Popular conservative pundit Ben Shapiro said Wednesday that the wave of recent anti-Semitic rants by Kanye West—who now goes by “Ye”—resemble Nazi propaganda.
Responding to West’s latest remarks—in which the rapper told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo that a “Jewish underground media mafia” is targeting him—Shapiro said that West is spouting “Der Stürmer-type anti-Semitism, and that is about as ugly as it gets, and nobody should be defending that,” referring to a Nazi-era tabloid newspaper that was intensely anti-Semitic.
In the interview with Cuomo, West also said he doesn’t believe in the term “anti-Semitic” and that today’s music industry is akin to “modern-day slavery.”
“We meet in the synagogue on Fridays. If we were out to get him, we would’ve done it already. Our space laser would’ve hit him,” Shapiro quipped regarding West’s “Jewish underground media mafia” comment.
Shapiro added that West “is obviously an unstable human being.”
“He is promoting every conspiracy theory about Jews that you can think of, from Jews control the media, to Jews somehow perverted my wife sexually,” said Shapiro, founder of The Daily Wire and host of The Ben Shapiro Show.
Shapiro was referring to West’s claim that his ex-wife Kim Kardashian and comedian Pete Davidson “have sex by the fireplace to honor their grandmother. … It’s Jewish Zionists that’s about that life.”
One of the main issues with West’s anti-Semitism, Shapiro explained, is that he is targeting Jews in broad strokes. While his defenders claim West is criticizing specific people such as his agent, Shapiro countered, “Well, then, name their names. Why are they representative of the Jews?”
“Here is the difference between anti-Semitism and naming just a person who happens to be Jewish—that you’re blaming all the Jewish people,” Shapiro said. “If I see a black guy and I’m like, ‘Man, that particular guy really ticks me off,’ that’s not racism. If I say, ‘That guy’s black, all black people are terrible,’ that’s racism. Kanye West does the latter thing.”