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Kanye West was today banned from the Twitch streaming platform just seven minutes into his first stream.
The controversial 47-year-old rapper, also known as Ye, has become well-known for making offensive and antisemitic remarks.
His first appearance on Twitch, which is popular with gamers, was no different. As The Daily Beast reports, West appeared on the stream wearing a black jacket and Prada sunglasses before launching into a speech that included slurs about Jewish people and the LGBT+ community. He also threw a Nazi salute while proclaiming: “Heil Hitler.”
West added that Elon Musk had given him “free passes” to post discriminatory messages on social media. He also made a series of disparaging comments about his ex-wife, Kim Kardashian.
Within minutes, his Twitch page had been replaced with a message that read: “This channel is temporarily unavailable due to a violation of Twitch’s Community Guidelines or Terms of Service.”
West had not even reached 220 followers before being banned.
Last month, West made a video featuring him posing in a diamond-encrusted swastika necklace next to infamous white supremacist Nick Fuentes.
He introduced a smiling Fuentes as his “white supremacist homeboy.”
In the now-deleted video, which was posted to X, West was seen standing next to Fuentes inside some kind of large venue, with loud music blaring nearby.
“Yo,” West says to the camera. “You know I’m here with my white supremacist homeboy Nick. We’re back.” The rapper is wearing the large Nazi symbol on his chest and jewel-encrusted grills.
The pair are known to be friendly, having been photographed together at dinner with Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence in 2022 — resulting in a backlash against the president.
In February, Friends actor David Schwimmer called on Musk to ban Kanye West from X after he made a series of antisemitic posts.
The actor pointed to a number of posts by West in a lengthy post to his own eight million followers on Instagram.
West, now known as Ye, wrote, “I’m a Nazi,” and “I don’t like or trust no Jewish person, and this is completely sober with no Hennessy.”
“I’m racist. Stereotypes exist for a reason and they all be true,” West wrote. “You can get money with Jewish people but they always gonna steal and invite you over to they house on Friday.”
Schwimmer cited a number of other antisemitic comments by West, including, “Jewish people actually hate white people and use black people.”
Schwimmer called on Musk, the owner of X, to remove West from the platform.
“This is so 2022,” said Schwimmer. “We can’t stop a deranged bigot from spewing hate-filled, ignorant bile… but we CAN stop giving him a megaphone, Mr Musk.”
