Kanye West has poured fresh fuel onto the swirling antisemitism controversy as he returned to Twitter for the first time since Elon Musk assumed control.
Three weeks after his Twitter account was restricted over his infamous “Death Con 3” post, West tweeted a caption-less photo of embattled Brooklyn Nets basketball player Kyrie Irving, who is under fire for promoting antisemitic content.
A few hours earlier, Irving and the Nets agreed to donate $500,000 each to “causes and organisations that work to eradicate hate and intolerance in our communities” after the basketballer posted a link to a movie riddled with antisemitic claims.
Ye’s return to Twitter was celebrated by his fans, with the tweet racking up nearly 180,000 likes and 16,000 retweets within 10 hours of posting, along with a wave of racist and antisemtic replies.
But the disgraced rapper’s return to Twitter was also met with widespread criticism.
“Posting a photo of a man who just apologized for an Antisemitic post on Twitter is not the slam dunk he thinks it is,” wrote Joel Petlin.
The 45-year-old rapper had previously called Irving one of the “real ones” in an Instagram post a few days earlier.
After he was suspended from Instagram on Wednesday, West went onto social media app Parler, which he is in the process of purchasing, to spew more antisemitic remarks.
West’s tweet appears unlikely to fall under the new “content moderation council” that Musk is planning to establish to police free speech on the platform.
Musk previously said that the platform had restored the rapper’s account before he finalised his acquisition of the company – though it is West’s first post since that time.
West has seen his net worth plunge after being dropped by many of his corporate partners including Adidas, Balenciaga and Gap.
