Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, has been barred from entering Australia following the release of his pro-Nazi song Heil Hitler.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said Ye had been travelling for years to Australia, where his wife, Bianca Censori, was born. Her family lives in Melbourne.
Burke said Heil Hitler promotes Nazism. The song, released in May, has been criticized as an antisemitic tribute to German dictator Adolf Hitler. It’s also been banned in Germany and from online platforms including Apple Music, YouTube and Spotify.
The song includes a direct sample from a speech Hitler gave in 1935 and repeats the slogan hailing the German dictator.
“He’s been coming to Australia for a long time. He’s got family here. And he’s made a lot of offensive comments that my officials looked at again once he released the Heil Hitler song and he no longer has a valid visa in Australia,” Burke told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“If you’re going to have a song and promote that sort of Nazism, we don’t need that in Australia,” Burke added. “We have enough problems in this country already without deliberately importing bigotry.”
He noted that the Australian government had not banned Ye from entering Australia permanently because “every visa application gets reassessed by my officials each time.”
“I’m not taking away the way the act operates, but even for the lowest level of visa, when my officials looked at it, they cancelled that following the announcement of that song,” he added.
Australia’s Migration Act sets security and character requirements for non-citizens to enter the country.
A spokesperson for the home affairs department told the Guardian Australia that the “government will continue to act decisively to protect the community from the risk of harm posed by individuals who choose to engage in criminal activity or behaviour of concern, including visa cancellation or refusal where appropriate.”
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Ye and his representatives have not commented on the visa revocation.
This isn’t the first time Australia has considered blocking West from entering the country. In 2023, Australia’s education minister, Jason Clare, condemned Ye’s “awful” antisemitic comments involving Hitler and the Holocaust, saying others who have made similar statements have been denied visas.
“People like that who’ve applied for visas to get into Australia in the past have been rejected,” Clare told CNN affiliate Nine News in January 2023. “I expect that if he does apply he would have to go through the same process and answer the same questions that they did.”
Ye has a years-long history of making antisemitic remarks.
Earlier this year, West’s Yeezy.com was removed from Shopify after it featured a single product: white T-shirts with a black swastika in the centre, under the product name HH-01.
In a statement to Global News, a Shopify spokesperson said, “All merchants are responsible for following the rules of our platform. This merchant did not engage in authentic commerce practices and violated our terms so we removed them from Shopify.”
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In February, West used his X account to share his controversial and antisemitic thoughts, including identifying as a Nazi and claiming to “love Hitler.” On Feb. 9, it appeared that West had deactivated his X account for a short amount of time before reactivating it.
He was also dropped by his talent agency, 33&West, following his antisemitic rants on X.
Daniel McCartney, the rapper’s former music agent, announced that West had been removed from the agency’s roster of clients as of Feb. 10.
“Effective immediately, I’m no longer representing YE (F/K/A Kanye West) due to his harmful and hateful remarks that myself nor 33 & West can stand for,” McCartney wrote in an Instagram Stories post.
“Peace and love to all.”
The Anti-Defamation League also released a statement with regard to West’s recent posts and his website, writing, “As if we needed further proof of Kanye’s antisemitism, he chose to put a single item for sale on his website – a t-shirt emblazoned with a swastika.”
“The swastika is the symbol adopted by Hitler as the primary emblem of the Nazis. It galvanized his followers in the 20th century and continues to threaten and instill fear in those targeted by antisemitism and white supremacy,” the post continued.
“If that wasn’t enough, the t-shirt is labeled on Kanye’s website as ‘HH-01,’ which is code for ‘Heil Hitler.’
“Kanye was tweeting vile antisemitism nonstop since last week. There’s no excuse for this kind of behavior. Even worse, Kanye advertised his website during the Super Bowl, amplifying it beyond his already massive social media audience.”
— With files from The Associated Press
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