Kanye West reportedly paid a settlement to a former employee who alleged that he had used antisemitic language in the workplace.
via MSNBC:
In addition, six people who have worked with Ye or witnessed him in professional settings over the past five years said they had heard him praise Adolf Hitler or mention conspiracy theories about Jewish people. Three of them are former employees or collaborators, and they said they recalled multiple instances of Ye’s using antisemitic language. The three other people said they recalled a 2018 incident in which Ye went on an antisemitic tirade in an interview at TMZ’s offices.
Their accounts, as well as the settlement, suggest that Ye has used such language for years in more instances than previously known to the public, well before his recent antisemitic comments online and in interviews came to light, resulting in his losing a wave of business deals.
Ryder Ripps, a conceptual artist who worked with Ye on and off from 2014 to 2018, said he recalled multiple times when Ye spoke positively about Hitler and the Nazis or mentioned anti-Jewish conspiracies during meetings in the summer and fall of 2018. Ripps, who is Jewish, said he pushed back against Ye’s comments at the time but thought they “didn’t seem that dangerous.” After Ye’s most recent wave of statements, however, Ripps said he sees things differently. “This is dangerous and disgusting and actually violent,” he said.
“With this pattern that’s happening and with the doubling and tripling down of all this, it’s pretty obvious that this is some kind of disgusting, hate-filled, strange Nazi obsession,” Ripps said.
In the settlement reviewed by NBC News, Ye paid a former employee who alleged having witnessed more than one incident in which Ye praised Hitler or Nazis in business meetings. Ye denied the claims made by the former employee in the agreement.
The former employee spoke on the condition of anonymity, having signed a nondisclosure agreement. NBC News, which is withholding certain details about the settlement to protect the person’s anonymity, reviewed the settlement, along with other correspondence and proof of the payment the former employee said they had received.
Representatives for Ye did not respond to requests for comment.
CNN reported last Thursday that a business executive who worked for Ye had accused him of creating a hostile work environment through an “obsession” with Hitler and had received a settlement. NBC News has not confirmed the settlement, which appears to be separate from the case of the former employee who shared settlement documents with NBC News.
Ye has recently made a string of remarks targeting Jewish people and referring to antisemitic conspiracy theories, some of them on social media and in interviews with Chris Cuomo, Fox News and the “Drink Champs” podcast. The comments have included repeated attacks on “Jewish media” — invoking the antisemitic claim that Jewish people disproportionately control the media — and Jewish people in general. In an interview with Piers Morgan, Ye apologized “for the pain that I’ve caused and the confusion that I cause.” Days later, however, he doubled down on his previous antisemitic remarks in an interview with MIT research scientist Lex Fridman. On Friday, Ye continued to echo antisemitic conspiracy theories in a conversation with paparazzi, pulling up a spreadsheet that he said highlighted Jewish media executives in red.
We did NOT have Kanye West being a full-fledged Nazi on our 2022 bingo card.
