Kanye West has been sued and dropped by his talent agency after he posted a stream of antisemitic abuse, put T-shirts with a swastika on sale in his online shop, and was alleged to have described himself as Hitler to a Jewish employee.
Last week West, also known as Ye, wrote a barrage of antisemitic posts on X including, “I’m a Nazi … I love Hitler”.
The swastika T-shirt was placed for sale on the website of his fashion brand Yeezy, with the product line “HH-01”, assumed to be code for “Heil Hitler”.
Shopify, the company that provided the online platform for Yeezy, has now taken the store offline, stating: “All merchants are responsible for following the rules of our platform. This merchant did not engage in authentic commerce practices and violated our terms.”
I’m not sure, but I think he’s been dropped and picked up by someone else before.
Talent agents choose money over ethics all the time. It’s practically their job. Regardless, things like this happen when the negative publicity makes a client a bad return on the agency’s investment (or a client hurts their reputation, which is to say, when a client hurts their chances of making money in the future). Their only concern is money, not antisemitism.
Next, he’ll be contacted by an even less prestigious agency whose desperation outweighs their ethical concerns. He may already have been.