Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, has been suspended from Twitter for 12 hours for inciting violence, the platform’s new billionaire owner Elon Musk confirmed on Friday.
The controversial U.S. rapper, who only had his account reinstated recently after a suspension for posting antisemitic messages in October, posted a series of erratic tweets on Thursday, including an image of a swastika inside the Star of David.
His final tweet on the platform was a photograph of U.S. media mogul Ari Emanuel, who is also Jewish, spraying water at the back of Musk’s head with a hose on what appears to be a private yacht.
“Let’s always remember this as my final tweet #ye24,” West posted prior to his suspension.
The suspension follows an interview released on Thursday with U.S. conservative commentator Alex Jones in which West proclaimed to “love Hitler,” denied the Holocaust, and called on people to “stop dissing the Nazis all the time.”
“You’re not Hitler, you’re not a Nazi, you don’t deserve to be called that and demonized,” said Jones to West.
West responded by saying, “Well, I see good things about Hitler also. I love everyone. Jewish people are not going to tell me, ‘You can love us, and you can love what we’re doing to you with the contracts, and you can love what we’re pushing with the pornography,’ but this guy that invented highways, that invented the very microphone that I use as a musician, you can’t say out loud that this person ever did anything good, and I’m done with that. I’m done with the classifications. Every human being has something special that they’ve brought to the table, especially Hitler.”
“The Holocaust is not what happened, and Hitler has a lot of redeeming qualities,” West claimed, who was sporting a full-on black face mask.
As well as praising the Nazi Germany, which was responsible for the Holocaust, West went off about sin, pornography and the devil.
“I tried my best,” Musk tweeted on Thursday in response to a social media user’s plea to help “fix” West. “Despite that, he again violated our rule against incitement to violence. Account will be suspended,” Musk added.
The new Twitter owner subsequently posted on Friday to clarify that West’s “account is being suspended for incitement to violence, not an unflattering pic of me being hosed by Ari. Frankly, I found those pics to be helpful motivation to lose weight!”
West’s public demise in recent months has seen global sports brand Adidas cut ties with the rapper, and his access to social media platform Instagram has also been revoked. Jewish groups such as the Anti-Defamation League called for West to be canceled, and was active in having the rapper dropped from a wide variety of brands and labels. West has claimed this is proof.of Jewish power in the United States, while others have indicated that these brands are only trying to protect their image.
West also received a text from his personal trainer, Harley Pasternik, who happens to be Jewish, threatening to have West institutionalized. West claims that Pasternik had him institutionalized the first time he was admitted to the hospital and diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which West claims was diagnosed by a “Jewish doctor.”
“Second option, I have you institutionalized again where they medicate the crap out of you, and you go back to Zombieland forever. Play date with the kids just won’t be the same,” wrote Paternik continued.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson ran a segment on the incident, saying, “The fact that no one’s investigating tells you a lot.”
West also posted the text message to his Twitter account. Pasternik has not denied the text message is authentic.
West had 18.5 million followers on Instagram, and more than 30 million followers on Twitter.
His latest Twitter ban comes hours after Parler, a social media platform which advocates free speech, announced it had canceled talks with West to purchase the company.
“The company has mutually agreed with Ye to terminate the intent of sale,” Parlement Technologies said in a statement on Thursday.
