Kanye West’s antisemitism seems anything but lucid

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Back in 1990, an American psychiatrist named Theodore Isaac Rubin wrote a book in which he posited that antisemitism was a mental illness. According to Dr. Rubin, Jew-hatred is a form of what he called “symbol sickness,” where a symbol becomes so divorced from the object it originally represents that it loses its organic meaning, to a pathological effect. A Jew is thus no longer viewed as a human being, but an inhuman figure of various manifestations born from the antisemite’s own specific psychological deficiencies (including feelings of inadequacy, envy, identity confusion and so on).

“Does this mean that every anti-Semite is emotionally disturbed?” Dr. Rubin raised. “The answer,” he concluded, “is yes.”

It could be argued that bigotry in all its forms is itself irrational; that to apply a specific set of assumptions to broad swathes of people with little regard to individual conditions does not make logical sense. But whether this tendency is a distortion from the normal functioning of the human psyche, or else, exists as a facet of it, is a matter of debate. Dr. Rubin would have argued it is the former. But to take the opposite view and purport that sane, healthy people can also harbour hateful, antisemitic views is to confront a question of a different sort: At what point does what one might call “lucid” antisemitism cross a threshold into genuine mental illness, and how does one tell the difference?

The question is pertinent watching the spectacular implosion of rapper Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) who has become more and more vocal and deranged in his expressions of antisemitism over the last several weeks, and who notably struggles with bipolar disorder. In October, he tweeted he was going to go “death con 3 on Jewish people” after espousing antisemitic tropes during an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson. More recently, he praised Adolf Hitler during an appearance on Infowars, the show hosted by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, where he commented that, “every human being has something of value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler.” He then tweeted an image of a Star of David with a swastika embedded inside, which resulted in a suspension from Twitter. Then, in a recent conversation with Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes, Ye said that Jews should “forgive Hitler” and repeated tropes about Jewish people controlling the media.

One latent effect of these interviews was that Ye’s outbursts made his hosts’ versions of antisemitism look moderate, careful and calculated. Tucker Carlson has repeatedly kicked at the Great Replacement Theory on his show, and he produced a documentary about Holocaust survivor George Soros – who is a central figure in many conspiracy theories about Jewish control – waging a “demographic war on the West.” Alex Jones will make reference to the “Jewish mafia” in his rants and go off about “globalists” destroying Western civilization. Gavin McInnes has disparaged Jews for being “obsessed” with the Holocaust. But these men never go as far as actually praising Hitler or saying outright that Jews control the banks or media. Instead, they use coded, deliberate language, tailored to their specific audiences, and presented in such a way that they maintain deniability. Their antisemitism is careful and strategic.

Then there’s Ye, who, by blurting the quiet stuff out loud, has torpedoed his reputation and lost handfuls of lucrative endorsements for seemingly no other reason than he can’t control his mouth. His version of antisemitism seems to be anything but lucid – he appeared on Mr. Jones’s show wearing a full-face covering (not even his eyes were exposed) – and suggested that incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, about whom he only recently learned, might try to kill him. Perhaps most bizarrely, his bigotry has targeted his own community as well. In October, he wore a “White Lives Matter” t-shirt at Paris Fashion Week. In 2020, he erroneously said at a political rally that Harriet Tubman never freed slaves. And in 2018, he told TMZ that 400 years of slavery in America “sounds like a choice.” All of this taken together, and at the risk of pathologizing hatred, it does not seem as though Ye’s antisemitism is the product of a “normally” functioning mind.

This is not to excuse Ye’s litany of atrocious comments, nor is it to imply that mood disorders are necessarily correlated with expressions of hatred. Indeed, many people suffer with mental illnesses and still manage to refrain from praising Hitler. But it is to raise the consideration that there is a spectrum of disordered thinking that may lead to the adoption of antisemitic beliefs – some of which might fall in the realm of “normal,” but all of which have pernicious effects. Indeed, Ye’s antisemitism has broken the dam on outright praise for those who advocate for Jewish extermination by people who likely don’t care whether Ye’s views are a symptom of a disordered mind. Dr. Rubin might say that every one of them is sick. But only one is wearing a stocking over his head while outright praising the virtues of one of the most evil men to have ever lived.