What Happened To Kanye? Ye's Controversy And Antisemitic Statements Explained

Well, it seems that Kanye West has finally gone too far in the eyes of many. After years of not just pushing the envelope but shoving it forcefully on a variety of issues, the rapper has made a series of anti-Semitic comments that have disgusted and alarmed his fans and sponsors.

At each step along Ye’s descent into the darkest timeline version of himself, memes have set the pace and kept track of the transformations, as well as the flood of reactions from people all around the internet.

But in an internet news cycle that churns out new viral moments every day, it can be hard to keep track of exactly what happened and when. Here’s a timeline of Kanye's anti-Semitism arc and what you need to know about the rapper's decent into controversy.

2018

In April 2018, Kanye West returned to Twitter after a hiatus and became involved with conservative influencer Candace Owens. He continued to support Donald Trump and dabble in right-wing views and politics. On a May 1st appearance at TMZ, Ye claimed that slavery was a choice, leading many to criticize and to push back against his fundamentally incorrect views. Ye appeared to be fixated on the idea of “mental prisons,” and seemed to view his new conservative friends as helping him break out of one.

This spring of 2018 arc continued through the fall, with Kanye’s visit to Donald Trump in the Oval Office on October 11th, 2018. During the course of this visit, Kanye wore a red MAGA hat which he said made him feel like a “superhero” and revealed that the passcode to his smartphone was just the number “0” tapped out several times.

Following this visit, Kanye seemed to have a change of heart. He tweeted on October 30th, 2018 that he’d “been used to spread messages I don’t believe in” and seemed to renounce his right-wing connections.

2020

Jumping up to 2020, Ye was drawn back into politics and into contentious posting. He announced his 2020 presidential campaign in a July 4th, 2020 tweet, although he had been talking about running for years.

After, the internet largely mocked his intentions as he released a political platform that many described as "incoherent." The campaign unrolled like a piece of performance art, but also helped to promote Ye’s other creative projects at the time. Predictably, he lost.

October 2022

The latest chapter in Kanye’s flirtation with the fringes of American politics began in the fall of 2022. The rapper and entrepreneur, divorced from Kim Kardashian and increasingly isolated, lashed out on Instagram against corporate partners like Adidas that he thought wronged him.

Partnering again with Candace Owens, Kanye sported a White Lives Matter shirt at Paris Fashion Week, recreating the kind of news cycle which had accompanied his previous comments.

It was at this point, amid the White Lives Matter controversy, that rapper Zack Fox tweeted the tweet seen below. On October 8th, 2022, the Kanye train arrived at that station.

The rapper was banned from Instagram (where he had been posting his thoughts and attacks on perceived enemies). He logged onto Twitter to criticize Mark Zuckerberg and was welcomed by Elon Musk as a friend. The next morning, he tweeted that he would go “def con 3” on Jewish people and then implied that Jewish people had invented cancel culture and conspired to oppress black people and others. Twitter locked him out of his account later that day for his anti-Semitic provocations.

On October 12th, 2022, Van Lathan, a TMZ staffer present at Kanye’s 2018 “slavery was a choice” rant (who notably and eloquently refuted the rapper’s views) shared that Ye also said he "loved Hitler" that day.

On October 16th, 2022, Kanye appeared on the Drink Champs podcast where he repeated claims about Jewish people “owning the media” and claimed that George Floyd died from a fentanyl overdose and not police brutality by Derek Chauvin.

By the end of October, brands like Balenciaga, Adidas and others ended their partnerships with Kanye West, leading him to lose millions of dollars and become increasingly isolated. Users online reacted with a mix of enthusiasm and concern that the brands hadn’t dropped Kanye earlier.

November 2022

On November 20th, 2022, Kanye confirmed that he would run for President again in 2024, and hired controversial right-wing figure Milo Yiannopoulous as a campaign adviser. Around this time, he invited self-professed white nationalist incel Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes into his entourage.

On November 22nd, Ye, Fuentes and another controversial influencer, Sneako, had dinner with Donald Trump, and Ye reportedly asked Trump to run to be his Vice President in 2024. Trump himself was widely criticized for hosting Fuentes and Ye, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell implying that he would not support a Trump 2024 campaign if Trump continued to associate with alleged neo-Nazis.

December 2022

In a December 1st, 2022, interview with Alex Jones, Kanye truly crossed the Rubicon in the eyes of many. Concealing his face behind a black mask in an appearance on Infowars, Kanye insisted, “I see good things about Hitler” and “I like Hitler,” among many other controversial statements.

Many posters online noted moments in the episode where it seemed as if Jones was trying to give Kanye the opportunity to walk back his comments but that rapper simply doubled down on his views.

That same day, Kanye tweeted a Raëlist symbol of the swastika inside of the Star of David, implying it would be his presidential campaign logo. Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, then reached out to Ye and told him he had gone too far. When asked by Ye who gave him the authority to ban people from Twitter, Musk replied with an inaccurate version of the Lord’s Prayer (according to text screenshots shared by Ye).

Following the Alex Jones appearance and the new Twitter ban, Kanye fans and critics alike responded with memes mourning the rapper’s descent into anti-Semitism, namely the series of "He Made Graduation" memes.