The site offered a spontaneous show of support for Jewish Americans and a visual representation of pushback against West, who has legally changed his name to Ye, after weeks of his anti-Semitic comments. It came after Ye said on Thursday that he liked Adolf Hitler and later tweeted an image of a swastika.
“As a Jew and an early Kanye fan,” said one commenter, “I’ve never looked into this sub[reddit] until this morning and i saw all the holocaust memorial posts. I’m in…tears now. Thank you for standing up for us. “
The posts include Holocaust-related photos and information intended to spread awareness about Nazi Germany’s persecution and murder of 6 million Jews. People also post recommendations for educational books and movies, photos from visits to Holocaust memorial and museum sites, and photos they say are of family members who were persecuted under the Nazi regime.
“Photos I took when I visited Auschwitz. This is real. This is what happened to millions of innocent men, women and children as a result of unchecked dehumanizing rhetoric against them,” wrote one person, attaching photos from the site of the Nazi death camp. “Never again.”
Sprinkled throughout these posts is another symbol of Ye’s fan rejection: Memes praising Taylor Swift, who has been seen as an enemy of Ye — and his fans — since he interrupted her 2009 MTV Video Music Awards acceptance speech. “Hey guys! Just getting into Taylor but don’t know where to start. Any suggestions?” wrote one person who posted a photo of Swift.
Some reports make it clear that even fans who remained loyal to Ye despite his repeated anti-Semitic comments and unruly behavior have now decided to abandon him.
“I looked up to you. And now you’ve ruined it all,” wrote one commenter. “Shame on you you used to be my favorite artist. Shame on me for calling you the GOAT. … I’m done with you.”
The shift on the subreddit began Thursday, after Ye praised Hitler and Nazis in an interview with right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. It came a little more than a week after Ye dined with former President Donald Trump and white nationalist Nick Fuentes, an event for which some Republicans chastised Trump. Fuentes also appeared on Jones’s show with Ye.
Wearing a full mask, Ye told Jones that he liked Hitler, then said, “I love Jewish people, but I also love Nazis.”
On Thursday evening, Ye tweeted a picture of a swastika combined with the Star of David. His Twitter account was suspended after the tweet. Both incidents drew widespread condemnation from politicians, Jewish groups and others.
The criticism included users on the subreddit, where on Thursday afternoon one person posted, “This is now a Taylor Swift Subreddit. We had a good run guys.” Hours later, after the swastika tweet, another user declared the thread “officially a holocaust awareness sub,” and holocaust-related messages began pouring in.
Reddit users post anonymously. A message sent to The Washington Post’s r/Kanye moderators was not returned. Information posted on Reddit, like elsewhere on social media, is not verified by fact-checkers.
Attempts to reach Ye were unsuccessful.
Hate speech and anti-Semitism online can contribute to real-world violence, experts say, and the current political climate has increased anxiety among American Jews. An April review by the Anti-Defamation League, an organization that fights anti-Semitism, found that the US saw a record number of anti-Semitic incidents in 2021, with an average of more than seven per day.
Pamela Nadell, director of American University’s Jewish Studies program, said she believes the United States is approaching a second “high tide of American anti-Semitism,” referring to the period between World War I and World War II that historians generally called the height of antisemitism in the country.
That makes learning about the Holocaust and the Jewish experience with anti-Semitism “of great value” to all Americans, she told The Post.
“What happened from October to the end of November … we’ve reached a point in American life where we now know that anti-Semitism is completely normalized,” she said, referring to Ye’s comments, his meeting with Trump and Fuentes and accusations of antisemitism that have also recently been leveled against basketball player Kyrie Irving. “There is certainly a growing sense of fear, legitimate fear. And I would say almost horror.”
Nadell recommended that people who want to know more about the Holocaust start by looking at the website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which includes an encyclopedia.
Ye’s actions have drawn outrage for weeks, from his wearing a “WHITE LIVES MATTER” T-shirt at his Paris Fashion Week show to an anti-Semitic rant and false information about the murder of George Floyd on the podcast “Drink Champs. ” A leaked portion of an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News also drew condemnation, as did an October tweet from Ye saying he would go “death con 3” on “JEWISH PEOPLE.”
Ye was dropped by Adidas, Gap, Balenciaga and other companies and has been intermittently suspended from Twitter. On Thursday, right-wing social app Parler announced that a deal for Ye to buy the company had been cancelled. A spokesman said it was “primarily due to his recent and well-publicised business difficulties.”
While some Redditors on r/Kanye posted messages of gratitude for the Holocaust material, others wondered why it had taken some fans so long to disown Ye. One person who identified herself as a “Jewish former Ye fan” urged people to learn about Jewish culture beyond the Holocaust, saying: “Anti-Semitism is not a thing of the past. … We need your alliance!”
Another person asked for reading material and movie recommendations, saying, “Thanks to Kanye, I will learn more about the history of the Holocaust.”
Even discussing Ye’s anti-Semitism presents a dilemma because it creates more publicity for his damaging comments, said Leonard Saxe, director of the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University.
“I don’t know if this Reddit approach of posting a lot of memories and information about the Holocaust will work, but it’s probably better than talking directly about him and how disgusting his views are,” Saxe told The Post.
“It’s a terrible situation, this moment in time when hatred and mistrust and other social forces seem to be stronger than ever, but educating people about the Holocaust is important,” he said, adding: “Turning the focus on the nations whose life [Hitler] destroyed and remembered, that is a good thing.
