The implications of Ye’s remarks about Hitler are, somehow, greater than losing one of my generation’s biggest superstars to fascism. It proves that, contrary to popular belief, regardless of skin tone, wealth or status, the alt-right’s reach is pervasive.
The descent of Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, into hatred is merely the most prominent example of an insidious recruitment campaign aimed at America’s vulnerable youths, one that I have witnessed firsthand.
His case in particular, however — still in its embryonic stages — gives us important insight on how the alt-right operates. Crucially, it also informs our civic responsibility to fight back against tyranny and prevent Ye and his ilk from doing any further damage.
To any observer of his interviews, it quickly becomes clear that Ye’s hate is mostly cached in his personal grudges, which, despite platitudes to Jewish people to “forgive Hitler,” he has obviously not forgotten. He flits unpredictably among his dramas, bridged disjointedly with antisemitic outbursts and painfully ironic appeals to Jesus.
In short, he’s not fully absorbed into the alt-right, and seems to be using it, in part, as a vessel to express and air his own grievances. The real culprit, though, the one actually feeding Ye his script, is the grinning, mostly silent young neo-Nazi by his side — Nick Fuentes.
Fuentes is unremarkable and unoriginal. He operates just like every other alt-right wannabe politico. His recruits are college students disaffected from mainstream politics for all the right reasons: frustration with the status quo and a misguided feeling that they are alone in their right-of-center beliefs.
Enter the alt-right, with a combination of lies and phony pretenses of merely being about “Christian morality” and opposing “cancel culture.” Importantly, though, they offer community, a valued sense of belonging for students who have nowhere else to turn.
There’s a reason why Fuentes is trying to milk Ye for everything his name is worth. Fuentes’ supporters, who often attempt to infiltrate young conservative organizations like Turning Point USA, Young Americans for Freedom and College Republicans, are primarily young college-aged men. Ye’s influence among this group cannot be understated.
In 2022 alone, 3.8 billion listeners streamed his music and, before Adidas canceled ts Yeezy line, consumers spent over $2 billion on his products. People idolized Kanye West, especially Chicagoans; he was homegrown, living proof of the South Side’s genius, considered one of the best hip-hop artists to ever do it.
With a platform that large, Ye deserved to be punished swiftly, harshly, and to the fullest extent possible. But we should be ashamed of ourselves that we have allowed the alt-right to fester to such a degree. This is certainly a problem caused in part by the right, whose college outreach is mostly limited to economic policy wonkishness and childish instances of “owning the libs.”
Republicans need to be better at fostering youths who actually want to solve problems, not creating pale Trump imitations with as much social awareness as a doorknob.
This is also, however, a problem caused in part by the left, which has turned its progressive youths into a real-life “Boy Who Cried Wolf,” trained to castigate everything right of progressive as a symptom of the ultimate evil.
Democrat or Republican, we are all American. With that shared identity must come the realization that certain beliefs are diametrically opposed to who we are and all that we hold dear. The fact that we have allowed a truly existential threat to reach such a head should be more than enough to shame us into a sense of community.
It’s one thing to cure its symptoms; what of the root of the illness: alt-right leeches like Fuentes? It is an unfortunate truth: Bipolar disorder or not, if he persists, Ye must be held as accountable as Fuentes. But how do you convert someone who is completely blinded by hate, so lost that they would prefer to believe obvious lies to claw their way to an exculpatory narrative?
There comes a time in the normal shopping hours of the marketplace of ideas when it is simply not enough to open an opposing stall of innocent criticism. Especially when an opponent deals in outright lies, sometimes, the solution is to leave a bad review. There is, in fact, a virtue to shame: an embarrassment so palpable that, even if you were so inclined to take a look at what the scammer was selling, you wouldn’t be caught dead in their store.
Ye, you can hold your hand over your Bible until the first page of Genesis imprints into your palm, but it will not change the fact that, even apart from your heinous antisemitism, there is still obvious hatred in your heart. One should wonder what your mother would think of you.
Matt Pinna was the 20th Ward Republican committeeman in Chicago’s South Side. He also served multiple terms as the chair of the Illinois College Republican Federation.
Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.
