A California holocaust museum says it has been barraged with antisemitic messages after Kanye West refused a private tour.
The Holocaust Museum of Los Angeles says it has been flooded with abuse since it invited the rapper to visit amid his antisemitism controversy.
West rejected the offer during an appearance on the now-deleted Drink Champs podcast and told the hosts that Planned Parenthood was “our Holocaust Museum.”
Despite his string of antisemitic comments, the museum’s CEO said that they offered the tour in the hope it would change the disgraced rapper’s mind.
“We know for a fact that education is the greatest catalyst for change,” Beth Kean told CBS Los Angeles. “When students and visitors come to the museum if they enter as bystanders they leave as upstanders. We know that.”
Since his widely-criticised comments, West has lost a lucrative billion-dollar deal with Adidas and has been dumped by a string of commercial partners, his agent, bankers and a lawyer.
He is also still locked out of his Instagram and Twitter accounts and has tried to buy right-wing social media platform Parler.
“I think Kanye has more than double the amount of Twitter followers than there are Jews living in this world,” added Ms Kean. “People like Kanye have a huge platform, he has over 30m Twitter followers and he needs to understand that he needs to use his words to inspire and not incite and to not perpetuate hate and lies and an antisemitism.”
Following his remarks, a group made Nazi salutes on a bridge over the 405 freeway in the city and flew a banner that read, “Kanye was right about the Jews.”
“It’s infuriating that this is happening in our own backyard,” said Ms Kean.
