Kanye West’s Latest Stunt Is Selling a Swastika Tee

Last week, Kanye West denied that his wife, Bianca Censori’s, mostly nude appearance by his side on the Grammys red carpet was a gimmick, tweeting on the Monday after the awards show, “She been dressing naked for 2 years. Now all of a sudden it’s a stunt.” Okay, so maybe the Grammys red carpet wasn’t a stunt; how can he explain everything that’s happened since?

West — or Ye, his legal mononym — spent the week back on Twitter, a site where he used to spout off semi-innocuous jokes and egocentric observations, posting about his admiration for Hitler and his continued disdain of Jewish people. This manic and public antisemitic episode concluded on February 9 with a bizarre Super Bowl ad, only aired in a few select markets, that depicted West filming himself on an iPhone in a dentist chair.

“I spent all the money for the commercial on these new teeth,” he says to the camera before encouraging viewers to go to his store, yeezy.com. West did this last year as well, filming himself and promoting his site, to market some new shoes. After last night’s Super Bowl, there is one product on yeezy.com: a white T-shirt with a black swastika that costs $20, available in three sizes. The extent to which the shirts are selling remains unknown. Earlier this year, West sold slippers for $20 after successfully selling his Pods at a similarly affordable price point. Whether this is a business strategy to appeal to a bigger market or a cash-grab attempt or Ye being random is a mystery. Buying a weird shoe for cheap is a fun gamble; a shirt with a racist symbol much less so.

West’s swastika shirt is surprising, not only because of what it depicts but because, amid West’s bizarre and angry tirades on Twitter over the past week, he said specifically he would not be selling a swastika shirt. “I would never sell a swastika tee because people could be physically harmed wearing it … I love my fans and supporters,” he wrote on Saturday, February 8. Right, not the ideal reason for refusing to sell a swastika tee, but irrelevant since he’s apparently doing it anyway.

West was previously banned from Twitter (and Instagram), but Elon Musk reinstated his account in 2023. This past week saw the rapper and mogul at his most active and vocal in a long time, seemingly empowered to say things he’d kept to himself over his past year of relative public silence. To check on West’s Twitter account over the past few days was a continued exercise in “Huh, he’s still going” — proof of little beyond his compulsive need to voice opinions, real or fake, relentlessly, offensively, and tediously. After the Super Bowl, West’s account disappeared. Before he vanished, he thanked Elon for “allowing him to vent” — if you can call it that — and said he would log off. (His Instagram remains with no posts and a link in the bio to the Yeezy site.) Whether that means he’s deactivated or his account has been banned is yet to be determined. Here’s hoping the shirts vanish too.

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