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.”
You wouldn’t be. The First Amendment would protect you against criminal charges for just expressing hatred towards a group.
Now, if you took action to harm a group and your speech was part of that attempt, then you could be prosecuted for a hate crime.
Now, this might seem like a bad thing. Why shouldn’t we make “saying hateful things” a crime? The problem (well among the many problems) is “who decides what’s a hateful statement?”
Most people would agree praising Hitler (for anything other than being the guy who killed Hitler) is hateful. What about praising Thomas Jefferson? He was a founding father and did laudable things in his life. On the other hand, he owned slaves and raped at least one of them. So would praising Thomas Jefferson be a hate crime?
Also, what if the Republicans came into power again and gained the ability to decide what is criminal hate speech? Imagine if hating black people, LGBTQ people, Jews, Muslims, etc was allowed, but even mildly criticizing white Christians was criminal hate speech.
Yes you would.
The US’ first Amendment doesn’t protect you from german Law. And this happened in Germany.
Ah, you’re right. I missed that significant detail. If Kayne had done this in the US, he would have been covered by the First Amendment (though Adidas would have been within their rights to cut off their deal because they didn’t want to work with someone like him). By doing this in Germany? The First Amendment doesn’t apply then.