Wireless festival says Kayne West still due to perform despite calls for ban | Kanye West
Kanye West will continue to perform at the Wireless festival despite calls for the show to be cancelled, one of its organisers.
The musician, legally known as Ye, was criticized for making anti-Semitic statements, including voicing his admiration for Adolf Hitler. Last year, he released a song called Heil Hitler, a few months after advertising the sale of a swastika T-shirt on his website.
His planned appearance was condemned by MPs and Jewish organizations, who called on the government to ban the rapper from the country. Earlier on Monday, Bridget Phillipson, a senior UK government minister, said West should be banned from performing at the festival due to his “completely unacceptable and absolutely disgusting” anti-Semitic remarks.
Over the weekend, Prime Minister Keir Starmer joined the criticism of the festival, saying it was “deeply concerning” that West was performing “despite his previous anti-Semitic statements and celebration of Nazism”.
On Monday evening, Melvin Benn, general manager of Festival Republic, which is promoting Wireless, said West “intends to come and perform,” adding that they “didn’t give him a platform to promote ideas of any nature, only to perform songs that are currently being played on radio stations and streaming platforms across our country and have been listened to and enjoyed by millions of people.”
He added: “I am a fiercely committed anti-fascist and have been all my adult life. I lived for months in the 1970s on a kibbutz that was attacked on October 7. I am pro-Jewish and pro-Jewish, but equally committed to the state of Palestine.”
“What Ye has said in the past about Jews and Hitler is equally disgusting to me, as well as to the Jewish community, the prime minister, and others who have commented and taken his word for it.”
In January, West took out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal apologizing for his anti-Semitic behavior, attributing his provocative actions to bipolar-I disorder, which he said he developed when medical monitoring failed to diagnose a frontal lobe injury sustained in a 2002 car accident.
He said he “lost touch with reality” as a result of the disorder, prompting him to turn to “the most destructive symbol I could find, the swastika.”
Benn said: “Having been a person suffering from mental illness in my life for the last 15 years, I have witnessed many incidents of despicable behavior that I have had to forgive and move on from. If I wasn’t before, I have become a forgiving and hopeful person in all areas of my life, including work.
“Forgiveness and giving people second chances is becoming a lost virtue in an increasingly divisive world, and I implore people to consider her comments of momentary disgust at the prospect of performing (like mine) and offer her some forgiveness and hope, as I have decided to do.”
West has no immediate plans to travel to the UK but ministers are understood to be reviewing West’s permission to enter the country. Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey also called on the government to ban Westerners from entering the UK, saying: “We need to get tougher on antisemitism.”
Pepsi and Diageo withdrew their festival sponsorships in response to West’s announcement as headliner for three nights, but the brands continue to be prominently featured as sponsors on the Wireless festival website. PayPal, the annual hip-hop festival’s payment partner, will not be featured in any future promotional materials.
West hasn’t performed in the UK since taking over at Glastonbury in 2015.
