AIBU to think cancelling Kanye West’s Italy concert was justified? (antisemitism)

[Twiglets1]

A Kanye West concert in Italy has been cancelled as a result of “public order and safety issues”.

He was scheduled to perform at the Pulse of Gaia Festival at the RCF Arena in Reggio Emilia on July 18, but Salvatore Angieri, the city’s prefect, stopped the concerts after “concerns” from the local Jewish community about previous anti-Semitic remarks by West.

A translation of a statement issued by the government of Reggio Emilia "took into account the cancellation of previous concerts by the American rapper in other countries and the real risk of counter-demonstrations.”

In April, West’s show in Marseille, France, was postponed after he had been denied a UK visa earlier that month, which led to the cancellation of his headline appearances at London’s Wireless Festival, following backlash due to anti-Semitic remarks.

West released a song called Heil Hitler in 2025, and previously advertised a swastika T-shirt for sale on his website. He has also been criticised for posting tweets of an anti-Semitic nature and describing slavery as “a choice”.

If the cancellation was justified in Britain, why would it be different in Italy?

Well the concert in Italy was organised more recently and I imagine some people would argue that seeing as he subsequently apologised, he should be forgiven for his antisemitic remarks.

Not an opinion I agree with but AIBU?

I don't agree with cancelling anybody tbh but

Who the hell books him in the first place??

Its the right choice. Anti semitisim is rife and it's upsetting

I absolutely understand why it has been cancelled as there are so many problems with antisemitism at the moment and I think it risks whipping up problems - from those who feel his comments justify their own views and action and from those who oppose them.

That said…. My understanding is that Kanye West has now admitted that he has had untreated bipolar disorder for a long time and he did and said these awful things whilst very unwell. There doesn’t seem to be much discourse about the sometimes devastating effects of severe mental illness. There a lot more awareness of mental illness now as long as it’s the one that people find palatable like anxiety and depression. Understanding around psychotic illness is still very poor. He didn’t just say sorry, he said sorry and explained that he said and did those things whilst very unwell but people are discussing if he should be forgiven because he’s said sorry and rather than trying to understand the illness.

That’s not to say that cancelling the concert is wrong, he can’t take back what he said, the situation has been created, but I think the conversation around it should be different.

Yes it would be better if people who spouted antisemitic nonsense were not booked in the first place I agree.

I’d quite like to see the obnoxious wanker cancelled entirely.

Bipolar doesn’t make you a racist prick who sells swastika T-shirts and professes to be a Nazi. I don’t believe his published “apology” was about anything other than trying to recover his income stream ahead of an album release.

I don't disagree that people should show sympathy for those with bipolar disorder.

That being said, most people who suffer from bipolar do not think swastika t shirts are ok or post tweets of an anti-Semitic nature.

I doubt he would have focused on swastikas etc if he didn't harbour some anti Jewish sentiment deep down - the same way that those that attack others based on race/religion/sex while having a psychotic episode are also likely to have negative feelings that could normally be held in check.

I don’t follow Kanye West or listen to his music, so I’m not hugely well informed. I thought he apologised last year for antisemitic comments made previously. He seems to have severe mental health problems and I was under the impression the comments were said during a psychiatric episode. If that is the case, then I’m generally in favour of forgiveness. But then you look at the way he parades his almost naked girlfriend around and conclude he must be very disturbed. Is he still doing that? All in all, not someone I’d want my children to go and see in concert.

This is not his first apology:

In October 2022, he published a private text message exchange on Instagram between him and Sean Combs - who is now in jail after being convicted on prostitution-related charges - in which he claimed Combs was "controlled by Jewish people".

The message played into a long-standing antisemitic conspiracy theory.
West's account was later suspended.

The rapper responded by rejoining Twitter, as the platform was then known, and saying he would go "death con 3 On Jewish people", earning him a second ban.

Both platforms removed West's posts and said the star had violated policies on hate speech.

In December 2022, West also appeared on a podcast hosted by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Wearing a face covering during the interview, he told Jones: "I see good things about Hitler."

West told Jones that the Nazi leader, like every human being, had brought value to the world.

Hours after the broadcast, he was again suspended from Twitter for "violating our rule against incitement to violence".

Just a couple of months after that ban, West was suspended from Twitter again and accused of "inciting violence" over offensive tweets.

The US rapper posted a series of erratic tweets - one of which appeared to show a symbol combining a swastika and a Jewish star.

In December 2023, West apologised to "the Jewish community" for a series of antisemitic remarks he had made the previous year.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9vl1pn70ddo

From the same article:

In February 2025, West started selling swastika T-shirts, prompting the commerce platform Shopify to take down his web store.

Three months later, West released the track Heil Hitler - in which he claimed a child custody battle and the freezing of his financial assets turned him towards Naziism.

West was later blocked from entering Australia over the song's glorification of the Nazi leader.

In January 2026, West took out a full-page advert in the Wall Street Journal apologising for his antisemitic behaviour.

"I am not a Nazi or an antisemite," he wrote. "I love Jewish people."
He said that as a result of his bipolar disorder, he had "lost touch with reality".

But speaking about the rapper's previous controversial comments in 2022, Professor Amy Elizabeth West, who teaches clinical pediatrics and psychology at USC Keck School of Medicine, said:, external "Bipolar disorder is absolutely not synonymous with racism and there's nothing about mental illness that creates racism or hate.

"Those are all entirely separate behaviours that he happens to have in addition to having bipolar disorder."

Yanbu he has a long history of antisemitism, he’s dangerous because of his influence

He tends to apologise (or his PR team do) whenever he has an album or performance coming out.

Possibly both the outrageous comments and the later apology help to generate publicity but if there is any thought like that, it has backfired recently.

Which is good because it sends out the message to other artists & hopefully their fans that antisemitism isn’t acceptable.

I love Kanye but he should not be given a public platform.

“Most people who suffer from bipolar” don’t have a specific theme for when they become very unwell. Yes they have to have knowledge of the focus of their delusion, it’s possible that comes from their own beliefs but it can just come from the environment around them. Delusions and hallucinations aren’t overt manifestations of people’s true beliefs that they just keep to themselves when they’re well. They could be but certainly not always or even most of the time.

I'm not buying that someone who sees "good things in Hitler" and uses language such as "controlled by Jews" and going "death con 3 on Jewish people," who sold swastika t-shirts and released a track called Heil Hitler is not antisemitic.

He's antisemitic and bi polar not antisemitic because of being bi polar.

I don't think much of him but would think his views were so extreme and because he has apologised that he didn't mean it and it was MH related. Someone who is truly racist would have subtle references in their music or support certain organisations with racist goals. He makes money from the public supporting him so he would know if he had full capacity that those actions would cause a backlash and ultimately cost him.

So thinking about the ald with Tourettes who was banned from flying for shouting out "Bomb", his MH condition did not take precedence over the considerations for the rest of the flyers and the airlines rules. Despite it being entirely due to his condition, he was barred..
So even IF Kaynes behavior is a direct result of his MH illness (and obv that's VERY open to debate), the point would be he shouldn't be given a platform in which he could cause more harm if he has an episode that makes him spout this crap. He obviously isn't reliabkl9taking his meds to rest his condition so he can't be trusted to not act out.

Plus my understanding is that a bipolar episode might make him say things he wouldn't ordinarily SAY but it doesn't create beliefs he didn't already hold. So if he said it, it was there already he'd just previosl9been able to keep his mouth shut.

Not someone I'd want to kids looking up to

He has been controversial so many times throughout his career on various issues, he doesn't seem to care about the public supporting everything he says/does. Or maybe he thought enough people would like what he said that he didn't have to care about those that would be offended.

After repeated examples of antisemitism going back several years, I don't personally think that "he didn't mean it" is very believable.

Yes I treat patients with bipolar who are completely mortified when they realise what they said and did when unwell. It’s very sad.

You mean like appearing on Nick Fuentes' podcast and making antisemitic comments in songs as far back as 2005?

I thought Hadley Freeman had a good take on Kanye. She’s Jewish and has been a psychiatric inpatient several times.

https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/kanye-west-real-mental-crisis-hitler-28wtrwjsd

TL;DR: “In short, if ever there was a living definition of bipolar disorder, it would be West. And so, what — in this mental health awareness era — was the reaction to West’s confirmation last week, again, that he is mentally unwell? Go screw that antisemite, pretty much. These days mental health means starting a Substack about how you’ve finally realised, at the age of 52, you’re neurodiverse, and the world must now respect your triggers. It absolutely does not mean anything as ugly as people ranting about Hitler, let alone making accommodations for those people, because that won’t get you the good likes on Instagram, no matter how many sparkly filters you put on it. In sanitising how we talk about mental illness, we’ve sanitised how we think mental illness should look.”

Also, Freddie deBoer, on Kanye and people claiming “mental illness doesn’t do that”:

https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/its-mental-illness-doesnt-do-that

“Postpartum psychosis causes mothers to drown their infants, but mental illness doesn’t do that. Coprophagics sit in group therapy, casually reach down and defecate in their hands and start smearing it on their body without seeming to notice, but mental illness doesn’t do that. Schizoaffectives wander onto subway tracks, bystanders screaming to them to stop, then get cut in half, but mental illness doesn’t do that. Women with obsessive compulsive disorder scour the interiors of their vaginas with steel wool in a brutal effort to cleanse themselves of contaminants that aren’t there, then die from the infections, but mental illness doesn’t do that…And people with bipolar disorder slowly and painstakingly build their lives like everybody else, and then in a few short manic weeks, set everything they’ve built on fire. But mental illness doesn’t do that.”

Some people on this thread disagree with me that Kanye is antisemitic (fair enough, it's an AIBU).

What about the title of the thread though - AIBU to think cancelling Kanye West’s Italy concert was justified.

Were the authorities in Italy justified to do that given that he is apparently unable to stop himself making antisemitic comments?

And what about the Home Office who refused him permission to travel to the UK for the Wireless festival on the grounds that his presence would not be conducive to the public good?