Kanye “Ye” West posted the graphic post-lynching photo of civil rights icon Emmett Till to Instagram Sunday alongside a long, antisemitic screed against Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel.
“You tried to bankrupt adidas and me at the same time … You tried to destroy my life after all the money I’ve made for the ‘business’ people,” the rapper wrote on an Instagram post Sunday, appearing to use the phrase “‘business’ people” in place of “Jewish people.” “And now eeeeveryone knows how much power you ‘Business’ people actually have.”
The post continues the saga between Ye and Emanuel after Emanuel wrote an opinion piece for the Financial Times earlier this month arguing that the rapper’s mental health challenges do not excuse his antisemitic remarks.
“Millions of people affected by mental illness do not perpetuate hateful ideologies,” the Endeavor CEO, who is Jewish, wrote, urging companies to sever ties with the artist due to his hateful comments. “Others brush his comments off as just words, but hateful words far too easily become hateful actions.”
In response, Ye posted a message to Emanuel saying, “Ari Emanuel, I lost 2 billion dollars in one day and I’m still alive,” West wrote. “This is love speech. I still love you. God still loves you. The money is not who I am. The people is who I am.”
In the midst of the controversy, the artist’s non-accredited private school Donda Academy abruptly closed Thursday — an event that likely sparked the post targeting Emanuel.
“Ari Emanuel,” the post begins. “Can you find a place for the Donda Academy kids to go to school that’s properly zoned for a school? I got about 60 children that have no place to be as they look to transfer.”
The artist continued by stating, “This is what modern post social media #Blackmirror warfare looks like…the children are not even off limits,” before identifying “economic lynching,” “digital lynching” and “bankrupting my social credit score” as examples of the “warfare.” There is no explicit mention of Till in the post, though, only references to “lynching.”
He then made a plea to Emanuel’s brother, former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, to help him save the school which he says he “bus[es] underprivileged kids in from all over.” “Rahm…You’re a very powerful ‘Business’ person,” he wrote. “Here I am…The once richest black man in the world asking the very person who is destroying me to at least help these Children…”
