401
submitted 1 year ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

An explosive new investigation by the New York Times details how Adidas employees experienced frequent anti-Semitism from Grammy Award-winning rapper and Yeezy designer Kanye West for nearly a decade.

Adidas officially ended its partnership with the rapper and producer, who now goes by Ye, in October of 2022, after multiple virulently anti-Semitic remarks, including a tweet in which the rapper threatened to go "death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE."

However, West's pattern of anti-Semitism dates back to at least 2013, according to the Times' reporting.

At the start of her report, Megan Twohey detailed how, in his initial meeting with Adidas executives at their German headquarters in 2013, West expressed his dissatisfaction with a proposed shoe design by taking a marker and drawing a swastika — the display of which is banned in Germany — on the design. He also reportedly told Jewish Adidas executive Jon Wexler, who at the time was Adidas' global director of entertainment and influencer marketing, to "kiss a picture of Hitler every day."

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] TechyDad@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

You wouldn't be. The First Amendment would protect you against criminal charges for just expressing hatred towards a group.

Now, if you took action to harm a group and your speech was part of that attempt, then you could be prosecuted for a hate crime.

Now, this might seem like a bad thing. Why shouldn't we make "saying hateful things" a crime? The problem (well among the many problems) is "who decides what's a hateful statement?"

Most people would agree praising Hitler (for anything other than being the guy who killed Hitler) is hateful. What about praising Thomas Jefferson? He was a founding father and did laudable things in his life. On the other hand, he owned slaves and raped at least one of them. So would praising Thomas Jefferson be a hate crime?

Also, what if the Republicans came into power again and gained the ability to decide what is criminal hate speech? Imagine if hating black people, LGBTQ people, Jews, Muslims, etc was allowed, but even mildly criticizing white Christians was criminal hate speech.

[-] Neon@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

Yes you would.

The US' first Amendment doesn't protect you from german Law. And this happened in Germany.

[-] TechyDad@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Ah, you're right. I missed that significant detail. If Kayne had done this in the US, he would have been covered by the First Amendment (though Adidas would have been within their rights to cut off their deal because they didn't want to work with someone like him). By doing this in Germany? The First Amendment doesn't apply then.

this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
401 points (94.3% liked)

News

23397 readers
1645 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS