Ye, now known as Kanye West, was holding a Yeezy sneaker while giving a speech at the Fast Company Innovation Festival in 2019.
Many people are asking for Adidas to stop its business relationship with Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, because of the hateful and anti-Jewish comments he has made recently.
Consequences for Ye’s comments include Twitter and Instagram restricting his accounts, Balenciaga fashion house cutting ties, and George Floyd’s family planning to sue him.
The German footwear company said at the beginning of this month that its partnership with the rapper was under review. Since then, the company has not released any updates and continues to release new Yeezy merchandise, even though the rapper has been using antisemitic language and spreading conspiracy theories.
He said that he has done drugs in the White House in a podcast that was later removed.
Ye is saying that he can say anti-semitic things and Adidas cannot drop him. He is asking what will happen now that he has said this.
The question of whether antisemitism is on the rise in the United States was answered over the weekend in Los Angeles, when a group of people hung antisemitic banners and gave Nazi salutes.
There has been an increase in antisemitism in the US, and the ADL is asking people to tell Adidas to stop supporting it.
Adidas has not said anything bad about Kanye West’s antisemitism, which has made groups like White Lives Matter and the Goyim Defense League happy. They promote his comments because it helps their extremist agendas, which is dangerous.
Many people are telling Adidas to stop working with Kanye West because he has said things that are hateful. They have a contract that lasts until 2026.
More than 90,000 people want Adidas to stop working with Kanye West because he has said antisemitic things. Many people on Twitter are using the hashtag #BoycottAdidas to try to get Adidas to listen.
Adidas and Ye have been working together since 2013, and formalized their partnership about two years later.
The Yeezy collaboration is a clothing and footwear line that generates an estimated $2 billion a year, which is nearly 10% of the company’s annual revenue.
Ye has said that Adidas is copying his ideas and not giving him enough control over the line. He also posted pictures of Adidas board members to social media, including a doctored image of a New York Times page falsely claiming that the CEO had died.
In early October, Ye made headlines for a series of controversies. These included wearing a “WHITE LIVES MATTER” t-shirt at his fashion show in Paris, and promising to go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE” in a series of antisemitic social media posts.
After repeated efforts to fix the situation, we have decided to review the partnership. Yeezy’s shoes and apparel lines will continue to be managed during the preview process.
Even though lots of people were telling Adidas to get rid of Kanye West, and to stop buying Adidas products, Adidas released a new Kanye West shoe over the weekend. The shoes sold out on Adidas’ website, and by Monday morning 900 pairs had been bought and sold on the online reseller marketplace Stockx.
ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt wrote an open letter to Adidas’ leadership, expressing alarm that the company is planning to release new Yeezy products (including the Yeezy Boost 350) in the run-up to the Oct. 27 anniversary of the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre – the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.
We are surprised that Adidas is still supporting the Ye product line even though Kanye West has been spreading antisemitic ideas to his 31 million Twitter followers. We are concerned that these hateful ideas will continue to spread across social media and around the world because of Kanye West’s celebrity status.
The ADL is concerned about recent comments by Ye and is asking Adidas to reconsider its support for the Yeezy line and to publicly condemn antisemitism.
People on social media are surprised that Adidas hasn’t made a statement about its history, given that the company’s founding brothers, Adolf and Rudolf Dassler, were members of the Nazi Party during World War II.
This story has been changed to make it clear that United Talent Agency CEO Jeremy Zimmer’s memo blamed anti-Semitism and that the ADL demanded that Adidas say publicly that they do not agree with anti-Semitism. The first version said condoning and condone instead of condemn.
Elvira Olson is a news reporter for the ABC News affiliate in Los Angeles. She has more than 20 years of experience in journalism and has won numerous awards for her work, including an Emmy.