Kanye West apologizes for his antisemitism: ‘I lost touch with reality’
The apology from the rapper known as Ye follows an earlier conversation with an Orthodox rabbi.
Kanye West and Bianca Censori attend the 67th Grammy Awards in Feb. 2025 in Los Angeles. Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
(JTA) — Ye has again issued a formal apology for his recent years of antisemitic tirades, taking out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal in which he attributed his actions to his prior health conditions.
“I lost touch with reality,” the rapper and fashion mogul formerly known as Kanye West writes in the ad. Later, he added, “I am not a Nazi or an antisemite. I love Jewish people.”
Ye has repeatedly alienated the global Jewish community and broad swaths of his fanbase since fall 2022, when he first threatened to go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.” Last year he bought a Super Bowl ad to promote T-shirts with swastikas on them, then released a song titled “Heil Hitler,” which a group of far-right antisemitic influencers including Nick Fuentes recently played at a Miami nightclub in a viral incident.
The Journal ad marks the latest in a series of apologies for Ye, which also included a May 2025 declaration that he was “done with antisemitism” and apologizing in-person to an Orthodox rabbi in November.
In the ad, Ye writes that he experienced head trauma from a car accident 25 years ago that went undiagnosed until 2023, which “caused serious damage to my mental health and led to my bipolar type-1 diagnosis.” He has been open about his bipolar disorder for years.
“In that fractured state, I gravitated toward the most destructive symbol I could find, the swastika, and even sold t-shirts bearing it,” Ye writes. He describes “disconnected moments” and “reckless behavior” stemming from his disorder, while noting, “It does not excuse what I did, though.”
Ye also apologized “to the black community — which held me down through all of the highs and lows and the darkest of times.” After his open embrace of Nazism, which had followed his promoting of the phrase “White lives matter,” many of Ye’s former allies and collaborators in the Black community abandoned him. His music remains popular on social media and underscores many Instagram posts and other user-generated content.
He said he was embarking on an “effective regime of medication, therapy, exercise and clean living,” concluding, “I’m not asking for sympathy, or a free pass, though I aspire to earn your forgiveness. I write today simply to ask for your patience and understanding as I find my way home.”
Ye’s normally active social media accounts, where he has shared antisemitic language and imagery in the past, were quiet Monday morning after the apology ad ran.
Ye has maintained an active performance schedule. This week he is scheduled to play two high-profile concerts in Mexico City.
Even amid his recent apologies, Ye’s record of antisemitism continues to motivate popular antisemitic influencers. In recent days Candace Owens, a far-right pundit and antisemitic conspiracy theorist whose own collaborations with Ye directly precipitated his public antisemitism, had returned to sharing some of Ye’s initial antisemitic tweets with her followers. “This tweet is a whole vibe,” she wrote about his “death con 3” tweet. Owens has been promoting allegations that Israel was involved in Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
