Spotify, SoundCloud and other platforms have pulled the song, but its spread underscores the challenges tech platforms face in removing content that violate their policies.
Spotify, SoundCloud and other tech platforms have worked to remove a new song from Ye that praises Adolf Hitler, but the song and its video have continued to proliferate online including across X, where it has racked up millions of views.
On various mainstream and alternative tech platforms this week, Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, has been able to share his latest song, titled “Heil Hitler,” along with its companion title, “WW3,” which similarly glorifies Hitler, the architect of the Holocaust.
While some platforms have taken steps to attempt to pull down the song, others have seemingly let it spread freely.
While this can certainly be interpreted as defending awful people (which I’m sure someone will, prepare for downvotes because many only read the first paragraph and do not understand nuance) with an awful message, I tend to agree with you.
Music is art, and like any artwork its quality does not depend on its message. I have to admit that the gay fish was never the kind of artist I enjoyed simply because the rap tracks I like are few and far between. (Wtf is drill rap?)
But to use a different angle: I’ve always been a metal head, and there’s quite a lot of black metal that I enjoy. And as most sensible people understand, that doesn’t make me a satanist, nor do I endorse burning of churches.
So the obvious question is then: Is Ye’s newer stuff any good? Well, fuck if I know. I cannot name a single song Ye made. But he’s not exactly making it more tempting to try and like his stuff. Anyway, fuck him and fuck the horse he rode in on.
EDIT: I did some research. I remember Golddigger. That’s all.
Unsurprisingly, it’s not my cup of tea. And I don’t even drink tea.
Why are they censoring that, though? I didn’t notice any lyrics more controversial than what you’d hear elsewhere.
That’s not really at issue here.
This isn’t the government deciding what art is objectionable, and arresting those who play music they don’t like. This is a private company deciding what it wants to host in it’s library, that it curates, it pays license fees for, and sells subscriptions too. Ye or any Nazi absolutely has the right to make and sell any music they want. They however don’t have the right to force another company to sell their music for them.
You are disgusting. Your argument is wack and holds no water. Social media has no obligation to host hate speech. Fuck you for being a bottom dwelling Nazi apologist.
Not defending the OP but his argument is that here in Australia the government is doing the censoring, he’s all for platforms delisting it if they wish. As an aside, that’s effectively the same thing (as argued by people like Philip Adams here in Australia)
As an Australian, I find government censorship of the arts problematic, this case is glaringly easy to agree with but there are a plethora of edge case issues that leave me feeling uneasy and I’m squarely on the side of Karl Popper with this.
As to everyone “disliking nazis”, thats not true. Russia is led by one, as is the US and India, the current Austrian Government is led by a a political party set up by literal Nazis, across the border the AfD is praised by the US.
Look at Hannah Ardent and Albert Einstein’s letter to the newspapers about the horror of Israel. So I’d suggest there is broad support for nazis, unless u mean literal nazis from Germany circa WW2, of which there aren’t many left but we had one in charge of NATO, another designing rockets for Nasa and on and on, so there is that.
https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYorkTimes.December41948
Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the “Freedom Party” (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine.
This seems like it was written by AI as it addresses practically nothing written here but goes off on tangents. The couple pieces that were relevant are wrong. There is nothing here to suggest that government censorship has fuck all to do with Kanye’s “art” and also OP said jack fucking shit to indicate they’re ok with social media taking it down. They seem very opposed to it actually. Which is why everyone hates them.
So if there is a new song that lists all of the high up government official’s addresses and tells everyone to kill them and a billionaire will give them a million dollars to do it, that would be cool? You think that would be art? Nah dude, those song people would get a knock on their door before the song plays though 10 times.
Totally wrong on this one. Your rights end where others begin. Is it OK if a guy writes a song about torturing and killing you. You specifically. No? What about 3 songs? 10 songs?
There’s a very clear line in free speech. You are free to say what you wish WITH IN NORMAL PARAMETERS! Does this protect some hate speech, or what a targeted group might see as hate speech? A bit. But not the brazen stuff. You want to stand on a corner and talk about how the pope controls the weather? OK. You want to stand on a street corner and clearly call people to violence to harm Catholics and their property? No. That’s not free speech. You aren’t allowed to call people to violence.
Is praising Hitler, and other neo nazi garbage hate speech? Yes. It’s hate speech. There’s no Hitler that didn’t kill millions of people. There’s no nazi party that didn’t call people to action and violence. You don’t have the freedom to stand on a street corner and clearly make appeals to specific violence. That’s never been allowed.
I don’t know why this has to keep being repeated. It’s not hard.
Free speech does not mean you are entitled to have a private entity like a website host your content or speech.
He is welcome to sing this on the streets. He is welcome to publish this himself, be it hosted by a website he creates or in a physical medium.
He is not entitled to it being placed on retail shelves. He is not entitled to have it hosted on YouTube or Spotify.
This isn’t hard. The government of the United States has made absolutely no moves to silence this song. He can sing it and personally distribute it as much as he wants. But no one can be forced to distribute it for him
But why educate others wrong? You may not sing heil Hitler on the streets. It is a hate crime
That depends on your country. In Germany singing this song on the street would be illegal.
In the USA where Kanye lives and produced this song it is perfectly legal to sing in the streets.
No one is claiming private entities have to host it lol, did you even read my entire comment? I literally wrote private companies can delist what they want
So you’re ranting about what exactly? Kanye has faced no repercussions from the government. The only thing that’s happened was backlash from fans and private entities not hosting his songs.
Still trying to find the “attack on free speech” you ranted about
And none of those platforms have to host the material. I don’t know what drill rap is.
Who gets to decide? The gallery, the sculpture garden, and YouTube.
I agree with you, BTW. However, I haven’t seen any government attempt to censor this song yet. Song sucks though, and I’m a fan of early Kanye.
Private entities should be free to delist whatever they choose
In Australia the government is banning music/artists
Show us where the government in Australia has banned music / artists? I cant find anything about this.
Dude. There’s a limit to that expression. There’s a reason why nobody likes Nazi’s and they deserve a punch in the face at minimum. Don’t be on the repeat side of history by performing some kind mental gymnastics to preserve freedom of expression and inadvertantly protect Nazism with that argument. That’s what apologists do now and did in the past.
Always remember this: if you have 10 people eating dinner at a table and 1 of them is a Nazi, how many nazi’s do you have? The answer is 10 Nazis.
You need to spend some time thinking on the (misnamed) “paradox of tolerance”. The idea you’re espousing is exactly the most critical, fundamental misunderstanding of tolerance as a moral value.
The “paradox of tolerance” is the idea that one must even tolerate the intolerant - it would be a paradox because this tolerance ultimately ensures the unbridled spread of intolerance. Folks weakly on the left have misunderstood this forever.
But there is no paradox, never has been. Tolerance must never be given to the hatefully intolerant. Nazism can never be tolerated, it must be defeated as quickly as possible everywhere it sprouts up. And I do absolutely mean violently, I am not talking about just simple ostracism or censorship.
A society that tolerates the hatefully intolerant is fully doomed. Please, come to realize that you are not advocating for anything high-minded, you are advocating for the destruction of all things beautiful, art or otherwise.
it would be a paradox because this tolerance ultimately ensures the unbridled spread of intolerance. Folks weakly on the left have misunderstood this forever.
While I can’t read what you’re responding to, that doesn’t follow (it can be ignored or protested) & no, they haven’t.
The paradox of tolerance doesn’t lead to a unique conclusion. Philosophers drew all kinds of conclusions. I favor John Rawls’:
Either way, philosopher John Rawls concludes differently in his 1971 A Theory of Justice, stating that a just society must tolerate the intolerant, for otherwise, the society would then itself be intolerant, and thus unjust. However, Rawls qualifies this assertion, conceding that under extraordinary circumstances, if constitutional safeguards do not suffice to ensure the security of the tolerant and the institutions of liberty, a tolerant society has a reasonable right to self-preservation to act against intolerance if it would limit the liberty of others under a just constitution. Rawls emphasizes that the liberties of the intolerant should be constrained only insofar as they demonstrably affect the liberties of others: “While an intolerant sect does not itself have title to complain of intolerance, its freedom should be restricted only when the tolerant sincerely and with reason believe that their own security and that of the institutions of liberty are in danger.”
Accordingly, constraining some liberties such as freedom of speech is unnecessary for self-preservation in extraordinary circumstances as speaking one’s mind is not an act that directly & demonstrably harms/threatens security or liberty. However, violence or violations of rights & regulations could justifiably be constrained.
A point of clarification: tolerance has a number of paradoxes identified in the SEP, and the paradox in discussion is more precisely called the paradox of drawing the limits.
Opposing basic civil liberties like freedom of expression is very authoritarian & small-minded. Basic rule on policymaking: don’t give yourself powers you wouldn’t want your opponents to have.
Quoting A Man of All Seasons
Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety’s sake!
Sacrificing basic civil liberties when they don’t suit you is a threat to everyone. Their willingness to do that is why everyone hates authoritarians. It’s cutting off your nose to spite your face.
There are better ways to beat these shitheads, and it’s been done before. Contrary to what you wrote, defending civil liberties regardless of whose is high-minded & defends everyone.
That’s a lotta words to say we should tolerate things I say we shouldn’t. We can disagree, but I’m not all that interested in getting scholarly about it - the writing’s on the wall, we have real - not theoretical - fascism headed our way within this 4 year presidency and we’d better be ready to fight.
Enjoy your Stanford political philosophy. I’m gonna keep watching for further sieg heils on national stages, and I know what I’ll do if they become too widespread.
I wish you’d help, but above all, I wish you well.
Either way, philosopher John Rawls concludes differently in his 1971 A Theory of Justice, stating that a just society must tolerate the intolerant, for otherwise, the society would then itself be intolerant, and thus unjust. However, Rawls qualifies this assertion, conceding that under extraordinary circumstances, if constitutional safeguards do not suffice to ensure the security of the tolerant and the institutions of liberty, a tolerant society has a reasonable right to self-preservation to act against intolerance if it would limit the liberty of others under a just constitution. Rawls emphasizes that the liberties of the intolerant should be constrained only insofar as they demonstrably affect the liberties of others: “While an intolerant sect does not itself have title to complain of intolerance, its freedom should be restricted only when the tolerant sincerely and with reason believe that their own security and that of the institutions of liberty are in danger.”
That’s a whole lot of words to communicate what could be easily described by reframing the concept of tolerance as a social contract rather than a moral precept.
First of all, these are private companies, not governments. They can technically do whatever TF they want, and we probably shouldn’t have ceded so much power to them.
…Anyway, I think you have a point. Or at least part of one.
It’s reasonable to draw red lines like “no nazism on our platform.” But at the end of the day Spotify and such can ban whatever they want, with no repercussions since it’s basically a network of defacto, legally shielded monopolies.
So how would we feel if, say, they started banning podcasts a little too popular and too critical of the president?
In other words, banning nazism as a policy is fine, but arbitrarily banning what looks bad to them is indeed going to be a problem.
Also: Defensive Democracy
The government isn’t silencing him. Private entities are deciding not to support it. Forcing them to would be against free speech.
Is it still music and art that should be platformed when it calls for genocide?
Edit: whoops I fell for sealioning again
The sun beams down on a brand new day
No more welfare tax to pay
Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light
Jobless millions whisked away
At last we have more room to play
All systems go to kill the poor tonightGonna kill, kill, kill, kill, kill the poor
Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill the poor
Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill the poor tonight
Should the song I quoted be banned? If not, where exactly do you draw the line?
The guy is once again professing his love for Hitler. This song is normalizing the Usage of Heil Hitler. How the fuck do you not see that?
Yep, so in Australia NSW police have been contacting Spotify/YouTube/etc with requests to delist certain songs from Sydney drill rap bands that glorify and promote gang violence against Spotify’s/Youtube’s/etcs policies, the streamers have in some cases agreed and delisted the music, in other cases they have not and the music remains. This is after the groups theyve had issues with (eg One-Four) have caused multiple riots and had several charges and convictions, so it’s arisen from a desire to serve public good. Only certain tracks have been targeted from what I can see, not whole albums or artist catalogs.
That’s a far cry from the government deciding what art people can or cannot listen to in my opinion. They have only asked some streaming platforms to adhere to their own policies, and then tbe platforms have made their own decisions on case by case basis.
Is there other actions I’m not aware of? The govt hasn’t passed any laws to block the sale of drill rap nor banned its play on radio etc?
