Why did David Schwimmer have an issue with Kanye West?
Kanye West has upset a lot of people over the last few years—particularly those within the Jewish community. Ye went through a phase of posting truly antisemitic bile online, for which he was roundly criticised. The Jewish actor David Schwimmer was among those to speak out against him.
Friends star Schwimmer, after Ye had embarked upon one of his rants on X, himself took to social media in February 2025 to address what Kanye had done. Schwimmer specifically appealed to Elon Musk, X’s owner, to do something about Ye’s behaviour.
“This is so 2022,” Schwimmer posted. “We can’t stop a deranged bigot from spewing hate filled, ignorant bile… but we CAN stop giving him a megaphone, Mr. Musk.” Schwimmer went on to point out that Ye, at that time, had 32.7 million followers on X, which represented twice the “number of Jews in existence.” Kanye’s “sick hate speech,” therefore, was a real threat to the Jewish community, Schwimmer argued.
Ye had been explicitly praising the Nazis and Hitler around this time, while directing hate towards disabled and queer people, as well as towards Jews.
“I don’t know what’s worse,” Schwimmer’s post continued, “the fact that he identifies as a Nazi (which implies he wants to exterminate ALL marginalized 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.”
After Schwimmer had uploaded this post, Ye took to X to announce that Musk had stopped following his account. “Elon unfollowed me so I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be on Twitter/X.” He then encouraged people to click into his own website.
Before this post claiming that Musk had unfollowed him, Ye had been referencing Musk’s own alleged antisemitic behaviour in other posts. He specifically mentioned the time that, during a Donald Trump inauguration event at the start of the year, Musk infamously performed a gesture that was widely interpreted as a Nazi salute—although Musk denied this interpretation.
“Elon stole my Nazi swag at the inauguration,” Ye posted in relation to the incident. It is unclear if Ye bringing this up prompted Musk to unfollow him.
Ye has since claimed that he has moved on from antisemitic behaviour. In November he met with a prominent New York rabbi in order to express “profound remorse” for his actions, which he said came about as a result of his bipolar disorder.