Shopify on Tuesday took down a website from rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, that sold just one vile item – swastika t-shirts.
Ye, who has a history of spewing antisemitic hate speech, ran a Super Bowl commercial promoting Yeezy.com, which was selling white t-shirts with a bold Nazi symbol in black.
The Shopify site remained up until Tuesday morning, when it started displaying an error message: “This store is unavailable.”
Shopify President Harley Finkelstein told CNBC that the website’s owners “had an entire day” to prove they were not violating company policies, “which did not happen.”
“The moment we realized this was not actually a real commerce practice, they weren’t actually engaging in authentic commerce, we pulled it down,” Finkelstein said on Tuesday.
Finkelstein called Ye’s website – which labeled the shirt “HH-01,” code for “Heil Hitler” – “disappointing.”
“I’m a proud Jewish entrepreneur,” Finkelstein told CNBC’s Sara Eisen. “I’m a proud Jewish community member. You and I have talked about this in the past, that it’s a big part of my identity. So obviously I’m devastated by that.”
Shopify did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The rapper was also dropped by his music booking agent, Daniel McCartney of 33 & West, on Tuesday.
“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 on his Instagram Stories.
For his Super Bowl ad, Ye filmed himself in a dentist’s chair and said he “spent, like, all the money for the commercial on these new teeth” before directing viewers to visit Yeezy.com.
Ye wrote about the disgusting t-shirt on X, before his account was deactivated on Monday.
“I’ve wanted to make this tee shirt for years,” he wrote on X before his account was deleted, according to the Daily Record. “My greatest performance art piece thus far.”
Everyone in the rapper’s inner circle – including his wife, Bianca Censori, who pulled a nude stunt on the Grammys red carpet – tried to stop him from selling the shirt, a close friend of West previously told The Post.
During a dayslong, incoherent stream of antisemitic speech on X, Ye also called himself a Nazi and declared his love for Hitler.
“Hitler was sooooo fresh,” the rapper wrote on X.
“I’m a Nazi,” he added. “I love Hitler.”
“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 Anti-Defamation League said in a statement.
In 2022, Ye was banned from X after he posted a photo of a swastika merged with the Star of David. His account was turned back on a few months later.
That same year, Gap and Adidas cut ties with the rapper and Yeezy clothing designer.
X’s owner, Elon Musk, has set off his own controversies for amplifying antisemitic posts on the platform since he bought it in 2022.
The Tesla and SpaceX founder has most recently faced backlash for making a gesture at Trump’s inauguration rally that many critics likened to a Nazi salute.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
