The Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles claimed to have been inundated with anti-Semitic messages following Kanye West‘s refusal to be given a private tour. West had recently made several anti-Semitic remarks, which prompted the CEO of the Museum, Beth Kean, to offer to show him around the space.
Kean said, “We know for a fact that education is the greatest catalyst for change. When students and visitors come to the museum, if they enter as bystanders, they leave as upstanders. We know that. We publicly invited him to come to the museum, and he publicly rejected our offer.”
Kanye had publicly rejected the tour offer when he appeared on the Drink Champs Podcast and claimed that he considered Planned Parenthood as his Holocaust Museum. Ever since the invitation from the Museum, Kean said that it had been the victim of several vitriolic messages.
“I think Kanye has more than double the amount of Twitter followers than there are Jews living in this world,” Kean added. “People like Kanye have a huge platform, he has over 30 million Twitter followers, and he needs to understand that he needs to use his words to inspire and not incite and to not perpetuate hate and lies and an antisemitism.”
West’s recent comments have also prompted several other anti-Semitists to conduct their own hateful action. On the 405 Freeway in LA on Saturday, a banner was flown by a group of people reading, “Kanye was right about the Jews,” while they performed Nazi salutes.
Security has been ramped up in the Fairfax area’s Jewish Neighbourhoods, with over 50 volunteers helping out. Rabbi Yossi Eilfort recently said, “[We’re] doing everything we can to show that we’re not afraid. We’re a strong community, and we won’t act like victims.” West has recently been dropped from several of his collaborative organisations, including Adidas.