During the Super Bowl, a commercial aired promoting a website associated with Ye (formerly Kanye West) that featured T-shirts displaying swastikas.
Ye, the rapper and designer formerly known as Kanye West, aired a controversial ad in select local markets during the Super Bowl that promoted a website selling just one item—a T-shirt with a swastika on it.
The 30-second ad featured Ye recording himself on an iPhone while lying in a dentist’s chair. Smiling into the camera, he said, “I spent all the money for the ad on these new teeth. So, once again, I had to shoot it on an iPhone.” He then directed viewers to his online store, Yeezy.com. Initially, the site offered a variety of unbranded clothing, but shortly after the ad aired, it simply featured a $20 white T-shirt with a black swastika on it.
The ad came just days after Ye posted a series of disturbing comments on social media in which he called himself a Nazi and expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler.
Following the backlash, his Yeezy account was deactivated. The Anti-Defamation League condemned the ad, saying the swastika is a symbol of hate and a reminder of the atrocities committed by the Nazis. “There is no excuse for such behavior,” the organization wrote. Fox, which broadcasts the Super Bowl, and Shopify, which hosts Ye’s online store, have not commented on the situation. The ad only ran in local markets, not nationally, making it far cheaper than the multimillion-dollar price of a national Super Bowl ad.
The same ad aired in those markets hours after the game ended.
This is not the first time Ye has been involved in controversy. In 2022, he was suspended from X after posting offensive images, including a swastika inside a Star of David. Although his account was later restored, Elon Musk said at the time that Ye’s posts violated the platform’s policy on inciting violence. In 2023, Ye publicly apologized to the Jewish community with a message in Hebrew on Instagram. Ye previously said he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, though in a recent podcast interview, he claimed that diagnosis was incorrect and said he believes he is actually on the autism spectrum. Earlier this year, his online store also drew attention for selling clothing with cryptic messages in Cyrillic and Greek letters, which language experts said had no real meaning.
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