"In March of this year, Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, announced an "open casting call" to his thirty-three million followers on X. Anyone thinking of showing up for the casting call had plenty of reasons to be wary. Previous Kanye West music videos had included one in which he and the rapper Lil Pump wear ridiculous boxy costumes and impish grins while sexually harassing a gigantic Adele Givens; one in which Teyana"
"But anyone who was still following West in 2025 had even more acute cause for concern, as the rest of his X post made clear. The casting call had five rules. West, a shock-jock poet on social media no less than in his music, spelled them out, with line breaks and expressive capitalization: All males NO FAT PEOPLE The skin complexion of Sean Combs and darker With shaved heads OR must be willing to shave head if approved MUST BE COMFORTABLE WEARING SWASTIKAS."
Ye paired a history of provocative, sexually explicit videos with an X casting call that demanded shaved heads, a dark skin complexion, and comfort wearing swastikas. The casting call listed openly discriminatory rules and invoked Nazi symbolism. He released a recent single titled "Heil Hitler" featuring thirty-five people chanting under harsh UV light. The combination of overt Nazi praise, antisemitic elements, and exclusionary demands compounded his public political ambitions and amplified widespread condemnation. The escalating use of extremist imagery and rhetoric alienated much of the mainstream cultural and commercial world.
Read at The New Yorker
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