Congratulations tonight to anyone who had “just about exactly one month” as their (shockingly) long pick in the “How long will it take Kanye West to get himself suspended from Elon Musk’s Twitter?” betting pool, as West appears to have finally passed Musk’s own personal thresholds for “free speech” at last—presumably right around the time he posted a picture this evening of a swastika entwined with a Star Of David.
Today was a fairly wild day for West all around, even by the extraordinarily lax standards of what constitutes “wild” for a guy who’s been hatefully spiraling now for a couple of years/what feels like a significant chunk of our lives. Earlier today, West went on Alex Jones’ Infowars, where he achieved the seemingly impossible task of making Alex Jones come off as a pleading voice of moderation, calling for some measure of restraint in the face of West’s blunt assertion that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler had many commendable traits, and that he loves Jewish people and Nazis equally.
Which brings us back around to West’s Twitter, which has now been suspended (with West posting a shirtless picture of Musk as his final tweet, because there’s a level at which this is all theater and trolling, in addition to being a statement of a whole bunch of genuine antisemitic ideas.) The swastika-Star Of David thing appears to have been the final straw after a whole bunch of hedging; although Musk has claimed he didn’t personally push to have West return to Twitter after Musk over-paid to acquire the social media company in late October, he’s often portrayed himself as friendly with the rapper as part of his ongoing efforts to suck up to famous people make Twitter a more inclusive and welcoming space.
After the suspension, Musk issued a real “Gosh, who’d a thunk it’d turn out this way” statement his followers, writing that, “I tried my best. Despite that, he again violated our rule against incitement to violence.” And genuinely: Who’d a thunk?