David Schwimmer Makes Plea to Elon Musk to Have Kanye West Banned From X Over “Sick Hate Speech”
David Schwimmer is standing up and speaking out against Kanye West’s recent hate-filled tirade.
The popular Friends star took to Instagram on Saturday afternoon amid a flurry of controversial and antisemitic tweets posted by West to make a plea to X owner Elon Musk to have him removed from the platform. “We can’t stop a deranged bigot from spewing hate filled, ignorant bile… but we CAN stop giving him a megaphone, Mr. Musk,” shared the Jewish actor. “Kanye West has 32.7 million followers on your platform, X. That’s twice as many people than the number of Jews in existence. His sick hate speech results in REAL LIFE violence against Jews.”
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West has been firing off social media posts for several days straight in the wake of a stunt on the Grammy Awards red carpet where his wife, Bianca Censori, disrobed to reveal her nude body covered by a transparent stocking dress. But the most recent posts shared over the past 24 hours-plus have caused alarm as he’s praised Adolf Hitler, identified as a Nazi, promoted a Yeezy t-shirt design featuring a swastika, reignited his controversial comments on slavery, denounced the #MeToo movement and slammed plus-sized models.
Schwimmer zeroed in on the fact that in recent years, such language would have led to a user’s account being suspended. West himself was banned for nearly eight months from December 2022 through the summer of 2023 when he posted a swastika and unloaded a series of tweets with similarly disturbing content. (The posts led Adidas to cut ties with the rapper, producer and clothing designer.) At the time, X was owned by Musk but since that time, the mogul has relaxed moderation guidelines reinstated controversial accounts and largely done away with fact-checking in place of community notes. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg followed his lead earlier this year for his platforms Facebook and Instagram.
Schwimmer, who has used his platform to speak out against antisemitism many times over the past several years, then questioned “what’s worse,” the fact that West identifies as a Nazi or “the fact there is not sufficient OUTRAGE to remove and ban him from all social media at this point.”
While there have been some high-profile celebrities to join Schwimmer in speaking out — Meghan McCain called him “a truly demonic person” while Piers Morgan also questioned Musk as to why he’s still allowed on X — there hasn’t been the same call to action in response to West’s posts that there was several years back.
See Schwimmer’s Instagram post and the full text of his response below.
This is so 2022.
We can’t stop a deranged bigot from spewing hate filled, ignorant bile… but we CAN stop giving him a megaphone, Mr. Musk.
Kanye West has 32.7 million followers on your platform, X.
That’s twice as many people than the number of Jews in existence.
His sick hate speech results in REAL LIFE violence against Jews.
I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that he identifies as a Nazi (which implies he wants to exterminate ALL marginalized communities including his own) or the fact that there is not sufficient OUTRAGE to remove and ban him from all social media at this point.
Silence is complicity.
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