Less than a week after Kanye West praised Adolf Hitler in an interview with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, West – flanked by white supremacist Nick Fuentes – sat down with Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes to demand that Jewish people “forgive Hitler.”
The 45 minute episode titled “Saving Ye” on the alt-right video platform Censored.TV, opens with McInnes at an airport spouting off his desire to “prevent Ye West from becoming an antisemite or a nazi” and to “talk him off the ledge.” In the same breath, McInnes voices his hopes to show West that “our problem is liberal elites of all races,” then proceeds to name two black leaders, Kamala Harris and Barack Obama, as a “major problem.”
McInnes, the co-founder of Vice who left the media company in 2008, was banned from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram in 2018 for promoting content related to violent extremist groups and hate speech. In 2020, his YouTube account was suspended for violating the platform’s policies on hate speech. His timely interview with the rapper coincides with a storm of media attention stemming from a Yeezy fashion show in October in which West displayed “White Lives Matter” shirts. While McInnes’ Censored.TV Twitter account has just under 16,000 followers, West had millions in comparison – before getting banned – and currently holds over 18 million followers on Instagram.
Before meeting with West and Fuentes, McInnes says he’s meeting them at a secure location in Los Angeles. The camera cuts to the 45 minute interview with West and Fuentes, which McInnes points out is taking place just two days after the InfoWars debacle. West, whose face is covered with a mask, begins by boasting that the backlash from his previous interview has been “awesome for a presidential campaign” before blaming Jewish people for Hitler’s “reputation” and comparing abortion to “eugenics,” “genocide,” and the “Holocaust.” West also reiterates his claims that “Jewish people control the majority of the media, along with banks, along with real estate, along with malls.” He adds, “They can control the narrative. History is written by the winners.”
Further into the interview, McInnes repeats an earlier claim that “ethnomasochism” is a “genetic white thing,” which Fuentes counters by saying “liberalism has poisoned the well for white people.” Fuentes takes the moment to nosedive into a thread about his childhood, claiming that “kids love Hitler” and that there is something compelling about the videos, propaganda, and symbols. When McInnes questions Fuentes’ claim, the Holocaust denier clarifies that he is referring to kids on 4chan.
Fuentes has been labeled a “white supremacist” by the Justice Department, and founded the America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC) in 2020 — a far-right competitor to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) — and has connections to far-right Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar.
Earlier in the episode, West claims “that there is a collusion of Jewish attorneys and managers and everything else you can think of” that “give America porn.” West continues to say that porn is “the gas chamber, it’s a silent killer” to “dumb us down.” He also cites his ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, who he claims is used to “sell it.” West – who allegedly used porn to bully and control his staff – comes back to this point later on, saying that porn “destroyed” his family and that women in porn are the “products of pedophilia.” In a move that throws out female empowerment in favor of body shaming, West adds that women on Instagram “showing their bodies” in their 30s and 40s are freezing their eggs because they haven’t “lived the dream of having a husband and kids.”
West then calls on people to “pray for Instagram” and condemns anyone who likes a photo of a “woman that’s half-naked” as a “sexual predator.”
Perhaps sensing an opportunity to give his male ego a much needed boost, McInnes goes on to call “spinsters who don’t pay attention to the time” the “new journalists” who are out to “cancel” and “sabotage family men.”
At one point, McInnes gives West a hypothetical question. “So you’re president of the United States,” says McInnes. “It’s day one and someone walks in and they go, ‘So what are we going to do about these Jews?’ What do ya say?” West replies, eliciting giggles from Fuentes and McInnes: “Jews should work for Christians. I’ll hire a Jewish person in a second if I knew they weren’t a spy and I could look through their phone and follow through their house and have a camera all in their living room.”
When asked if he has chosen a running mate, West says he considered Candace Owens (who wore a matching “White Lives Matter” shirt at the show) but that he has a problem with Ben Shapiro who is “in control of Candace Owens’ voice.” Owens is a talk show host on the Daily Wire, which Shapiro co-founded.
The Proud Boys founder fires off a series of final questions. While West answers that he would make abortion illegal, he stalls on giving his “policies on immigration” and “fortifying a wall” and replies that he does not “have a clear answer immediately on that.” When asked about gay marriage, West says that all of his policies will “follow the bible.” This triggers McInnes and Fuentes to devolve into a reprehensible tangent relating gay and transgender people with “mental illness.”
Despite spending the majority of the interview denouncing the Jewish community and women who haven’t given birth before the age of 30, West ends the interview by professing his love for “everyone.” Alluding to his campaign, which has yet to be filed, West says that “the rules of the country will be based on the bible” and that “we’re going to align the constitution with the bible.”
“Jewish people can’t tell me who I can love and who I can’t love,” he continues. “You can’t say, you can’t force your pain on everyone else. Jewish people, forgive Hitler today.”
West’s comments tie back to a recent Rolling Stone piece by George Chidi, who writes that on “some base level, white racists love hearing a Black voice articulating ideas that they can’t say themselves in public without blowback.” As Chidi points out, men like McInnes and Fuentes get “to wear blackface with Ye” as their “based proxy.”
