Adidas has broken up with Kanye West. This Tuesday, the sports firm decided to end their contractual relationship with the rapper and designer after he posted antisemitic comments on his Twitter account.
In a statement, Adidas said it "does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech" and called the comments "unacceptable, hateful and dangerous, and they violate the company's values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness."
With this decision, the production of the Yeezy brand, the long-standing collaboration between Kanye West and Adidas, comes to an end. In addition, the brand confirmed that all payments to the artist and his companies have been stopped. Adidas estimates that it will suffer revenue losses of up to $250 million through Dec. 31.
Kanye West's antisemitic message
Two weeks ago, Twitter decided to block West's account after he posted an antisemitic message. The social network considered that one of his tweets violated its platform usage policies. In his message, the rapper accused the Jewish community of playing games with him and pressuring to exclude anyone who criticizes some of his actions:
I'm a little sleepy tonight, but when I wake up I'm going to death con 3 [sic.] On JEWISH PEOPLE. The funny thing is I actually can't be ANTI SEMITIC [sic.] because black people are actually Jew [sic.] also. You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball [sic.] anyone whoever [sic.] opposes your agenda.
After being blocked on Twitter, Kanye West decided to buy Parlement Technologies, parent company of the social network Parler.
The artist now known as Ye had not tweeted since November 2020. He returned to Twitter after he was also suspended from Instagram for suggesting that rapper Sean Combs, better known as Diddy, was being controlled by Jews who were trying to silence his "white lives matter" message.
