Black people were murdered by Hitler’s Nazis, too

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Since when did the solution to anti-Blackness become unabashed antisemitism? For a time, Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, was seen as a genius in the hip-hop and entertainment world. But what started out as an understandable critique of systemic power quickly morphed into blatant hate directed toward Jewish Americans.

I’m not sure what’s worse—a powerful Black used-to-be billionaire using his platform to incite hate toward another marginalized group, associating with unapologetic White supremacists like Nick Fuentes, or his followers eagerly eating up Ye’s every word.

Most recently, Ye faced severe backlash and a banning of his Twitter account after he went on disgraced conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ podcast to say he loves Hitler and Nazis and that Hitler “didn’t kill six million Jews.” 

You know you’re too far gone when even Alex Jones and Donald Trump try to distance themselves from you.

Ye’s latest antics are hardly a shock to many after he wore a White Lives Matter shirt and disrespected the family of George Floyd. But the 2024 presidential candidate’s hard pivot to the very fringes of the far right has his followers on all fours devouring every piece of bullsh*t that spews from his ignorant mouth.

Does he realize that not only were 11 million people murdered by the Nazis in total (6 million Jews and 5 million non-Jews), but also Black people were victims of the fascist terror as well?

Stop caping for Kanye. Ye made his bed, now he should lie in it.

For those who love to say he’s making “chess moves” or that we need to “watch the whole video”, why don’t y’all use that same energy and do some research?

During Hitler’s rise to power, people of African descent became victims, too. Hitler was very clear in his hatred for anyone other than the “aryan” race, and he made brutal moves to eliminate race-mixing in Germany.

Ye’s followers like to claim he’s a victim of modern-day buck breaking, a term used to describe ways White slave owners would physically and sexually humiliate Black men to show their dominance. Some folks made a case for Kyrie Irving suffering that fate as someone who shared a film with antisemitic tropes but who never made hateful comments toward Jewish people. Ye, on the other hand, is much closer to a White supremacist than a victim of anti-Blackness.

In expressing his love for mass murderers, Ye failed to mention that, in an effort to eliminate interracial relationships, Hitler and his nazis forcibly sterilized Black Germans and their bi-racial children.

In the 1920s, roughly 24,000 Black people were living in Germany, according to the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. By 1937, “every identified mixed-race child in the Rhineland had been forcibly sterilized, in order to prevent further ‘race polluting’, as Hitler termed it.”

Does Kanye know Hitler and his Nazis sterilized and murdered Black Germans, Black Prisoners of War?

Nearly a century ago, Hitler ordered the buck breaking of an entire Black population with intergenerational impacts. Ye’s admiration for the deadly dictator makes him a purveyor of the same white supremacist attitudes his followers claim to be fighting against.

Many Black people living in Germany were denied education, employment and citizenship even before Hitler rose to power. By the end of World War II, Black Germans and Black American soldiers became victims of the genocidal regime.

Captured Black soldiers from the U.S., France, and Britain were worked to death in concentration camps, shot in the streets, or executed as they faced even harsher treatment than White prisoners of war.

Some of y’all are blinded by an ex-billionaire status and being used as pawns by a White supremacist in Blackface. It’s no wonder some of Kanye’s former associates claim he planned to name one of his album’s “Hitler” before changing it to “Ye.”

We can address anti-Blackness and White supremacy without being antisemitic

Don’t get me wrong. We should absolutely critique all the leaders of genocide, including the founding fathers of the United States. They perpetuated chattel slavery for 400 years and contributed to the mass murders of people Indigenous to Turtle Island under the banner of “manifest destiny.” 

We should absolutely call out the hypocrisy behind the world turning a blind eye to holocausts that Europeans perpetrated against African people, such as the mass murders of roughly 10 million Congolese people under the rule of Belgian King Leopold II between 1885 and 1908. Not to mention the genocide of Namibians by Germans decades before the Jewish Holocaust.

But there should be absolutely no tolerance for using a popular platform to spread love for Hitler or a Nazi. And there should be no tolerance for ignorance and hate toward any marginalized group of people, period. Jewish Americans are one of the most likely groups to be a victim of hate crimes after Black Americans, according to FBI statistics.

Hitler’s Nazis imprisoned, worked to death, and executed Black Germans and captured Black American soldiers too. Any Blk folx defending Ye or Hitler are a disgrace to the ancestors who came before you.

— Deon Devon Osborne (@indepthwithDeon) December 3, 2022

Kanye’s ignorance even has some believing Hitler invented the microphone. That’s a lie. It was in fact Black American James West who made that incredible contribution that Kanye used to advance his career.

Liberty is not a pie. Marginalized groups don’t have to fight each other for a slice.

Liberty is like air. We can either allow White supremacy to suck it out of the room like a vacuum. Or we can work together to open the doors and windows for us all to breathe.