In a Friday installment of his podcast he titled “The Madness of Ye,” Ben Shapiro criticized Twitter owner Elon Musk for banning rapper Kanye West because he was not “actually inciting violence against people.”
Twitter executed a “permanent suspension” of Kanye West after he posted a swastika designed to look like a Star of David. The ban was announced early Friday morning, after West’s crazed appearance on the Alex Jones Show on Thursday. West, accompanied by neo-Nazi/Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, praised Adolf Hitler for all the good stuff the chap with the Chaplin mustache did (the Autobahn, they always mention the Autobahn).
Shapiro, in keeping with Voltaire’s great adage (made up by Evelyn Beatrice Hall), “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” said he found Kanye West’s comments offensive (Surely you knew Shapiro was a religious Jew), but noted that West had not used Twitter to incite violence or do anything else illegal, and should not be banned for exercising his right to free speech.
“I understand why Musk did it,” Shapiro explained. “Do I think that Musk should have done it? I actually don’t think that Musk should have done it. So, all of these things can be true at once, as always. … Ye should not be banned from Twitter. Ye definitely needs treatment. People who are treating him seriously for their own purposes are sick, deviant. The people around him who are using a person who’s in the middle of a breakdown for their own purposes are perverse and cynical.”
Shapiro discussed the Alex Jones interview where West wore a black ski mask and announced: “I see good things about Hitler, also. Every human being has value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler. I was thinking about Satan. Whether it’s the Zionists or Hitler — it’s not the person. It’s Satan using the people, who are controlled by demonic forces.”
And West continued with his favorite topic: “The Jewish media has made us feel like the Nazis and Hitler have never offered anything of value to the world. Meanwhile, there’s all of these things that are happening.”
Shapiro, for his part, noted soberly: “When you sit there, doing weird Elmo voices carrying a net and a bottle of Yoohoo, people tend to take you less seriously.”
And added: “When you show up on Tim Pool with Milo Yiannopoulos and Nick Fuentes, and Tim Pool simply asks you why you are slandering all Jews as opposed to just naming the Hollywood agents that you don’t like, and you get up and you walk out – sunlight is a pretty good disinfectant here.”
And: “Do I think that Ye is responsible for actually inciting violence against people? No. Do I think he’s raising the temperature radically? Absolutely. And I speak as somebody who’s personally targeted by name, by Ye in all these interviews, right? There’s a reason I have 24/7 security. Do I think that Ye is responsible for incitement to the extent that would be necessary to ban him from a platform like Twitter? I do not.”
