The Media Research Center has had trouble criticizing Kanye West’s fits of anti-Semitism after years of praising his embrace of right-wing narrative. The most egregious example of this is an Oct. 13 post by Jason Cohen that actually tried to argue that West’s banning from various outlets and platforms following those anti-Semitic remarks was proof that his hatred of Jews was correct.
Cohen began his argument this way: “In the past week, Ye made outrageous antisemitic posts and claims, but banning him may only prove his point.” After rehashing his posts and whining that “Ye got banned from Instagram for inferring that P-Diddy is controlled by Jews, an antisemitic trope,” he added: “People assumed this terrible tweet implied violence, but that seems a little ridiculous. It is difficult to believe anyone would think Ye wants to carry out violence against Jewish people. But maybe with all the propaganda framing him as a crazy white supremacist, they truly did.” Cohen then bizarrely argued that Jewish groups who responded to Kanye’s anti-Semitism was as bad as the anti-Semitism itself:
Ye even tweeted, “Who you think created cancel culture?,” seeming to suggest that the Jews created it and the bannings are proof.
American Jewish Committee (AJC) and Anti-Defamation League (ADL) are two Jewish organizations that both rightfully condemned Ye. However, they each used extreme language. AJC called his posts “dangerous” in a video that was produced before the “death con 3” tweet. So it was solely based on Ye using Jewish stereotypes such as greed and power.
ADL took it up a notch, tweeting: “The behavior exhibited this week by @kanyewest is deeply troubling, dangerous, and antisemitic, period. There is no excuse for his propagating of white supremacist slogans and classic #antisemitism about Jewish power, especially with the platform he has.” This tweet was also before the “death con 3” comment.
Ye has said terrible things before, but never has he been canceled to this extent. He was only banned from social media in the past for harassing his ex-wife, which is a much more agreeable reason. And he was never banned by a bank.
It would be more productive to condemn him, debate him, ask him to apologize, etc. Anything but canceling or condoning.
Hopefully, these institutions come to their senses and uncancel Ye. And hopefully, Ye comes to his senses, apologizes, and adapts his views. But if he continues to be canceled, they may be cemented instead.
What? Anti-Semitism is not an “agreeable” reason to take action against someone? It would be “productive” to “debate” Kanye about anti-Semitism? Why would anyone — let alone anyone on the right — elevate anti-Semitism to a subject worthy of debate? And it’s merely “cancel culture” to shun someone who promotes an ugly and, yes, dangerous ideology?
The MRC eventually saw the folly and tone-deafness of Cohen’s argument, because according to the Internet Archive, his post was deleted by Oct. 17, four days after it was made live — the URL to his post now returns a 404 error on the NewsBusters website — but the MRC told nobody about it, and it definitely didn’t apologize for posting it in the first place. But the internet is forever, and Cohen’s highly misguided post lives on.
As we noted, Cohen followed up on Oct. 27 with a similarly misguided post playing the “cancel culture” card again by complaining that Ye’s anti-Semitism got his music dropped from streaming services — though Cohen strangely refused to use the word “anti-Semitic” to accurately describe what Ye did. It’s still live as of this writing.