Friends alum David Schwimmer took to Instagram on Saturday to implore Elon Musk to suspend Kanye West’s X account following several days’ worth of racist, antisemitic, and conspiratorial posts from the musician on the platform.
Schwimmer shared a photo of West with the text “I’m a Nazi” superimposed on top, quoting one of West’s own posts, with the caption, “We can’t stop a deranged bigot from spewing hate filled, ignorant bile… but we CAN stop giving him a megaphone, Mr. Musk."
In his post, Schwimmer explained that “sick hate speech” like West’s results in “REAL LIFE violence against Jews.” The three-time Emmy nominee condemned the lack of “OUTRAGE to remove and ban West from all social media at this point,” as such inaction means West still has a number of global platforms where he can publish hate speech at will. Schwimmer ended his post with a simple message: “Silence is complicity.”
West, who now goes by the name Ye, has been posting offensive material to X for days following his red carpet stunt at the Grammys, including racist and ableist slurs, antisemitic conspiracy theories, proclamations such as “I love Hitler” and “I’m a Nazi,” calls to free Sean “Diddy” Combs from jail, and even threats to crash the Super Bowl with his wife, Bianca Censori.
Many of his tweets have been deleted, and more than a dozen have had their visibility limited by X, but Musk has yet to step in and actually suspend West’s account. Under Musk, the site’s policies around how many violations are required before an account is suspended have become unclear; Musk famously reinstated Donald Trump’s account in November 2022—nearly two years after it had been suspended following the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
There is precedent for West’s account being suspended; the artist was previously banned from X from December 2022 to July 2023 after he shared an image of a swastika and made several posts similar to his most recent rants.
Unfortunately for Schwimmer, however, the chances of Musk taking issue with the content of West’s posts enough to actually suspend his account once more seem small. Trump’s “First Buddy” has relaxed moderation guidelines on the platform since West’s previous suspension—and Musk himself appealed to white supremacists around the country when he performed what most (except for his most loyal followers) considered to be a Nazi salute while speaking at a MAGA rally last month.
Broadcaster Piers Morgan took to X to share similar sentiments to Schwimmer, quoting a West tweet that reads, “B---hes deserve to get slapped sometimes” and asking Musk how much more “violence-inducing stuff” he was going to allow West to post before intervening.
It remains to be seen whether Musk will take any action against West.
