What Has Gotten Into Kanye?
When “All Of The Lights” sadly turn off
Kanye West has burned the boats.
He is going full nazi. His new music video, “Heil Hitler”, has been banned almost everywhere, but is still available on X. In the warlike artwork, the Chicagoan rapper doubled down on his message.
There is no way back.
The words of the song could hardly be more explicit:
All my n****s nazis, n**** heil Hitler
N**** heil hitler, n**** heil Hitler
All my n****s nazis, n**** heil Hitler
It is not just clickbait.
Kanye has aligned himself with far-right figures, wears swastika T-shirts, and is openly antisemitic. It is no longer mere provocation. He is committed to the cause.
“Uncle Adolf” is living rent-free in his head.
What made him spiral?
Before Yeezy wanted to be führer, he only wanted to be president.
It did not end well. During his 2020 campaign, he scorned his wife, Kim Kardashian, by revealing that they considered aborting their daughter North. Later, he publicly offended her relatives on Twitter.
Not only would he not become president; he would soon cease to be a husband.
A few months after Kanye’s campaign failed, Kim filed for divorce. He lost custody of his children. She dissed him on SNL.
All he had left was his astronomical ego.
Kanye has a megolamaniacal mind. As an artist, he is brilliant, but unstably grandiose. He once compared himself to Andy Warhol, William Shakespeare, and Walt Disney in a single interview.
The world is telling him he is insane, but he will retort by claiming it simply does not understand his vision.
Now he seeks comfort in ideology.
If you are (at least somewhat) narcissistic, it may reassure you to believe it is not you, but everyone else who is wrong. In Kanye’s case, that means blaming the world’s miseries on a particular people (the ones wearing tiny hats). He believes society is plotting against him, and they are behind it all.
It could not be that he simply has clinical-level delusions of grandeur.
Ye would rather become a fascist than admit to his shortcomings.
In the real world, he is nowhere near Shakespeare. (It is tragic that it even needs to be stated.) He was never a God-like figure, but a deeply flawed man, egotistically drunk on the flattery that pop culture provided him with.
As it has for many, his poor mental state seduced him into extremism.
The latest lyrics reveal the psychological trap he is in:
I got so much anger in me
Got no way to take it out
Think I'm stuck in the matrix
[…]
With all of the money and fame
I still can't get my kids back
[…]
N****s see my Twitter
But they don't see how I be feeling
So I became a nazi
Yeah bitch I'm the villain
This is an unstable person, confessing (and embracing) his descent into madness on record.
A psychologically plagued human being usually, at first, resists what troubles him. But failing to, he may be tempted to give in to the fall: enabling his demons, becoming one in the process. This is portrayed, for example, by the movie Joker.
Joaquin Phoenix, as he put it, went “werewolf”. He embraced his insanity in the hope it might empower him.
In truth, psychopathology controls the patient, not vice versa.
Metaphorically, Kanye is attempting to revive the Devil (fascism), hoping it will give him power. But the Devil only serves himself. Ye, thus, will inevitably find himself in his servitude.
For now, nazism provides him with at least a few benefits.
It is a convenient mechanism for him to stay relevant. As he keeps shocking the public, he will inevitably bring fascism back into the mainstream. Then, the shock value will wear off, but the damage will remain.
The prism of nazism also allows him to blame the Jews for his descent. In his mind, he has not disgraced himself; he was plotted against.
Frailty, opportunism, and excuses do not make good prophets.
He is losing it all.
History will remember Kanye, at best, as a talented artist gone astray. At worst, it will remember him as a failed artist who channeled his resentment into catastrophe. This, unfortunately, rings familiar.
Far-right delusions are feeding Ye’s paranoia.
Believing the world is a “matrix”, a giant conspiracy, reassures him in the short term that he has “found out the plot”. In the long term, it will only isolate him. It will keep him from examining what brought him here, and only allow him to associate with those who think exactly alike.
He has found his like-minded tribe.
In the digital space, many aggrieved (young) men are treading in the same direction. The far right is rising. They are but foot soldiers.
Ye is not much different, just a lot more successful.
They madly scramble for order in a world that feels too chaotic for them to endure.
Fascism provides the (false) promise of such order. Since society does not cater to them, these young men seek to subdue it to their will. The movement is driven by a base instinct of domination.
"The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth."
- Proverb (of unknown origin)
Should we fear Yeezy?
At the very least, we should fear the trend he represents: radicalization.
Kanye is insane, but remains a cultural visionary. He turned to nazism to protect his fragile ego. Now, he is carving out a sinister path for others to follow.
Society will feel the consequences.
It is therefore unwise to dismiss Ye as irrelevant.
He is indeed crazy. But arguably, so was half of the nazi leadership. Madness does not hinder totalitarianism; it fuels it.
World War II proved how much calamity a single artistic outcast can produce.