By Liam McCrorie
I’m sure many of you like me have seen recently the increase in the use of hate speech by people with big followings on the internet, and not just a rise in the use of hate speech but a rise in the tolerance of hate speech. Not even a decade ago it would be crazy and pretty much career suicide for anyone of note to go out and openly spew hate speech about a certain group, and you’d think today with cancel culture it would be even more crazy to spew hateful rhetoric in an open forum, but sadly the opposite is happening.
More and more people with large audiences have seemed to have almost gone off the deep end with some of the stuff they say. Probably most noteworthy and very recent in the news is Ye’s (formerly Kanye West) constant hate speech towards people of the Jewish faith. He has gone on and on spewing his hatred toward Jewish people and the Jewish faith. This has caused him to loose his deals with brands such as Adidas and Balenciaga, and more recently he was recently on the far right conspiracy podcast, Info Wars hosted by Alex Jones, where he admitted he “likes Hitler” and went on to defend the leader of the Third Reich saying everyone has value and he did valuable things as well. This most recent outburst has cost him many fans, but on the other hand, some of Ye’s other followers have decided to agree what he has said and more and more people are spewing hate about Jewish people. It just starts with one hateful person spreading a message and it can spread like wildfire.
Hate 2.0 