Concert of Scandalous Rapper Kanye West Canceled in Poland
The reason is his antisemitic statements.
Photo: Scott Dudelson/Getty Images
In Poland, the cancellation of American rapper Kanye West's June concert was announced on Friday. West has for many years shocked the public with antisemitic, racist, and pro-Nazi statements, writes the BBC.
Kanye West's concert, who changed his name to "Ye" five years ago, was planned for June 19 in the city of Chorzów in southern Poland. It could have been his first performance in Poland in 15 years, but on Friday, the stadium where the performance was planned announced that it would not happen — "due to formal and legal reasons."
Earlier, Polish Minister of Culture, Marta Cienkowska, stated that she considered the decision to invite West "unacceptable."
During his European tour, West intended to perform in Britain and France, in addition to Poland. However, British authorities banned his entry into the country on April 6, and a few days later, organizers of the event in Marseille announced that the decision regarding the concert had been postponed.
Last February, West began selling T-shirts with swastikas, leading online marketplace Shopify to remove his store.
Three months later, the rapper released a piece titled "Heil Hitler," in which he stated that a child custody battle and the freezing of his assets had turned him into a Nazi.
In January, before announcing a European tour and the release of a new album, West paid for a full page in the Wall Street Journal newspaper, on which he apologized for his statements and actions.
"I am not a Nazi and not an antisemite. I love Jewish people," West wrote, explaining that he "lost touch with reality" due to bipolar disorder.
In Poland, the promotion of Nazi symbols is a crime punishable by up to three years in prison.
For Poland, Nazi symbols and ideology are a particularly painful issue. Nazi Germany occupied and dismembered the country. Nazis massively deported Poles and also established death camps on the country's territory, where millions of European Jews, including 3 million Polish Jews, were killed.
"This artist publicly expressed antisemitic views, downplayed the gravity of crimes, and profited from swastika T-shirts," Minister of Culture Cienkowska wrote on X. "This is a deliberate crossing of boundaries and normalization of hatred. Culture should not have a place for those who use it to spread hatred."
Before the Polish stadium announced the concert's cancellation, Piotr Jędrzejewski, spokesperson for Poland's Ministry of Culture, told the BBC that authorities cannot simply ban a concert because there is no appropriate law for it.
He added that Poland's Ministry of Foreign Affairs is also against West's concert.