Photo Credit: Kanye West by Daniele Dalledonne / CC by 2.0
San Antonio city staff have been directed by the mayor to amend Kanye’s contract so he agrees not to perform songs about Hitler or sell swastika merch.
San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones has announced that she has directed city officials to amend Kanye West’s contract so that he refrains from performing his song “Heil Hitler” or selling any swastika merchandise during his upcoming show at the Alamodome.
The news follows Mayor Jones’ continued efforts to encourage the City Council to vote to cancel the concert in light of the rapper’s history of antisemitism. West, who now goes by Ye, has since apologized for his behavior, which he blamed on his struggles with mental illness.
“The fact that we even had to ask for those things is ludicrous,” said Jones. “But that’s where we’re at, and we move forward.”
Unfortunately, Jones’ requests to cancel the show have largely gone unanswered, as six council members—a majority—have issued a joint statement announcing their opposition to censorship. Moreover, the concert is expected to bring in a lot of money to San Antonio’s local economy, which city officials find difficult to ignore. Earlier this week, West’s concert had already sold 50,000 tickets, the majority of them from outside the county, while the show is expected to generate around $1.7 million for the Alamodome.
Despite Kanye’s apology, Jones—like many other lawmakers across the globe—has said the rapper’s past remarks are inexcusable and that he should not be platformed.
“There’s a difference between free speech and hate speech, and then how we are stewards of our city’s resources in either providing a platform for that or not,” said Jones.
Kanye West’s hateful remarks have been drawing headlines for the past several years, and led to the shuttering of his longtime brand deals with companies like Adidas.
Last year, the rapper said he was a Nazi and did not trust Jews, and later bought a Super Bowl ad spot to promote his swastika t-shirts. In January, he took out a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal apologizing for his behavior, which he blamed on a manic episode resulting from his bipolar disorder. It’s worth noting that while West claimed he had only been in the midst of this so-called manic episode for the last several months, his highly public antisemitic spiral began in late 2022.