After spending years praising Adolf Hitler and espousing antisemitic rhetoric, the rapper Kanye West is apparently feeling remorseful—again.

West, who now goes by Ye, took out a one-page ad in The Wall Street Journal to apologize and make excuses for his recent conduct, which involved selling shirts emblazoned with swastikas as recently as last February.

“I’m a Nazi,” he plainly said in 2022.

The lengthy letter of contrition, titled “To Those I’ve Hurt,” leaned on West’s 2002 car accident, saying it resulted in brain damage that caused his present-day bipolar disorder diagnosis.

“I lost touch with reality,” he wrote. “I am not a Nazi or an antisemite. I love Jewish people.”

The thing is, West has been here many, many times before, and he has historically followed his apologies with more antisemitic remarks.

In February 2025, West took back a previous apology he’d made in 2023, then praised Hitler. A few months later, he released a song titled “Heil Hitler.”But we’re not here to create a diatribe against the rapper for his very public and unfortunate track record of saying terrible things. However, the Grammy-winning artist’s off-and-on antisemitic behavior has managed to do one thing: add to the increasing normalization of antisemitism on the right.

West already runs in those circles. In 2022, it was actually West who, with his proximity to President Donald Trump, introduced the president to Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes during a highly controversial dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

Fuentes is a notorious antisemite. Just last week, Fuentes, who leads the so-called Groyper movement of racist Internet weirdos, was seen dancing to West’s “Heil Hitler” in a Miami nightclub. Other manosphere influencers reportedly chanted the song’s title and even threw up Nazi salutes.

West also has a longstanding friendship with noted Nazi-salute enthusiast Elon Musk, even reportedly giving the multibillionaire advice on building out his company town in Texas.

This widespread antisemitism has seeped deeply into right-leaning politics as well. Young Republicans were exposed for their egregious texts joking about gas chambers and saying they “love Hitler.”

While West might be feeling sorry for helping to normalize such vicious hatred, the damage is already done.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos