Kanye West has been accused of subjecting a former business partner and friend to antisemitic abuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alex Klein, a tech entrepreneur who worked with the rapper \u2013 now known as Ye \u2013 on the \u201cStem Player\u201d that he\u00a0used to release his Donda 2 albumdecided to end the collaboration after troubling behaviour, including\u00a0publicly praising Hitler. As a result, he found himself on the receiving end of an angry, racist tirade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe turned down 10 million dollars. Kanye was very angry,\u201d says Klein in\u00a0BBC\u00a0documentary The Trouble with KanYe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe was saying \u2018I feel like I wanna smack you\u2019 and \u2018you\u2019re exactly like the other Jews\u2019 \u2013 almost relishing and revelling in how offensive he could be, using these phrases hoping to hurt me\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI asked him: \u2018do you really think Jews are working together to hold you back?\u2019 and he said \u2018yes, yes I do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Klein, who worked with West between 2019 and 2022, his antisemitic public statements are a deliberate political strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He claims that West described his comments as \u201c\u2018not even a statement that I need to take back because look at all the energy around me right now. Without that statement, I wouldn\u2019t become president\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe thinks it\u2019s his manifest destiny, his god-chosen destiny to become president. He used these anti-Jewish statements as part of a political platform and he told me that he was attempting to do what Trump did in a more intense way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When the documentary\u2019s presenter, Bafta-winning investigative journalist Mobeen Azhar asks if West\u2019s plan is to \u201csupersize Trump\u201d, Klein responds: \u201cExactly, yeah.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elsewhere in the BBC documentary, Azhar meets a homeless man who claims that West approached him to manage his 2024 presidential campaign after attending the same church as him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mark, who lives in his car, says that West regularly visits the Cornerstone Christian church, where the white nationalist Nick Fuentes is known to hold political meetings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey all said I was the most religiously erudite in the room and Kanye started looking to me for my opinion on every topic that came up,\u201d he tells Azhar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe called me the following Monday, the Monday before Thanksgiving, and the first thing he said to me was \u2018I want you to be my campaign manager to run for president\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The pastor of Cornerstone Christian church, who didn\u2019t want to be filmed for the documentary, tells Azhar that West had bought part of the property and had \u201cbig plans\u201d. The pastor shows Azhar a room full of workers on sewing machines with mood boards on the wall showing new designs for his Yeezy brand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Klein, it\u2019s important that the public know about the antisemitic abuse he received at Kanye\u2019s hands. \u201cThe return of Kanye is inevitable and I think it\u2019s important to shed light on the situation,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis demon in the box that he\u2019s playing with for his own benefit is irresponsible. The conversation has become \u2018oh, it\u2019s his mental health\u2019 and \u2018oh, maybe a few Jewish people screwed him over\u2019. It\u2019s like: no. Kanye needs to be taken seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kanye West has been accused of subjecting a former business partner and friend to antisemitic abuse. Alex Klein, a tech entrepreneur who worked with the rapper \u2013 now known as Ye \u2013 on the \u201cStem Player\u201d that he\u00a0used to release his Donda 2 albumdecided to end the collaboration after troubling behaviour, including\u00a0publicly praising Hitler. As […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":24289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[4791,11261,10305,1891,2735,2701,10387,13175,8927,6537,8590,9309,8352,5494,746,1445,12634,6237,3259,8662,6259,6030,2659,12791,5913,237,8386,3805,11377,6544,12938,428,6431,10236,8701,6571,594,7962,3872,2174],"class_list":["post-35453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-abuse","tag-accused","tag-alex-klein","tag-anti-semitism-in-the-labour-party","tag-bbc","tag-behaviour","tag-campaign","tag-car","tag-christian","tag-church","tag-conversation","tag-dollars","tag-donda","tag-energy","tag-feel","tag-god","tag-health","tag-hitler","tag-homeless","tag-jewish-people","tag-jews","tag-journalist","tag-kanye-west","tag-manager","tag-mental-health","tag-pastor","tag-platform","tag-president","tag-presidential","tag-property","tag-racist","tag-rapper","tag-release","tag-tech","tag-thanksgiving","tag-white","tag-who","tag-ye","tag-yeezy","tag-yes-i-do"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}