Kanye to Alex Jones: ‘I Like Hitler’

BY NIKKI MCCANN RAMIREZ, RYAN BORT

Kanye West Praised Adolf Hitler and Nazis, denied the Holocaust, and attacked Jewish people at length during a disturbing Thursday afternoon interview with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. 

“Every human being has something of value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler,” Ye said. “Also Hitler was born Christian.”

“I see good things about Hitler also” said Ye, who wore a full face mask throughout the interview. “I love everyone. Jewish people are not going to tell me you can love us, and you can love what we’re doing to you with the contracts, and you can love what we’re pushing with the pornography. But this guy that invented highways, invented the very microphone that I use as a musician, you can’t say out loud that this person ever did anything good, and I’m done with that.”

When Jones said he didn’t like Nazis as the show moved to a commercial break, Ye interjected.

“I like Hitler,” he said.

“We got to stop dissing the Nazis all the time,” Ye said after the show returned from break.

Throughout the show, Ye blamed several subjects mentioned in the broadcast, including suppression of free speech, on “zionists.” At one point, he said that “it’s Satan that gets inside of the zionists and makes them do evil things.” At another, he mocked former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a bottle of Yoo-hoo and an aquarium net.

“You’ve got a little bit of a Hitler fetish going on,” said Jones, who seemed uncomfortable by the intensity of Ye’s antisemitism. “I’m not on the whole Jew thing,” Jones said later in the stream.

Ye was undeterred by the pushback. “I don’t like the word ‘evil’ next to Nazis,” he said. “I love Jewish people, but I also love Nazis.” (Hours after the interview, Ye tweeted an image of a swastika intertwined with a Star of David. “YE24 LOVE EVERYONE #LOVESPEECH,” he wrote.)

Ye continued to praise Hitler and Nazis while railing against Jewish people as the interview with Jones wore on, even praising Hitler’s “cool outfit” before launching into Holocaust denial: “He didn’t kill six million Jews. That’s just factually incorrect.”

“The Holocaust is not what happened,” Ye said. “Let’s look at the facts of that. Hitler has a lot of redeeming qualities.”

He also shared praise of Vladimir Putin, who has tried to justify Russia’s war on Ukraine by claiming he simply wants to rid the latter nation of Nazis. Ye was joined on Thursday by white nationalist holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, and when Fuentes said he’s “very pro-Putin” and “very pro-Russia,” Ye responded “I am also.”

Fuentes and Jones are both banned from Twitter, but Ye let them tweet to his more-than-32-million followers during the broadcast. He also let banned far-right activist Ali Alexander, who was also on the broadcast, tweet from his personal account. “INVESTIGATE THE CIVIL RIGHTS AND DUE PROCESS VIOLATIONS OF THE J6 POLITICAL PRISONERS,” Alexander wrote.

Ye has been embroiled in a public controversy regarding a stream of antisemitic statements made following backlash to a Yeezy fashion show in October in which he displayed “White Lives Matter” shirts. In a series of tweets and interviews, Ye lashed out against his critics and accused the “Jewish media” of censoring him and having an agenda against him. In a tweet that saw him temporary banned from Twitter, Ye threatened that he was going “death con 3 on Jewish people” — later saying he misspelled the military term “defcon.”

Ye has since partnered up with Fuentes, whom he took to Mar-a-Lago to have dinner with former President Donald Trump late last month. During the interview with Jones, Fuentes claimed that their dinner with the former president had been generally amiable until things took a turn when Trump received a phone call mid-meal. Fuentes claimed the group had been provided with “intel about how we were going to handle the Trump meeting,” and Ye accidentally forwarded the information to a lawyer, Nick Gravante, who was also connected to Trump. According to Fuentes, the phone call Trump received was from Gravante, or someone close to Trump tipped off by Gravante, who cautioned him that the meeting may have been a setup.

A spokesperson for Gravante categorically denied Fuentes’ account. “Mr. Gravante made no such call to Mr. Trump or anyone in his organization or orbit,” the spokesperson said in a statement provided to Rolling Stone. “Any suggestion to the contrary is patently false. As has been widely reported, Mr. Gravante ended his representation of Ye after Ye made antisemitic comments in October.”

Amid the backlash from the dinner with Trump, Fuentes accompanied Ye for an interview on a right-wing podcast earlier this week. Ye stormed out of the studio after the host pushed back on his antisemitism.

From Rolling Stone US.