Will his UK ban kill Kanye West's ‘comeback’?

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0:30so you can monitor and engage with the account while your teen learns how to invest and manage money. Learn more at schwab.com. A warning that this episode features discussions of racist, anti-Semitic and misogynistic language. Please take care while listening. Kanye West has been banned from performing in the UK, a decision that's dividing people on both sides of the Atlantic. The artist was due to headline three nights of a London festival this summer until the British government intervened and revoked his visa, citing a history of extreme anti-Semitic comments and behaviour and saying, quote, his presence in the UK would not be conducive to the public good.

1:18West has apologised for his actions multiple times and blamed his bipolar disorder. Some people take him at his word. Others feel his apologies are cynical attempts to rescue his career. But while he's banned from the UK, Kanye's still selling out shows in US stadiums. From the BBC, I'm Tristan Redmond in London. And today on The Global Story, what does Kanye West's enduring popularity tell us about how mainstream anti-Semitism has become? And if you're big enough, are you uncancellable?

1:56Well, I'm very pleased to say that to help us decipher this very complex story, we're joined from Manchester by Anushka Mutanda-Dowarty, the BBC's host of Fame Under Fire podcast, and my mentor for all things pop culture and youth culture. Anushka, I'm hoping you can help me understand what's going on, please. Well, I mean, trying to decipher the world of Kanye. Are we calling him Kanye or are we going to call him Ye? He prefers Ye. Well, that was going to be my first question. What is the correct thing and how are we going to proceed? I think we should go with Kanye because I think that's what most people know him as.

2:33Let's go with Kanye. So this week we've learned that Kanye West has been banned from visiting the United Kingdom in a somewhat dramatic decision by the UK government. Tell us what led up to this. So a few weeks ago, it was leaked online that Kanye was going to headline a festival called Wireless, Wireless is a festival in the UK. It's known for having a lot of rap artists that perform there. And some people say it's the only real festival that caters to that market in the UK. So that was leaked online and it was circulated by a lot of the blogs. And it was circulated to quite positive reception.

3:11A lot of the comments were like, you can't cancel Kanye. This is amazing. Well done to Wireless for standing up to cancel culture. and then this week on the 30th of March, it was announced that he would be headlining three nights, so headlining every single day at wireless, but then the sponsors start pulling out. Massive companies have pulled their sponsorships of the Wireless Festival in London. Pepsi and Diageo are no longer involved. We've got Pepsi, which is the biggest sponsor of wireless. Diageo pulled out. Rockstar, PayPal was rumored to be kind of distancing itself from the festival as well.

3:44And then there is a public call for why is he headlining at Wireless? If you were to invite Kanye West, what are you doing exactly to try and ensure that he's not going to say or do anything on stage? He could be uttering neo-Nazi stuff on stage in Finsbury Park. Why have they done this? It's disrespectful to the Jewish community. It's disrespectful to the African-American community, who Kanye has also said made derogatory comments about. It's disrespectful to women. but the loudest sort of cry was he's been repeatedly anti-Semitic. He's said outrageous things. Why was he chosen to headline Wireless?

4:21And then the man who organises Wireless, his creator, came out and defended that. He has made abhorrent statements, of course he has, and they're equally abhorrent to me as they are to, you know, members of the Jewish community. And asked, you know, please find forgiveness for Kanye. Kanye West, yay as he is now officially known, should be given a second chance and should be able to become an advocate for the very same community that he has upset so much. So they actually backed him. Has he actually had a visa yet? Has he applied for one? No, he has a visa. He has an approved visa. But then eventually it was said online that the government were reviewing whether he'd be allowed to come into the UK and then pretty quickly it was actually he's not.

5:07His request has been denied. Full transparency, I was into early Kanye and then I sort of slightly tuned him out. But when did the anti-Semitism accusations against him first begin? So there were sporadic demonstrations of what you could say negative stereotypes about Jewish people in his music. In 2005, in a freestyle, he rapped, I'm tight with my dough like my family Jews. And that was seen as perpetuating a negative stereotype about the Jewish community. There were reports that surfaced that in an interview in 2018 with TMZ, he reportedly made pro-Nazi comments that were edited out. So we've had accusations peppered throughout his career.

5:56But in 2022, in a spree of tweets, he says, I woke up, I'm a bit sleepy tonight, but when I wake up, I'm going death con free on Jewish people. He started to praise Hitler and say that he admired Hitler. It started creeping its way into more of his social media posts. I do have to say a lot of this commentary that he was making, a lot of these anti-Semitic remarks were alongside other remarks that were offensive against other groups. He has been repeatedly misogynistic and encouraged sexual violence on multiple accounts. So we start to see this behavior, these frankly unbelievable tweets that are coming out in 2022.

6:32Then in 2023, he apologizes and then he does it again. What was the context of that apology? So a lot of people have viewed it as him doing damage control because he was dropped by Adidas. If you remember, he did Yeezy with Adidas. He had some very successful launches of trainers. He was dropped from higher end brands like Balenciaga. He had his Twitter account revoked by Elon Musk, who said that he was violating their policy. So it started to affect Kanye's business. and then in 2023 he made this completely weird remark that watching Jonah Hill in 21 Jump Street quote made him like Jewish people again which some people think constitutes an apology I think the Jewish community will probably say that it does not but there was an element of damage control and then in I mean in 2025 it goes beyond that he releases a song I'm gonna warn people now because obviously the title is inflammatory and offensive but he releases a song called Heil Hitler with the repeated lyric over and over again.

7:32I'm not going to keep saying it, but repeated over and over again, that's released by his own platform. So that's not through a label or a distribution service, but he just doubles down. When you look at it in a timeline, you're just like, what is happening here? Well, what was the reception when he released that song? It's really difficult with Kanye because you're always going to have a group of people who are like, this is atrocious and the voice of reason that I cannot believe this is the space that we're in, that somebody is doing this and hasn't been completely ostracized. But when Kanye does these things, it's imbued with an air of, I really don't want to say humor, but it is received online by a rather large community as this is funny.

8:14And once you make something funny, you make something forgivable. And that's what has happened. Kanye is humorous. That's why people like him. They always liked him for his humor. He was a witty rapper. He was known for saying things that other people wouldn't say. I'll refer you back to George Bush doesn't care about black people after Katrina. That's what people liked him for. And he's taken that personality, applied it to these horrific statements, and people have run with it as memes. And like I said, when you are laughing, you are forgiving. Look at what Kanye has done. This song is jokes.

8:48I can't believe he's done this. You can't cancel Kanye. And it starts to become almost a caricature of what it looks like to be cancelled. And it's this returning joke of like, you just can't cancel this guy because he will just say something more inflammatory, more racist, more xenophobic next week. And then he'll make it into a song and then he'll make it into merch. You create an atmosphere online where it's like, well, really, what can't he say or do? And he makes a number of appearances, doesn't he, on controversial right wing talk shows, right? Yeah, so Kanye turns up on Alex Jones's podcast and he's wearing a, it almost looks like he's got a pair of black tights and put it over his face.

9:29I'm sure Kanye would like me to talk about it as high fashion, but that is what it looks like to me. And he's wearing a camouflage biker jacket on top of that. He's known for looking ridiculous and claiming it's fashion. So that wasn't crazy for him to turn up looking like that. But then when the podcast got going, he started to say things like, I see good things about Hitler. He has made comments like this before. But once again, it was an example of him not just making anti-Semitic comments, but aligning himself with Hitler. I mean, one of the things that struck me about that was even Alex Jones, who is no stranger to extreme pronouncements, seemed, I wouldn't say shocked, but maybe uncomfortable at the things that Kanye West was saying on the set of his show.

10:13Yeah, this is the thing. Kanye aligned himself after he came out in support of Trump in 2016. He aligned himself quite heavily with Candace Owens, who is a right wing political commentator. So he very much was existing in that world of right wing influences, commentators, however you want to see them. But then you get to the point where Kanye starts saying things that make them feel uncomfortable. And Candace Owens also came out and distanced herself from some of those comments by saying, you know, we need to talk about his mental health. And it became talking about Kanye's mental health. And that was an explanation for what he was doing.

10:43But these comments have been repeated and they've also been apologized for and then doubled down on and done again. So he says that on the Alex Jones podcast. But then he also releases a line of merch with a swastika on a T-shirt, which is, I mean, how much more offensive does it get? So when does he start selling swastika T-shirts, Anushka? Yeah, so what happens is Kanye does an advert at the Super Bowl. Now, ad space at the Super Bowl is highly coveted because it's one of, if not the most watched sports game in the US. Kanye takes out his own ad at the Super Bowl for his brand. And then when you click onto his website, the only piece of merch he was selling was a T-shirt with a swastika on it.

11:25And that was in 2025, in February 2025. and once again yes there's uproar in the mainstream media but in another world in another sphere on social media on reddit pages a lot of it is making light of it it's funny look at what Kanye's done now he has such a huge fan base it's been likened to a cult by some critics of Kanye you know he called himself Yeezus that he just seems to get away with it but the pattern seems to be that when it starts to threaten his earning potential and his brand deals, he comes out and tries to do some form of damage control. Okay, well explain how he tries to control the damage then.

12:10So people have been saying that this year, 2025, was the redemption arc for Kanye West. This was his comeback where he was going to make amends. So Kanye publicly says that he wants to sit down with leaders in the Jewish community and then he does sit down with a rabbi and he explains what he feels is an explanation for his actions was that he has bipolar disorder which is something he's spoken about before but also denied as well but he seems at this point to be reconciling with the fact that he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and this is the reason for I don't want to call them outbursts because I think that minimizes what was said but it was the reason for the anti-semitic remarks that he's made.

12:48Okay and then he makes a second apology right what happened there? Yeah. So in the Wall Street Journal, he takes out an ad space and releases a written statement saying to those I've hurt, which is essentially an apology to both the Jewish community and the African-American community who he says were always his home. and he's going to find his way back to them. He was also involved in a car crash, very famous car crash that he says has had lasting impacts on him. And this was basically a result of him being unmedicated and refusing to come to terms with his bipolar disorder diagnosis. And this led to him basically being in a four-month manic episode, he says, where he wrote all these tweets, where he made this song, where he sold these t-shirts and he apologizes and he asks for time to earn your forgiveness, re-earn forgiveness and re-earn respect.

13:40Now, what was going on behind the scenes was Kanye was looking for a distributor to release his album, Bully, long anticipated album where the release date kept changing. And his fans were like, when is he going to release it? And it became clear that it was hard for him to find a distributor. No one wanted to give it to him. Nobody wants to sponsor him. And he actually ends up in a partnership signing a deal with Gamma. Now Gamma is a company founded by former Apple Music executive Larry Jackson. The deal was described as a mid to low seven figure agreement. The reports were that they spoke to Jewish members of staff at Gamma before they entered into this partnership with him.

14:20And it was also hinging on him making these public apologies, these public statements. So from a very cynical perspective, the critique has been made that this is just to get this album out so he can continue to make his money and his business can continue to function. If you take Kanye's side of it, this is a man who has been dealing with a bipolar disorder, refusing to be medicated. Okay, so he introduces in this Wall Street Journal full-page apology, and also in his conversation with the rabbi, the idea that his behavior may be down to his bipolar condition. Now, neither you nor I are trained psychologists, Anoushka, but we've been doing a bit of reading around on this topic.

15:10And it does seem that there are divergent opinions on the idea of how strong this defense might be. So some psychologists say that unmanaged mental health conditions can cause people to act in seemingly uncharacteristic ways. It can cause extreme behavior. and there are other experts who say that that's not the case. But is this question something that's dividing fans? What are people saying online about it? Yeah, I mean, absolutely. It's important to remember that there's been contradictory statements made by Kanye about his diagnosis with bipolar. So in 2016, it was reported that he'd been diagnosed with bipolar.

15:53But in early 2025, he was in a podcast and he said, I was misdiagnosed with bipolar. I'm actually autistic. Then there were multiple statements that he made where he claims he was misdiagnosed, but he was basically saying that he was being purposefully misdiagnosed by doctors from the Jewish community as part of a secret ploy to keep him quiet. And then once again, like you say, he has this conversation with the rabbi and he's back to saying, I have bipolar disorder and he's asking for grace and space and kindness. And then this Wall Street Journal ad, he's doing the same thing so it's very confusing for diehard fans of kanye who are hanging on his every word do you have bipolar or do you not have bipolar because you've come out and said it before and then you've backtracked now a lot of people online are saying he's also saying other things that are leading to basically the destruction of his life his relationship with the mother of his children his access to his kids this is all widely and publicly documented this has been going on alongside those anti-Semitic remarks.

16:52And they're saying it all speaks to a broader picture that Kanye really does have genuine mental health struggles and he needs to be protected. And those people who are saying that are saying, why on earth did Wireless book him as the headline performer for a three-day festival, knowing that this apology was only put out in 2025? This is not a man who went away for five years, has come to terms with his mental health struggles, has come to terms with what medication he needs to be on, is speaking to psychologists, has mended his relationship with his family, has mended his relationship with his fans, with his community.

17:26This is somebody who asked for grace and space and to find his way home in 2025. It's irresponsible for the festival to book him. And they did it because they know they're going to get maximum publicity and maximum headlines. That's one camp of his fans. And other people are saying, we just do not buy this. He's apologized before. He resecures the distribution deals. He resecures the brand deals. People feel sorry for him. And then he comes out. And if it's not anti-Semitic remarks, it's something else. It's blatant misogyny. It's racism. I mean, those are the two camps and they're going back and forth.

18:04But I will say there has been a pretty forgiving response online to Kanye West.

18:35We'll be right back. texting you the score before your TV catches up. Come on! Get a load of this guy. Ketchup. On a dog. Yeah, we've got thoughts. Too loud? In Chicago, you're gonna hear it. Because nothing here gets built without conversation. Nothing moves without connection. So, if you think you know AT &T, it might be time to rethink that. Because their network has improved, like, a lot. So Chicago can keep speaking its mind with AT &T Wireless and AT &T Fiber. Chicago won't stop talking. Our improved network backs it up. AT &T, connecting changes everything. AT &T Fiber, limited availability in select areas.

19:21If you or I or most people that we knew said enormously offensive and anti-Semitic things, we would be ostracized in society, roundly criticized, and rightly so. it seems like somehow Kanye West is an exception. What have the consequences been for the things he said and done? Well, if you'd have asked me that two weeks ago, I'd have had a different answer. But what's happened with Wireless and him being denied entry into the UK is probably the clearest and loudest piece of backlash that he's faced. Now, we can get into the reaction to that on social media and the reaction from his fans. But that is the first time in a long while that we've seen somebody vocally say, you are going to be held accountable for what you've tweeted, for the song you've made, for the t-shirts that you've put out.

20:16It's led to the cancellation of the festival. Like I said, if you asked me this before all of that happened, I would have said that Kanye exists in a space in our culture where he's almost uncancellable. But I still think he's uncancellable because that's happened. And a lot of people are commenting, how can you do this? You're trying to censor him. He has a right to free speech. He has a right to artistic expression. You need to show him grace. He's come out and spoken publicly about his mental health as a man. That's a very difficult thing to do, especially as a black man and a black male rapper.

20:44He's shown his vulnerability and your response is to say you're denied access to the country and we're going to show you no grace. I think he's uncancellable. I actually do think he has crafted a perfect defense for himself. How much does it actually mean for him financially to not be allowed into the UK to perform at this festival? So we don't know what deal he'd entered into with Wireless. We do know that he had another gig that was lined up in London that's now also had to be cancelled. Obviously, the UK is a massive market for Kanye West and him being able to perform here would have, in a lot of his fans' minds, been the pinnacle of his redemption arc.

21:22He hasn't performed in the UK for many, many years and it would have spoke to a comeback for Kanye West, which is realistically financially what he needs. He's gone into that distribution deal with Gamma. He needs to make money. He's lost a lot of his sponsorship. He's lost his brand partnerships. And also, which a lot of people are not reporting on, he is facing multiple civil lawsuits in the US. If all of the claimants win, we're talking millions of dollars that he will have to pay out. So financially, he's in actually quite a difficult position. You've got to remember he's also no longer married to a billionaire who can help bail him out, as Kim Kardashian has done in the past.

21:58I think she gave him$35 million when he was in debt with Yeezy. Bianca Sensori does not have that kind of money. I'm not saying Kanye doesn't have a dime to his name, but this is a financially difficult year for him. And he has already lost one of those civil lawsuits where he's had to pay out to a construction worker who was working on one of his properties, and he is facing more serious ones as the year progresses. So whilst him not being able to headline at wireless probably hasn't dented his pockets that much, it kind of puts a stop to that redemption arc, the apology tour of Kanye West, which can provide a stop to future potential earnings.

22:36He needs those earnings going forward. Yeah, I mean, he has to keep performing from what you're saying, because of the future financial burdens he might face. And he is still performing. Just last week, he performed in Los Angeles to tens of thousands of people in spite of all the things that he said. Is that a sign, Anushka, that antisemitism in society is something that is tolerated now in some sectors at least? There are figures, Anushka, there are figures. So a huge rise in anti-Semitism in the UK. That's something that is said to have driven Sir Keir Starmer's decision not to let Kanye West into the country.

23:19The figures show anti-Semitism incidents increased almost 150 % in 2023 alone and have stayed extremely high ever since. Jewish groups in Britain have said they didn't want him to perform in the UK. The campaign against anti-Semitism has said Mr. West has previously made apologies right before album releases and concert tours and then retracted the apology and reverted to type. Is Kanye West profiting from anti-Semitism? I think Kanye West has been profiting off of the culture's willingness to forgive him for being an anti-Semite, for being a misogynist, for being racist. one of the last things you said about reverting to type that criticism that's made a lot I mean people are saying oh it's so cynical well he's opening up to you about his bipolar and you're just seeing it as a ways and means for him to win back a large base but at the same time working its way through the court system as I keep saying multiple pieces of civil litigation and one of the defenses that is being used by his lawyers this is this year being in multiple cases is that Kanye's whole life is performance art.

24:38Kanye cannot be held responsible for anything he said because it's an extended version of performance art. And that extends to his anti-Semitic remarks. That is not him taking responsibility and accountability and saying, I take accountability, please give me space because I have bipolar and I want to earn your forgiveness and your trust back. That's saying, yeah, I said it, but it's art. It's provocative. And I just, I want to read you this direct quote. This is speaking to a lawsuit where one of the people who worked for him is saying that she heard anti-Semitic comments, that she was victimized personally by Kanye West.

25:13He says the communications she challenges, his lawyer's writing this, were creative directives, conceptual drafts, provocative imagery, marketing strategy, and staffing decisions shaping a public facing message. They were not collateral to Ye's art. They were part of its development. them. Now it goes on to say Ye is not merely a creator, he is art. Ye's public and private personas form a continuous provocative performance that challenges societal taboos surrounding race, religion, gender, power, politics and censorship. That is not taking accountability for anti-Semitic comments. So you've got two conflicting messages, one in what he said in the Wall Street Journal, what he said to leaders in the Jewish community and one that's making its way through the courts And because people will not report on what is happening in the court system, I think a lot of the meme-ification of what Kanye has said about the Jewish community, his overtly anti-Semitic remarks have been turned into humorous tidbits on the internet.

26:10And when you try and talk to publications and say, do you know about this lawsuit? Are you going to report on this? They say, everybody knows Kanye is a bad guy. No one's going to be interested in that. So he has crafted, I don't know if it's intentional, he's saying that this is because of his mental illness, okay, but there is the perfect defense against any crime because people won't pay attention and take it seriously because Kanye's always doing something bad. He's always saying something outrageous and it is infuriating when you are trying to cover him and say, actually, there are people out there who say they have been genuinely victimized by this man.

26:53Genuinely victimized. The worrying thing that I'm taking from this is that if you just say and do the most extreme things all of the time, eventually you'll end up as a joke and you can kind of get away with anything.

27:11Anoushka, thank you so much. It's been really good to talk with you. Thanks for having me.