Kanye West to Jewish Adidas employee: 'Kiss a picture of Hitler every day'
An explosive new investigation in the New York Times details how Adidas employees experienced frequent anti-Semitism from Grammy Award-winning rapper and Yeezy designer Kanye West for nearly a decade.
Adidas officially ended its partnership with the rapper and producer, who now goes by Ye, in October of 2022, over multiple virulently anti-Semitic remarks, including a tweet in which the rapper threatened to go "death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE." However, West's pattern of anti-Semitism dates back to at least 2013, according to the Times' reporting.
At the start of her investigation, reporter Megan Twohey detailed how, in his initial meeting with Adidas executives at their German headquarters in 2013, West expressed his dissatisfaction with a proposed shoe design by taking a marker and drawing a swastika — the display of which is banned in Germany — on the design. He also reportedly told Jewish Adidas executive Jon Wexler, who at the time was Adidas' global director of entertainment and influencer marketing, to "kiss a picture of Hitler every day."
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According to the Times, the Adidas/Yeezy partnership was the second-most profitable sneaker deal in history behind Nike's partnership with Michael Jordan. In 2016, Adidas tied its fortunes even closer with West despite his anti-Semitism intensifying, inking a lucrative new contract planning a long-term relationship with the rapper. West, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2016 and prescribed medication, stopped taking his medication by 2018, and exhibited increasingly unhinged behavior.
That year, some of West's Adidas handlers had knowledge of the rapper wanting to name his 2018 album "Hitler" (he ultimately named it "Ye"). That same year, West disclosed to Adidas global brand manager and executive board member Eric Liedtke that he paid a seven-figure settlement to the outgoing CEO of the Yeezy brand, who apparently accused the rapper of creating a hostile workplace and repeatedly praising Adolf Hitler. West is alleged to have called Hitler a "master marketer" and lauded the architect of the Holocaust's command of media.
In addition to the allegations of anti-Semitism, the article also reported on how West allegedly made "angry, sexually crude comments" to Adidas staff, repeatedly showed pornography to Adidas employees, drank at the workplace, and hurled abuse at members of Adidas' Yeezy team. Still, the company reportedly stayed committed to West, with internal documents predicting Yeezy sales would go from $65 million in 2016 to over $1 billion by 2021, with the intent of "putting CASH in Kanye’s pocket to show him we VALUE him and recognize his impact on the brand."
When Adidas finally ended its partnership with Ye, his net worth reportedly dropped by roughly $1.5 billion to $400 million. A few months later, West appeared on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' InfoWars program alongside white supremacist influencer and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, heaping additional praise on Hitler.
Read the Times' investigation here.
