Parler CEO calls Kanye West a ‘victim of cancellation’

The CEO of Parler has sought to defend Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, from antisemitisim complaints following news of his takeover bid of the right wing social media app.

Speaking with Fox Business on Monday, Parler CEO George Farmer said “censorship in any format is never a good thing” after Mr West was locked out of his Twitter and Instagram accounts over statements deemed antisemitic. He added that the rapper was also a “victim of cancellation”, per Mediaite.

“The tweet that he put out last week, as far as I could understand it, was an incorrect reference to defcon,” Mr Farmer told Maria Bartiromo of the rapper’s apparent reference to DEFCON, a level of US defence department readiness. “He’s obviously willing to have conversations that plenty of people want to have and I think that he’s trying to engage in the free speech environment”.

“Specific comments about his personal opinions, obviously I can’t comment because I’m not him, but I would like to say that he’s now in a place where he’s fallen victim to the cancellation narrative,” Mr Farmer continued. “Whether or not what he said offended some people, of course, is up for conversation,” he said.

Mr West was locked out of his Twitter and Instagram accounts in the past week for comments deeemed antisemitic, having said he was going to go “death con 3” on Jewish people on Twitter.

He also alleged that he wasn’t “Anti Semitic because black people are actually Jew,” before the website removed the posts for violating its rules.

Instagram, meanwhile, toldThe Independent on Saturday that they “may place restrictions on accounts that repeatedly break our rules, for example, we may temporarily restrict them from posting, commenting, or sending DMs.”

On Instagram, Mr West had been accused of saying that Sean “Diddy” Combs, a fellow American rapper known by his stage name “P Diddy”, was was being controlled by Jewish people. The post was almost immediately condemned by the American Jewish Committee as being “dangerous” before Instagram and its owner Meta took it down.

Mr West, who told Page Six last week he was “happy to have crossed that line” with his remarks but did not wish to harm Jewish people, said in a statement through Parler on Monday morning that he wanted to purchase Parler, the app favoured by some on the far right.

“Parlement Technologies is pleased to announce that it has entered into an agreement in principle for Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, to acquire the Parler platform,” the app said in a statement on Twitter, with the news later confirmed by Mr Farmer.

The statement continued by claiming that Mr West’s ownership of the app would ensure Parler became an “uncancelable ecosystem where all voices are welcome.”

As noted by Jared Holt, a senior researcher on US hate and extremism for the institute for Strategic Dialogue think tank, the CEO of Parlier is married to Candace Owens, a friend of Mr West’s who appeared alongside him at Paris Fashion Week earlier this month sporting a similar “White Lives Matter” t-shirt, reports said.

Mr West was widely condemned for wearing the t-shirt, in apparent opposition to the anti-racism Black Lives Matter movement. The controversy was soon overshadowed by his social media posts about Jewish people.

Parler, which was founded in 2018, was briefly removed from Google and Apple’s online stores in January 2021 for allegedly hosting posts calling for violence on January 6, The New York Times reported.

At the same time, Parler was joined by supporters of former US president Donald Trump, who abandoned Twitter and Facebook for banning Mr Trump from their sites over his election lies.

One of Parler’s main rivals is Truth Social, the social media platform founded by Mr Trump earlier this year.

Mr West and Mr Trump have long spoken favourably of one another since 2016, when Mr West first voiced his support for the Republican, according to Rolling Stone.

The Independent has approached a spokesperson for Mr West and Parler for comment.