PREVIEW: The Friday edition. - I forgive Kanye West.
Tangle
Isaac Saul
4.7 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 31 January 2026
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kanye West says he’s sorry.
And I forgive him.
I first wrote about West’s antisemitic rants in 2022, when he began engaging with the world of antisemitism. And, in some narrow ways, I defended him: I pleaded with people to accept that some of the stereotypes he was calling out were actually tied to realities we should discuss, that we can explain the overrepresentation of “The Jews” — my people — in the entertainment industry, while also calling out West when his ranting tipped into paranoia and conspiracy.
In the months and years since, West — who now goes by Ye — has been using increasingly unhinged language. His reality has become more and more divorced from the one you and I share. He apologized in 2023, then took it back; by 2025, he was back to posting Nazi propaganda on social media, selling merchandise adorned with swastikas, and dropping club anthems lionizing Hitler. His social media activity made clear that he was either all the way down the rabbit hole or in the depths of a mental crisis, and following him went from angering to amusing to alarming. I stopped defending him and started blaming him for the rise in antisemitism among his fans, and more broadly for the normalization of antisemitism across our culture.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. |
| 0:12.5 | Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, I'm here to say, I forgive Kanye West. That's right. Kanye says he's sorry, and I say, I forgive him. I first wrote about West's |
| 0:41.4 | anti-Semitic rants in 2022 and he began engaging with the world of anti-Semitism. And in some |
| 0:48.7 | narrow ways, I defended him back then. I pleaded with people to accept that some of the |
| 0:53.2 | stereotypes he was calling out |
| 0:54.7 | were actually tied to realities that we should and could discuss, that we can explain why Jews |
| 1:01.1 | are overrepresented my people in the entertainment industry, while also calling out West when |
| 1:07.9 | his ranting tipped into paranoia and conspiracy. In the months and years after |
| 1:12.6 | that, though, West, who now goes by Ye, has been using increasingly unhinged language. His reality |
| 1:19.1 | has become more and more divorced from the one you and I share. He apologized in 2023 and then |
| 1:24.8 | took it back. By 2025, he was back to posting Nazi propaganda on social media, |
| 1:30.9 | selling merchandise adorned with swastikas, and dropping club anthems, lionizing Hitler. |
| 1:36.4 | His social media activity made clear that he was either all the way down the rabbit hole |
| 1:40.5 | or in the depths of a mental health crisis, and following him went from angering |
| 1:45.1 | to amusing to alarming. I stopped defending him and started blaming him for the rise in |
| 1:50.5 | anti-Semitism among his fans, and more broadly for the normalization of anti-Semitism across our |
| 1:56.1 | culture. In no uncertain terms, yay emboldened anti-Semites everywhere and probably recruited a few to the cause. |
| 2:04.2 | I've long been a fan of his music, but calling him a rapper or hip-hop artist doesn't really do him |
| 2:08.8 | justice. He's among the most significant cultural icons of the last two decades, not just in the |
| 2:15.1 | United States, but globally. And for a period in 2020, he was a prominent |
| 2:19.9 | political figure. He's viewed, rightly, as an artistic genius. His words matter, and his actions |
| 2:27.0 | have consequences. Over the last several years, he's used his considerable influence to mainstream |
... |
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