Kanye West had his Twitter account locked on Sunday following a string of antisemitic tweets, just two days after having his Instagram temporarily restricted.
West on Sunday tweeted that he was going to sleep but that, when he wakes up, “I’m going death con 3 On [sic] JEWISH PEOPLE.” West added that “you guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever [sic] opposes your agenda.”
The rapper’s account wasn’t deleted, but locked. West’s tweets are still visible — except for the antisemitic ones, which Twitter deleted — but he’s unable to post new ones. “The account was locked for violating Twitter’s policies,” a Twitter spokesperson said.
West hadn’t been active on Twitter since November 2020, following his failed bid for the presidency, and appeared to move to the platform over the weekend after having his Instagram account restricted.
The behavior exhibited this week by @kanyewest is deeply troubling, dangerous, and antisemitic, period. There is no excuse for his propagating of white supremacist slogans and classic #antisemitism about Jewish power, especially with the platform he has.
— ADL (@ADL) October 7, 2022
Meta confirmed to NBC that West’s account was restricted, but didn’t specify which post earned the punishment. It seems the cause was a series of text messages between West and Sean “Diddy” Combs that West published on Instagram were the cause, as they were deleted from his page. In their conversations, as reported by HipHopDXWest said he would “use you as an example to show the Jewish people that told you to call me that no one can threaten or influence me.”
Diddy had contacted West about a “White Lives Matter” shirt West wore to the Paris Fashion Show. West has drawn criticism for the shirt, including from the Anti-Defamation League, which categorizes “White Lives Matter” as a white supremacist phrase. In an interview with Fox’s Tucker Carlson, West said he wore the shirt because he thought it was “funny.”
“Kanye West has more twitter followers than there Jews in the world,” Carly Pildis, director of community engagement at the Anti-Defamation League, wrote on Twitter. “There are an estimated 14.8 million Jews and he has over 30 million followers. American Jews are experiencing a historic rise in antisemitic incidents. His actions are extremely dangerous and must be called out.”