David Schwimmer has called on Elon Musk to ban Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, from X, after a string of offensive posts from the performer.
Following his headline-grabbing appearance on the Grammys red carpet earlier this month, Ye made a return to social media last week.
While he initially spoke mostly about his Grammys appearance and the fall-out from his wife Bianca Censori’s outfit, it didn’t take long before he was making headlines thanks to a series of anti-semitic comments, including self-identifying as a Nazi and praising Adolf Hitler, as well as the use of other slurs and derogatory language.
Ye previously took time out from the spotlight following a number of high-profile controversies, including his use of anti-semitic language.
Posting on Instagram over the weekend, former Friends actor David – who is Jewish – wrote on Instagram: “This is so 2022. We can’t stop a deranged bigot from spewing hate filled, ignorant bile… but we CAN stop giving him a megaphone, Mr. Musk.”
Addressing Musk directly, David continued: “Kanye West has 32.7 million followers on your platform, X. That’s twice as many people than the number of Jews in existence.
“His sick hate speech results in REAL LIFE violence against Jews. I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that he identifies as a Nazi (which implies he wants to exterminate ALL marginalised communities including his own) or the fact that there is not sufficient OUTRAGE to remove and ban him from all social media at this point.”
“Silence is complicity,” he said.
On Sunday evening, Musk responded to another post calling for Ye to be “banned” from X, saying: “Given what he has posted, his account is now classified as NSFW. You should not be seeing that anymore.”
A message on what used to be Ye’s profile now reads: “This account doesn’t exist Try searching for another.”
David has spoken about his Jewish identity on many occasions, appearing in David Baddiel’s documentary Jews Don’t Count in 2022, where he claimed he’d “never felt white, ever” as a Jewish person.
He previously shared this four years earlier during an NBC News interview, stating that “when it comes to certain prejudice and the hatred that still pervades this country I’m a Jew first and not a white person”, and opening up about prejudice he has personally faced because of his Jewish identity.
