Such insinuations allow Republicans to talk to dissidents and then go wild when others notice. Then the trolley itself becomes part of the political message: Those people won’t let you speak whatever anymore! Often, this performance depends on the language having at least some ambiguity, allowing the speaker to adopt an artificially innocent posture. “Obviously it’s kind of racist now if I’m talking about schools,” Mastriano snapped.
However, you don’t mind the ambiguity. Last week, after Sean Combs, the rapper known as Diddy, criticized him for “Living in purity is the problemT-shirt, Ye posted an exchange on Instagram accusing Combs of being controlled by Jews. That caused Ye’s Instagram account to be frozen, so he went to Twitter where he is now welcome back by the site’s future owner, Elon Musk. There, after declaring her anti-Semitic affiliation, Ye told us bluntly: “You guys have toyed with me and tried to blackmail anyone who opposes your agenda. friend.”
If Republicans were likely to be embarrassed, they might have felt some part. Ye, who has long been a fan of Donald Trump, gave an interview to Tucker Carlson in which he criticized the media’s “atheistic agenda” and opposed abortion. Always hungry for celebrity authenticity, conservatives have eaten up interviews. Republican Accounts on the House Judiciary Committee tweeted, “Kanye. Elon. Trumpet.” And now here, Ye has performed, completely unprepared, just what his right-wing transition requires. (Turns out, Carlson knew; Vice did. since the reveal that Ye’s most paranoid and pointless comments have been edited.)
Not surprisingly, some conservatives are rushing to distance themselves from Ye, pledging to defend their right to exploit their enemies without consequences. After all, the Antisemites may have been the original monsters. As Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in “Anti-Semite and the Jew,” first published in English in 1948, opponents “know that their remarks are frivolous, always ready to challenge . But they are amusing themselves, because their opponent is the one who is obliged to use words responsibly, because he believes in words. “It was the opponents who perfected the posture of just ask questions; The famous Holocaust denier David Irving claimed that Deborah Lipstadta scholar of the Holocaust, debated him.
Criticizing Ye requires admitting that there is such a thing as going too far, and taking it more seriously than possessing liars. Some conservatives have pivoted; “Fox & Friends Weekend” host, who previously condemned Ye’s Instagram suspension, called his tweets “Ugly” and “unfortunate.” Others, however, stuck with the typical right-wing scenario.
