Among the star-studded Super Bowl ads that viewers saw during Sunday’s game was an awkward 30-second spot, filmed vertically on an iPhone, in which the rapper Ye talks about his new teeth and instructs the audience to go to Yeezy.com.
As of the morning after the game, when they visited the site, shoppers could find exactly one item for sale: a white T-shirt emblazoned with a swastika.
The T-shirt, which comes in three sizes and sells for $20, is the latest in a long series of blatantly antisemitic acts and statements by Ye, formerly known as Kanye West. The ad aired on some local Super Bowl broadcasts just days after Ye embarked on his latest antisemitic rant on the social network X, declaring his dislike for Jews, praising Adolf Hitler and calling himself a Nazi. On Sunday night, he announced he was quitting the platform.
The T-shirt is labeled “HH-01,” using a common neo-Nazi shorthand for “Heil Hitler.”
Yeezy, West’s fashion label, was one of the more prominent casualties of his initial stream of antisemitic remarks in the fall of 2022. Following public backlash, the sportswear company Adidas dropped its $2 billion-a-year partnership with Yeezy.
In Sunday’s ad, Ye somewhat haltingly tries to promote the brand.
“What’s up, guys? I just spent like all the money for the commercial, um, on these new teeth,” Ye says in the ad, wearing a blue hoodie and displaying his teeth. “So, once again I had to shoot it on the iPhone. Um, um, um, go to Yeezy.com.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
