Photo Credit: Ashley King
Shopify has taken Yeezy.com offline after Kanye West bought an advertisement during the Super Bowl and sold a white t-shirt emblazoned with a black swastika.
The site was available Sunday night and most of Monday before it was taken offline. Shopify has directly intervened, stating: “All merchants are responsible for following the rules of our platform. This merchant did not engage in authentic commerce practices and violated our terms so we removed them from Shopify.”
Heading to Yeezy.com shows the site is unavailable (pictured above). Shopify is a widely used ecommerce platform that makes it easy for businesses to sell goods online. The company did not specify which of its rules were violated, but terms of service for the site state that Shopify reserves the right to “restrict products or activities we deem unsafe, inappropriate, or offensive.”
Kanye West made headlines when he purchased a Super Bowl advertisement in some markets that appeared to show the rapper in a dentist chair. The rapper encourages the viewer to visit Yeezy.com to purchase merch, which contained multiple pieces of Kanye merch in addition to the swastika t-shirt when the ad aired. Sometime afterward, all of the rest of the merch was removed and the white swastika t-shirt was the only piece of merch available for purchase.
The shirt featured a black 45-degree tilted swastika, which is the same symbol used by the Nazi party in Germany. The product name was ‘HH-01’ a reference to the Nazi salute, ‘Heil Hitler.’ The move follows an unhinged rant on Twitter on Friday, praising Hitler, claiming to be a Nazi and stating “I love Hitler.” Kanye was banned from Twitter in 2022 for an anti-semitic tirade before being allowed back onto the site by X/Twitter’s current owner, Elon Musk.
“Elon stole my Nazi swag at the inauguration yooooo my guy get your own third rale,” the rapper wrote on the platform on February 7. He also followed that offensive statement with others, saying “Slavery is a choice” and “All white people are racist” and “I have dominion over my wife.”
Following the outburst, multiple people including David Schwimmer and the Anti-Defamation League denounced the hateful outburst and called for Kanye to be banned from X/Twitter yet again. “Another egregious display of antisemitism, racism, and misogyny from Kanye West on his X account this morning,” wrote the ADL. “Just a few years ago ADL found that 30 antisemitic incidents nationwide were tied to Kanye’s 2022 antisemitic rants. We condemn this dangerous behavior and need to call it what it is—a flagrant and unequivocal display of hate.”
Kanye deactivated his X/Twitter account before he could be banned, signing off and thanking Elon for giving him a platform to spew hate.
