There's nothing especially new to Kanye West's open association and collaboration with modern fascism in the form of the Donald Trump-led movement. Long-gone is the old Kanye West who was at one point against the genesis of the growing fascist threat in the midst of the brutal 'war on terror' / 'shock and awe' years. In Sept 2nd 2005 Kanye West nervously but correctly denounced George Bush that 'George Bush doesn't care about black people' in the context of the structural and institutional racism to the Katrina disaster and relief measures.
Kanye West is a very talented musician having helped to make further beautiful Hip-Hop music. He considers himself a genius, while we can all have our opinions to the extent of his creativity the point to be made here is that Kanye West clearly thinks of himself as genius who has failed to get the recognition he deserves and this dynamic has played upon his mental health in a negative and descending trajectory to say the least. His relationship with Kim Kardashian and its fall-out involving their children has added to his mental health challenges all in the context of his riches and the industry of narcissism and ego which is the upper echelons of the colonial entertainment industry. However, is his mental health really that bad to justify all of this utterly detestable postures?
Frankly the combination of failed relationships (possibly involving children), frustration with one's career paths, feelings that one isn't respected by society coupled with the growing fascist global community since the 1990s is an extremely common one. Whole swathes global populations since children and young pepole in this last few decades have been infiltrated with far-right views through on-line gaming, the endless YouTube far-right conspiracy videos and its connected leading advocates like David Icke, Prison Planet/Alex Jones and others.
Kanye West's descent into open fascist advocacy is common place amongst our peers. We have lacked effective anti-racist anti-fascist leaders and advocates for several years now which has created a growing fascist community which has great momentum and a very powerful world network and joint enterprise including Donald Trump, Brexiteers (especially the ERG group), leaders in Europe like Orban, Putin and others.
Reflecting back to his comments on Bush and Katrina, Kanye said in April 2020 that: "'This white person didn’t do something for us'. That is stemmed in victim mentality ... Every day I have to look in the mirror like I’m Robert De Niro and tell myself, ‘You are not a slave.’". While Kanye is correct narrowly that no-one is a slave in the humanity-affirming sense or that no one can be solely defined as a slave, the comment is actually meant to deny historic white supremacy (including enslavement by colonisers) and its contemporary forms.
Kanye doesn't, like many other oppressed people, want to be treated outside the framework of whiteness, but oppressed people don't have the power to just wish-away an objectively existing historic and current colonial system which still centrally uses white supremacy to facilitate its power and growing wealth from the labour and land of the world's oppressed and nature.
It seems instead of committing oneself in a collective struggle to counter act colonialism and white supremacy, Kanye has chosen to fold into modern fascism and seeks to benefit from it. Where else does Kanye have to go? Where is the modern movements and struggles anti-colonial black power struggles that Kanye can join that isn't attached to the other indirect wing of modern fascism - liberal imperialism? There isn't a place for him to go in this regards, it has to be constructed and someone like Kanye like everyone else in the establishment isn't going to be the one to lead it. This is a major crisis of our times.
In his frustrations and narcissism Kanye has denied white supremacy and instead done the classic far-right trick to then scapegoat another group of people generally kept outside the framework of whiteness by colonialism: Jewish people.
The establishment of the colonial settler state of Israel which has and continues to oppress and annex Palestinians and their land does not change the relationship of Jews to whiteness, what changes with the state of Israel in 1948 is a *Zionist* movement which has some influence amongst some Jews but like supremacism one has to totally resist right-wing/far-right naturalising or essentialising of an entire people who aren't in the realm of whiteness. Jews are an easy target for this for a number of reasons not least that due to their own oppression (something that is reflected in parts of the African heritage Black community) they are disproportionately represented in certain areas of society including the entertainment industry.
The anti-Jewish comments and postures of Kanye and his denial of anti-Black racism are often in the framework of far-right / Neo-Nazi politics two sides of the same fascist coin: “When you hear about slavery for 400 years that sounds like a choice.”
Kanye's well publicised and televised meeting with Donald Trump in the White House was another depressing occasion when Kanye says of the event: "There was something about when I put this hat on [MAGA hat] it made me feel like Superman. "You [Donald Trump] made a Superman - that's my favourite superhero - you made a Superman cape for me."
Kanye in the depths of his own confusions and ego sees an empowerment in attaching himself to Donald Trump and his political project, the dynamics of subservience to the 'white man' is rather loud and clear here. A denial of Black peoples experience of current and historic racism, an attachment to the most infamous figure and leader of global rising fascism and the attacks on an 'other' in the form of Jews and according to Kanye the 'false BLM narratives'. The BLM movement has a heavy dose of colonial liberalism to in in-part in terms of its funding and the way it places itself in the politics in world, there *is* a legitimate critique to be made of it from a more radical perspective that comes out of the traditions of the 'Black radical tradition' / 'Black marxism' / 'third world socialism / black socialism' etc. The attack on BLM and 'woke' politics however is hegemonised (totally controlled more or less) currently by the growing fascist community and as such is no critique at all as it's a totally bad faith approach with an agenda of manipulation and deceit at the service of the most vicious capitalist global ruling classes.
Reflecting Kanye's own cowardice to take responsibility for his own mistakes and to decide to look in the counter-opposite direction to the long standing black liberation movement and its liberation ideologies and the general ease by which people are slipping into the white supremacist fascist project the recent Kanye interview reflects something else about our times: too many are making excuses for people they know and their own descent into fascist madness. We have all experienced sitting together socially with friends and some mad fascist nonsense comes out of the mouths of one of our friends, perhaps against African people, or against Asian people, or against Jewish people or perhaps against more than one oppressed group of people. In these contexts often people allow the madness to pass without opposition or critical engagement. The same thing is happening here whereby people are making all kinds of twisted and nonsensical excuses for Kanye's sell out. If the root base of your stuff is bat-shit crazy fascism then everything else that might have a drop of truth in it is just materiel for the bat-shit crazy fascism.
Cowardice and sellout at the feet of growing fascism is the buzz of our era. It's where people seem to want to be as they think everything else is just a bit of an effort not worth making for whatever cheap and expedient excuses they give themselves. A few of us will not submit, and like the sellouts we too can clearly see what's going on it's just that we aren't going to sellout to the mass collapse into global fascism and racism. Some of us know our traditions that lead to liberation, and we know what leads to our further oppression.
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