While some Harvard students never knew the “old Kanye,” they certainly do not condone the recent rhetoric of the “new Kanye.” In a three-day tirade, Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, posted a series of tweets targeting Jewish and Black communities, women, and other Hollywood public figures. As Ye headlined news outlets for making loaded statements like “I’m a Nazi,” his words also filled Harvard undergraduates’ social media feeds. Students quickly condemned Ye’s use of X, formerly known as Twitter, and discussed what his words meant in the context of free speech on social media platforms.
Brayden Lee ’28 recalls initially enjoying listening to Ye in 2018 but turning away from his content following his feature on a podcast where he praised Nazis. “It was just really bad,” Lee said. “I thought it was really just to be provocative, but I don’t think that really matters at the end of the day, so I just decided to not listen to him.”
August Hachmeister ’28 agreed with Lee’s sentiment, explaining that he frequently followed Ye’s music in the past but now has different opinions. “I just can’t say I’m a fan,” Hachmeister said. “Maybe at one point I [was], but nowadays, because the quality [of Ye’s music] has gone down, and because of the obvious—let’s not pretend, he’s really screwed up—I don’t consider myself a fan anymore.”
In addition to their general commentary, students were quick to reference Ye’s recent tweets, including “I love Hitler.” They additionally discussed his 2025 Super Bowl commercial to advertise his apparel brand Yeezy, which was exclusively selling t-shirts with the swastika on their fronts. “That’s just fucked up,” Hachmeister said.
While Ye’s rhetoric parallels that of neo-Nazis, Lee explained how even people who say similar things as him nonetheless do not like his character. “It’s just weird,” he said. “No one likes him right now, most people don’t like him as of now as a character.”
Some students thought Ye’s mental health was to blame for his actions. “I think that he’s mentally ill,” Lillie Tyrrell ’28 shared. “It’s been pretty apparent through a lot of things that he said over the course of, I guess, the last decade.”
However, even in the wake of this controversy, Ye’s short ban from X led some students to question their views on free speech and social media. “Personally, I think that people should feel free to be idiots because we have to realize who we consider right and who we consider wrong,” Hachmeister said.
“It’s hard, because I feel like the Internet should be an open space for everyone, even if they disagree, and I think the public shame that he gets is what kind of helps steer other people who might be even considering what he thinks away,” Lee added. “It kind of opens the doors to a conversation when you don’t agree with someone, you want to have that conversation instead of just forcing them out.”
“I honestly don’t know, because media suppression is also an issue—free speech and everything—but at the same time, when you have a celebrity that big with such a huge platform, honestly, he’s impressing upon young kids through rap music,” Tyrrell stated. “It is harmful to have him on that kind of pedestal and give him a venue and a forum for him to just kind of spew a lot of antisemitic things.”
Students had more difficulty navigating their beliefs on Ye’s ban when Elon Musk was brought into the conversation. “To think that Elon only banned [Ye] because he posted porn, I think that really kind of shows his true cards, because Elon is very ban-happy if you speak against him. I personally think he’s a huge hypocrite,” Hachmeister said.
Lee similarly felt that Musk’s statements on X are “always going to be pushed in the algorithm, because he owns it, and that’s what he wants. I feel like he is pushing his ideals… I think Elon Musk has not done a good job, because he’s using [X] as a tool more than anything.”
After having her Harvard Political Review article “Trump’s Rhetoric Echoes Hitler” retweeted on X by Elon Musk, Alexandra Fierman ’26 condemned the rhetoric of President Donald Trump, Musk, and Ye altogether. “I believe that Elon Musk should crack down on hate speech, of course, but he won’t,” Fierman said. “I believe that on all social media platforms—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or X, whatever it’s called, and just any social media platform—nobody should be able to say things that target some minority groups, historically marginalized groups, because I believe that’s threatening speech. So, yeah, I do believe that he should crack down on hate speech, but I don’t believe that he will.”
Fierman also mentioned Musk’s antisemitic rhetoric, discussing his recent controversy of making a hand motion that resembled the Nazi salute. “Of course, people are debating whether it was the Nazi salute or not,” she said. “And it’s quite clear what he did. And I find it suspicious when he reposted my article—his word above my article was ‘Seriously.’ And that day everybody, people in the mainstream media, were even saying, ‘he’s performing the Nazi salute.’ I wonder if he was just saying, ‘Seriously, I am a Nazi.’”
“The word ‘Seriously’ could be taken in one of two ways,” she continued. “So definitely that’s just speculation on my part, but I do believe that Elon Musk is an antisemitic individual based on performing the Nazi salute and based on his ties with Trump.”
Ultimately, each interview conducted by the Independent regarding Ye and Musk’s words and actions tied back to antisemitism’s growing presence in modern rhetoric. Fierman offered insight into these similarities in hate speech, particularly between Trump and Ye. “I believe that it ultimately causes the same repercussions because it’s coming from the same place. What happened to the Jewish people in Nazi Germany stems from a place of targeting people who do not fit into a mold of belonging or a mold for belonging in a nation,” Fierman said.
“Hitler also targeted the [Romani] and the disabled and homosexuals. So, disproportionately, it was Jewish people, but that targeting stemmed from a place of looking at a certain group as unworthy of belonging to a nation. So I do think that it has the same repercussions,” Fierman continued.
Fierman concluded that Trump and Ye’s rhetoric reflected a growing alienation of numerous minority groups. “When you have Kanye West explicitly targeting Jewish people, he’s making it clear that he doesn’t believe they belong,” she said. “And when Donald Trump targets immigrants and non-white people, he makes it clear that they don’t belong.”
Courtney Hines ’28 (courtneyhines@college.harvard.edu) is comping the Independent.