Category: Unit 2

I want to preface that Ye’s (Formerly known as Kanye West) antisemitic, anti-black/conservative rhetoric is far too cogent and effective to have mental illness as a shield. His mania is only allowing him to say it so loudly and be emboldened to go on an antisemitism tour for the past month, but his messaging is far too coherent to just be ranting fueled by his mental illness and it’s likely he does hold these beliefs to heart.
Ye’s perpetuation of the myth that there exist a Jewish cabal that owns the media is due to mostly his preconceived bigotry and his lack analysis from a class point of view. As many have pointed out Ye shouldn’t hold a grudge because the people who exploited him are Jewish but should instead be speak against their malpractice as businessmen. However, I think that it’s a symptom that these businessmen exploit those who work for them, the pattern of exploitation isn’t just because Ye had an unlucky streak with contracts, it’s because such exploitation is inherent to the capitalist system, to extract as much profit as possible from the laborer. The businessmen regardless of creed, nationality, race, and/or gender act in favor of their class interest, they unify along class. You don’t need a formal conspiracy to consolidate power when capital understand that it is within their class interest to do so, and they understand what their class interests are.
Racism has always been used as a weapon to be used against the working class to be united under one unifying struggle. During the reconstruction era, racism was used for the recently freed slaves to not recognized that they and the poor, working class white people had identical goals. Had they come to the realization and united along class boundaries it would’ve posed an existential threat for capital owners. Therefore, every poor white person was conditioned to believe that no matter how much they are abused by the systemic violence that is poverty and by the capital owners that they toil for, they are still superior to black people. It allows to find solace in knowing at least they aren’t black despite their exploitation by the capital owning class.
Seeing yourself as a temporarily embarrassed billionaire when you are an exploited proletarian and advocating for the interest of the wealthy for “when I get there” is modus operandi for most of contemporary working-class Americans. Ye is applying this exact same principle but for white supremacy. Ye who has now accumulated enough wealth/capital is able to transcend above his struggle as a working-class black man in America, now he operates within his own class interest as a wealthy capital owner.

“Far from experience producing his idea of the Jew, it was the latter which explained his experience. If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him.” – Jean Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite & Jew.

“It is not the Jews who are the enemies of the working people. The enemies of the workers are the capitalists of all countries. Among the Jews there are working people, and they form the majority. They are our brothers, who, like us, are oppressed by capital; they are our comrades in the struggle for socialism. Among the Jews there are kulaks, exploiters, and capitalists, just as there are among the Russians, and among people of all nations. The capitalists strive to sow and foment hatred between workers of different faiths, different nations, and different races. Those who do not work are kept in power by the power and strength of capital. Rich Jews, like rich Russians, and the rich in all countries, are in alliance to oppress, crush, rob and disunite the workers.” – V. Lenin.