Is it really possible to separate art from the artist? Pop culture has certainly fostered an environment where toxic men thrive off of their fans who claim that they can. It’s happened time and time again, specifically with men in the music industry: Chris Brown the abuser, R. Kelly the pedophile and, most recently, Kanye West the far-right extremist. 

At his Yeezy show on Oct. 3 during Paris Fashion Week, West sent several models down the runway donning T-shirts with the phrase “White Lives Matter” printed in bold text. He also wore a shirt with the same phrase.

West has an extensive history of saying and doing things that shock us: running for president, saying 400 years of slavery “sounds like a choice,” and making it his mission to tell anyone who would listen about how much he loves Donald Trump. He’s a walking enigma, and we continue to let him get away with spreading these dangerous and hateful messages. 

But these are not sporadic, unpredictable instances. This is a pattern. 

Even with his problematic statements, West has been able to stay in a position of mass influence for so long because people love when celebrities act unhinged. It adds an extra element of entertainment when someone in the spotlight breaks down. We laugh it off again and again, but where is the joke? 

It’s not funny when someone with a worldwide platform continually uses their influence to spread hate. West’s 2020 presidential run wasn’t amusing; his run took away 60,000 votes that could have gone to a serious candidate. 

It wasn’t just “out of pocket” when he said slavery sounded “like a choice,” it was insulting. And he’s not an enlightened, godly artist for sending Black models down the runway with shirts that say “White Lives Matter,” a white supremacist phrase used by far-right groups like the Ku Klux Klan, printed on their shirts — he’s a political extremist. 

He proved this further on Oct. 9 when he had his Instagram account disabled for posting messages between himself and Sean Combs, where he references an anti-Semitic theory. After his account was disabled, he ran to Twitter, where his anti-Semitism became blatant. 

Whether or not he just loves the media frenzies that surround his political stunts, West is now pushing far-right hate speech through his own brand.

The tweet, which resulted in Twitter locking Kanye out of his account, read: “I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE The funny thing is I actually can’t be Anti Semetic because black people are actually Jew also.”

Whether or not he just loves the media frenzies that surround his political stunts, West is now pushing far-right hate speech through his own brand. He used to flaunt his MAGA hat like it was a crown and told Trump himself during a 2018 meeting in the Oval Office that the hat “gives him power”. 

West also has a history of targeting powerful women in an attempt to publicly shame them. We all remember the infamous 2009 VMAs where he burst onto the stage, interrupting Taylor Swift in the middle of her acceptance speech. This past February, he attacked Billie Eilish on his Instagram account, demanding that she apologize for a post she made about concert safety following the tragic deaths at Travis Scott’s concert in 2021. 

His latest public misogynistic antics were personal attacks made against renowned fashion editor Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, who called the “White Lives Matter” shirts “pure violence” and stated that “there is no excuse, there is no art here.” In response, West posted zoomed-in photos of Karefa-Johnson, mocking her outfit, and shared screenshots of cryptic messages from someone telling him he “shouldn’t insult that writer.”

Karefa-Johnson was not the only person who voiced distaste for the show. Jaden Smith walked out in the middle of the Yeezy show and posted a series of Tweets that made his dislike of the T-shirts clear. Unlike Karefa-Johnson, however, Smith did not receive public backlash from West. The difference? Karefa-Johnson is a powerful woman, and that is threatening to West.

West’s dangerous patterns will continue until he is held accountable rather than made into a meme. People continue to support his music and his brand because they claim they can separate the art from the artist and can appreciate brilliance while acknowledging the mind behind it is insane. 

But you can’t do that. Avidly listening to this man’s music, buying his clothing and engaging in his social media rampages feed into his cosmic ego.

West didn’t have just one random outburst, and he’s not “unhinged”; he has used and will continue to use his platform to spread far-right rhetoric and attack women. Supporting him in any way allows him to keep that platform. 

It is completely unfair and insulting to everyone who also struggles with mental illness to excuse West’s behavior just because he struggles with mental health.

It’s always important to take into consideration one’s personal struggles; West himself has openly discussed being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. However, his BPD is not an excuse for his actions. It is completely unfair and insulting to everyone who also struggles with mental illness to excuse West’s behavior just because he struggles with mental health.

His actions are not impulsive. Planning a high-end fashion show is a task that takes at least four months to prepare for, according to the CM Modeling Agency. West had months to conceptualize, design and produce those t-shirts. He went a step further by inviting Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens to the show, where Owens posed wearing one of these t-shirts with West. The cherry on top was sending models down the runway at Paris Fashion Week wearing the insulting shirts, which one could most certainly find at a tchotchke shop on the Jersey Shore. 

It’s exhausting that West is a constant topic of conversation in the media and that the coverage of him is largely uncritical. The pedestal West stands on needs to be ripped out from under him. He should no longer be welcomed into elite fashion and music spaces, and his bizarre Instagram apologies cannot fix the damage he has repeatedly caused.