueives Matter” brand. Remember when right-wingers had a “buycott” of Whole Foods when they thought libs turned against it?
All he has to do is replace “Jewish” with “liberal” and he’d have a whole new customer base and he can still push anti-Semitism in more subtle ways. His new base of fools would eat it up.
*”Blue Lives Matter” obv.
@12
the primary nature of money and value seems to be overlooked by most, especially by the conservative wealthy and the “nouveau riche”. it is no more substantial the crypto it is all based on some kind of agreement and getting a vast majority of humans to agree to any one thing at the same time is not an easy thing to accomplish. Those agreements are a lot of what make up a market. When the real shit hits the fan those agreements go right out the window very fast..
this fool just learned what happens when you step in it. and is falling like Icarus his “wealth and power” just wax and feathers.
#6 The crazy thing about Fox News is that they don’t need to sell commercials to be profitable. The cable fees that they get are sufficient to make them profitable. The only channels that makes more in cable fees is ESPN.
After reading some of the Israeli New Historians like Avi Shlaim back in the early 2000s I had turned a very critical eye toward Israel in many respects. Sadly some on the Palestinian side went with intensified violence in the form of suicide bombings so empathy is difficult to come by. But one can be critical of Israeli policies and some very rightward shifted sorts of Zionism without being antisemitic. It’s a hot mess! Herzl himself was kinda cool though. And Zionism given the Dreyfus Affair, Russian pogroms etc was fully understandable. Then the Holocaust!!!
From that complicated perspective I can’t help but go all in with the ADL. I do recall speculating on a previous thread that Kanye was echoing Black Israelites. ADL says: “Ye’s comments have been embraced by antisemitic extremist groups. During an October 16 sermon for the Nation of Islam’s annual Holy Day of Atonement commemoration, Student Minister Ishmael Muhammad referenced Ye’s recent remarks. Extremist Black Hebrew Israelite sects also praised Ye over the weekend for helping spread their teachings to more people. Other extremist groups, including White Lives Matter and the Goyim Defense League, have leveraged Ye’s comments to further their own agendas and inspire new propaganda campaigns.”
https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/unpacking-kanye-wests-antisemitic-remarks
Coyne had linked this in a recent WEIT thread. He’s johnny come lately to the Kanye downward spiral, but hat tips are a thing I suppose. Kanye’s rhetoric is so extreme I hat tip Coyne for a link.Yep! Not a trend!
“…The people is who I am,” West wrote on Instagram.
Um…which people?
the primary nature of money … is no more substantial the crypto it is all based on some kind of agreement and getting a vast majority of humans to agree to any one thing at the same time is not an easy thing to accomplish. Those agreements are a lot of what make up a market. When the real shit hits the fan those agreements go right out the window very fast.
Actually, “those agreements” don’t “go out the window” all that often, at least not WRT state-supported currencies. This is because “those agreements” are most often based on both the universal need for a currency and a shared understanding of how much of the currency is appropriate amount to have moving about in an economy under current circumstances. So as long as there isn’t too much more or less money in the system as the general agreement specifies, NO ONE will want to toss the agre3ement out the window.
But that’s not what’s happening to Ye — he’s just not getting money he expected to get because certain business deals are falling through; which is a totally different issue.
@ birgerjohansson :
Yes I saw that great segment mentioned – starting at the 2 min 30 seconds mark approx. Stephen very quickly spotted some key flaws through the richie riches “genius” plans.
Colbert has had some brilliant stuff lately esp on the mid eterms and is usually well worth watching. Even if it is generally broadcast after midnight here.
It was only two weeks ago that Ye complained about the “Jewish media” referring to him as a rapper instead of a billionaire, although the former implies some talent and the second does not. So however made up those numbers are, he cares about them.
@22- monad
I became familiar with rapping though Rakim, EPMD, Public Enemy, Roxanne Shante, KRS One, Big Daddy Kane, MC Lyte, pre-lame ass LL Cool J (he went very soft before movies and TV fame) and later Mos Def, Busta Rhymes, RZA (on Ghost Dog soundtrack) etc. Hell I am more familiar with goof ball Diddy (due to Biggie) than Kanye. Kanye may have had talent and his Dubya diss after Katrina gave him cred. I’m not a Taylor Swift fan but he got weird about her even if in admiration for Beyonce.
Kanye could never match up to https://youtu.be/VFCey9o_0hY
Who could really though? Nobody. Ever.
@23-
Ughhh!!! Actually Mos Def is awesome but I meant this Eric B and Rakim instead:
https://youtu.be/2TN-kDEKxF0
Hit the wrong link. Mos Def comes very close to Rakim in delivery though so not a total oops, even if he’s on Chappelle.
Ok Kanye doesn’t hold a candle to either Mos Def or Rakim. So there!
One of life’s mysteries: why is the ‘c’ silent in crap music?
hemidactylus, it doesn’t need a match or even a candle; it needs a flamethrower.
While I’m at it, one more thing. The dude now claims to be called ‘Ye’.
So why do most people still use the dead name?
It seems to me that wealth only makes sense in the context of the civilization supporting and ratifying that wealth. Inflation can negate it, or a thoughtless word can get it cancelled. It seems to me that the wealthy would do well to remember that. It’s probably why they hate “fiat currency” so much.
@20: The context was about millionaire/billionaire doomsday preppers, who believe that in a total collapse of society they’ll be able to form libertarian communes where they can rule everything because they’ve got stockpiles of money that they can use to pay private armies of mercenaries. What they fail to realize that in the event that an apocalypse actually does wipe out civilization, guns and skills will be worth a hell of a lot more than gold will so there’s actually nothing to keep the people with guns from just killing them and taking their stuff once the mercenaries get wise to the situation.
microraptor:
And food and water and medicine and tech.
And, um, the very point is they can have the “guns and skills” if they have the rest of it.
Anyway. Ye is like two or three orders of magnitude less rich than those people.
And, evidently, not quite as clever — mental health issues aside.
@#29, microraptor:
In the event of total societal collapse, even guns and ammo aren’t worth much, because they won’t be very portable without a supply of gasoline for vehicles, and once you use the ammo it’s gone. They will let you defend a specific location for a limited amount of time (which lengthens if you don’t use them). Roving bands of Mad Max-style bandits in modified cars are not going to last very long post-fuel-delivery-breakdown although a lot of people think in terms of that. What would actually be valuable would be the ability to raise food, spin thread, weave, and carry out repairs to plumbing and carpentry — and although thugs with guns can steal your stuff they can only rob you for a limited time (no resupplies of gas and ammo, remember) and if you survived them, after that you still have the skills. (The spinning and weaving skills are seriously important — doomsday preppers sometimes dimly realize about the food part, those big buckets of dehydrated meals with a shelf life of 20 years won’t last forever, but having a reliable source of cloth is almost always forgotten and in the event of a meltdown that lack will gradually become more and more and more important as time passes.)
Not-at-all generic Vicar:
[memo] guns and ammo and a supply of gasoline for vehicles
[submemo] vehicles
[etc]
Well, yes… but it kinda depends. And defence can be strategic — indirect or even logistical.
Um, fantasy post-apocalyptic fiction is just that.
Also, you clearly have no idea of the scale of modern economics, of resources, of warehouses. It’s much, much more that a lifetime’s worth, that’s for sure.
Not as much as the magic panel that in the sunlight feeds the energy thing that powers the box that tells you what spinning and weaving are, nevermind the applicable skills.
(Since we’re in this post-apocalyptic mode)
Heh. In your imagination, perhaps.
John Morales @25
It’s pronounced “pop.”
When I first saw that, my assumption was that “death con” is probably some obscure neonazi code for holocaust. The context speaks clearly here, even if the words don’t.