Ben Shapiro: Kanye Declaring War on Jews Is Bad, But…

Daily Wire founder and conservative podcast host Ben Shapiro took to Twitter on Wednesday to downplay rapper Kanye West’s head-first dive into antisemitism. West had his Twitter and Instagram accounts restricted last week after lobbing various attacks at the Jewish community. On Tuesday, Vice revealed that Fox News had cut a series of antisemitic statements made by West out of a two-part interview aired last week on the network.

Shapiro, a practicing orthodox Jew, gave a qualified critique of West’s screed. “Two things can be true at once,” Shapiro wrote. “Kanye’s moves toward pro-life, faith, and family conservatism are encouraging; his “death con 3” posts and Black Hebrew Israelite language are clearly anti-Semitic and disturbing.”

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In response to the controversy at Paris Fashion Week, West sat down for a two-part interview with white nationalism’s loudest primetime promoter, Tucker Carlson. On Tuesay, a leak of outtakes from the interview obtained by Vice revealed that Carlson’s production team cut a variety of bizzare, conspiratorial, and antisemitic statements made by West from the final version of the interview. The removed portions included West stating that he’d rather his kids learned about Hanukkah before Kwanzaa because “at least it will come with some financial engineering.”

Video: Kanye West episode of 'The Shop' dropped after 'hate speech'

Following widespread outrage over his display of “White Lives Matter” shirts at a Yeezy runway show in Paris, West began posting images on Instagram of text exchanges between himself, friends, and other industry names. His account was locked after he published screenshots of an exchange between himself and fellow rapper Diddy in which he suggested Diddy was being controlled by Jews. West reacted to the ban by taking to Twitter, where he posted that he was tired and when he woke up would go “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE,” and had has account locked in response.

Much like Fox, Shapiro and other conservatives have rushed to reframe or outright dismiss West’s statements, arguing that the public reaction is based on a censorious desire to silence a global superstar who turned conservative. Shapiro hedging his condemnation of the outbursts with praise of West’s politics is notable given his history of forceful accusation of antisemitism against Democratic lawmakers.

Shapiro tweet comes days after his own employee, Daily Wire host Candace Owens, outright dismissed West’s “death con 3” threat, saying that no “honest person” would think the tweet was antisemitic. Owens appeared with West in a “White Lives Matter” shirt at Paris Fashion Week, and appeared on Carlson’s show on Monday to defend West. Owens told Carlson that “the result of Black Lives Matter has been white supremacy.”

For Shapiro, one of the most well-known Jewish political commentators in the United States, giving cursory acknowledgment to the attack while prioritizing the potential political gains Kanye represents for conservatives is emblematic of modern GOP policy: Nothing is too heinous, no lines exist, and there is no such thing as hypocrisy, so long as they are the ones reaping the benefits.

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