I thought I had stepped into an alternative universe. Who would have guessed that, in a dialogue between Kanye West and Alex Jones, Jones would come across as the voice of reason?
Yes, I know that’s a low bar. I’m talking about the same podcasting conspiracy theorist who has been ordered to pay more than $1 billion for slandering the parents of Sandy Hook school massacre victims with his baseless charge that the mass killing didn’t really happen. For that alone, he deserves more shame than acclaim.
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Yet even Jones seemed to have a tough time trying to get ahead of the crazy train Thursday when West, the rap star and fashion mogul who identifies as Ye these days, was his guest and took him on a ride deep into baseless conspiracies of his own, peppered with various antisemitic insults and a few kind words for — wait for it — Adolf Hitler and Nazis.
At one point, for example, Jones tried to defend Ye from his detractors by pointing out, “You’re not Hitler. You’re not a Nazi. You don’t deserve to be called that and demonized.”
But instead of simply agreeing, West responded, “Well, I see good things about Hitler also.”
Say, what?
“Every human being has something of value that they brought to the table,” he said, “especially Hitler.”
Especially. Even some of the rapper’s notable apologists who have been making him the unlikely darling of the political right with his earlier antics and remarks, such as playfully sporting a “White Lives Matter” sweatshirt at Paris Fashion Week, fled his side after that sit-down.
But I knew some surprises were in store when he started chattering about slavery being “a choice” and his fawning over Trump, saying of his MAGA hat, “There was something about when I put this hat on — it made me feel like Superman.”
Well, folks on the right and left were less pleased when he started complimenting Hitler. On Thursday, House Judiciary Committee Republicans, for example, deleted a controversial tweet they posted earlier in the month that expressed support for West, Donald Trump and Elon Musk. That tweet lasted through some more Kanye controversies but came down after the rapper’s InfoWars bombshells.
Even Jones showed signs of discomfort as West rambled deeper into the muck with such sentiments as, “We got to stop dissing the Nazis all the time.”
“You’ve got a little bit of a Hitler fetish going on,” said Jones. “I’m not on the whole Jew thing.”
But West pushed back, saying, “I love Jewish people, but I also love Nazis.”
Does that even come from the same planet as his apology in mid-October for his maniacal threat-tweet about going “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE,” mangling the military readiness condition “DEFCON.”
After that got him locked out of his Twitter and Instagram accounts for violating the platform’s policies, he apologized later on Piers Morgan’s TalkTV show for “the people that I hurt” and “the confusion that I caused … for the families of the people that had nothing to do with the trauma that I have been through.”
Yet, something happened to that poignant burst of self-awareness. West’s earlier antisemitic comments had cost him so many major endorsement deals that he reportedly lost his billionaire status, Fortune magazine reported. In the past year he was disinvited from performing at the Grammy Awards and suddenly pulled out of headlining this year’s Coachella festival.
But for some people, as an old saying goes, money is just a way of keeping score. What does it profit a man to have millions while losing his marbles?
Seriously. Ye’s rambling, irrational doublespeak (“I love Jewish people, but I also love Nazis”) reveals something that seems ominously wrong about his reasoning abilities. He has opened up at length in the past about his bipolar disorder diagnosis, but he sounds ambivalent about what he should do about it.
Mental illness is no excuse for racism or antisemitism, experts say. If he needs more help he should get it. Everybody around him, including his fans, should encourage him to help himself — for his own good, for the many who love him and the many other folks who are influenced by him.
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