Right-wing YouTuber Tim Pool earned thousands of dollars from a late November interview with Kanye West, where the rapper, now known as Ye, continued on his recent spree of antisemitic attacks on Jewish people.
During the appearance, which also featured West’s 2024 far-right campaign advisers Milo Yiannopoulos and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, the hip-hop star railed against Hollywood figures and supposed “Zionist” plants in top industries conspiring against him.
West eventually stormed out of the interview, when Mr Pool pushed back lightly on the rapper’s claims.
That didn’t stop Mr Pool from bringing in $7,258 from Super Chat payments, a feature that lets YouTube viewers pay to have their comments on live broadcasts appear in the video. YouTube, for its part, took a cut of over $2,000 from the donations.
Of 583 Super Chat payments that went along with the video, 54 of those comments “were used to promote explicit and implicit forms of antisemitism, including comments that spread antisemitic conspiracy theories, championed Holocaust deniers and promoted antisemitic propaganda,” according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
This nexus between hateful views and platforms which broadcast them to the public for money, shows how “Ye’s hard turn to public antisemitism has been amplified as a result of the cooperation, mendacity and/or negligence of organizations and individuals who have enabled him to spread it,” according to a Southern Poverty Law center analysis.
During the interview with West, Mr Pool refuted West’s claims that Jews were conspiring against him, and appeared shocked when the rapper stormed out of the studio.
“You guys wanna bring that stuff up and think we’re not gonna have a conversation?” Mr Pool asked.
The YouTube host later said he had been warned not to platform West, but argued it was valuable to air out his views in public.
“I think you should all invite them on,” Mr Pool later said, The Daily Beast reported. “I think if anything is bad for their ideas, it’s exactly what just happened.”
The Independent has contacted YouTube for comment.
After the conversation, Mr Pool shared a clip on his Twitter account of comedian Bill Burr comparing West’s mania and ego to that of Hitler.
The chaotic interview with Mr Pool capped off a multiple week stretch where West made antisemitic remarks across a string of podcasts and interview shows, and dined with Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago alongside Fuentes.
