La Marseillaise, Or Hitlerian Hip-Hoppers Not Welcome in Marseille

The thuggish rapper, or plug-ugly hip-hopper, I can’t tell the difference, Mr. Kanye West, commonly known as Ye, was going to give a concert this summer in Marseilles, France’s second city. He announced it. Now he won’t. The mayor of Marseille won’t stand for it; other mayors we could name closer to home ought to do the same when Ye’s manager comes a-calling.

More on Mayor Benoît Payan’s response to Kanye West’s planned performance in his city can be found here: “Mayor of Marseille Says Kanye West ‘Not Welcome’ to Perform Scheduled Concert in June,” by Shiryn Ghermezian, Algemeiner, March 5, 2026:

The mayor of France’s second-biggest city, Marseille, said he does not want American rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, in his city after the musician announced a scheduled concert at the Orange Velodrome stadium on June 11.

“I refuse to let Marseille become a showcase for those who promote hatred and unapologetic Nazism,” Mayor Benoît Payan wrote in a message posted on X. “Kanye West is not welcome at the Vélodrome, our temple of living together and of all Marseillais.”

Mayor Payan’s mention of the Vélodrome in Marseille, where Ye had planned to perform, will put some people in mind of that other Vélodrome, the one in Paris known as the Vélodrome d’Hiver or Winter Vélodrome or Vél d’Hiv for short. It was at the Vel d’Hiv where the Vichy police, acting under orders of the German occupiers, rounded up 13,000 Jewish men, women, an children, on July 16 and 17, 1942, keeping them there for several days without food or water before shipping them out to transit camps, such as that at Drancy, from which places they would be sent on to the death camps. There was a smaller roundup of Jews and others, including captured members of the French Resistance, in Marseille between January 22 and 24, 1943. Some 6,000 Marseille residents were arrested. More than 1,500 were later deported, including almost 800 Jews who were sent to the Sobibor extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Bruno Benjamin, president of the Marseille branch of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF), said he is also opposed to Ye’s performance in June at the city-owned stadium due to the rapper’s past antisemitic behavior and comments.

“Welcoming to Marseille someone who has claimed his admiration for Hitler by stating ‘I am a Nazi’ ‘I love Hitler’ and multiplied antisemitic remarks raises a real moral question,” he wrote on X. “Marseille is a city marked by history, by the 1943 roundups and by the memory of the victims of Nazi barbarism. Artistic freedom exists. But the normalization of hatred must never become a spectacle. No @kanyewest in Marseille.” 

Bendayan Fabienne, the former regional head of CRIF in Marseilles, has called for the cancellation of the concert and said the city should have “no promotion of antisemites.”

The concert at the city-owned Velodrome has been cancelled, but it is still possible that Ye will find a privately-owned venue. However, an owner of such a venue might not want to risk the anger of the French and Jewish population, and a consequent loss of business, by providing Ye with a place to perform.

In a series of posts on X last year, Ye made several racist and antisemitic remarks, similar to the one he posted on the same social media platform in 2022 targeting Jews. The Grammy winner declared himself “a Nazi,” repeatedly expressed admiration for Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, and went on a rant about how much he dislikes Jews. He claimed antisemitism is “just some bulls—t Jewish people made up to protect their bulls—t.” Also last year, he sold T-shirts that featured a swastika design and released a song titled “Heil Hitler,” in which he further praised the Nazi leader….

What more need be known about this moral cretin?

Ye has not performed in Europe since 2014 and his new tour will follow the release of his latest album “Bully,” on March 20. Mars 360, the agency organizing the concert in Marseilles, told AFP it included specific clauses into the concert contract with Ye “to ensure that no illegal remarks are made during the concert and that French law is fully respected.”…

In October 2022, Ye tweeted about wanting to physically harm Jews. “I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE,” he wrote in the since-deleted post, referring to the DEFCON system used by the US military to rate how alert the armed forces should be at any given moment in the face of a threat. He later apologized for his remarks and said he “definitely was drinking” when he was posted the antisemitic comments in 2022.

What a long list of excuses Ye offers: he had a “four-month long episode of psychotic, paranoid, and impulsive behavior.” He suffered from “bipolar disorder,” and then he didn’t because, you see, it was a misdiagnosis. Or he “definitely was drinking.” Actually it’s very simple: Kanye West is a moron, in the formal I.Q. bell-curve sense of the term, and an antisemite, who happens to have a following of similar morons all over the world, who have quite deplorably made him very very rich. He can say what he thinks, and repeatedly says what he wants about Hitler, whom he so admires, and about Jews, whom he so detests, but always has his excuse ready, when called out, that he is psychotic, and paranoid, and a drunkard, and therefore cannot be held responsible for his statements.

Now Ye will go on to sing in Turkey, where a great many people, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, share his views and will be glad to welcome him, and to Spain, which is currently in the throes of an epidemic of antisemitism and anti-Israel animus that makes it a fitting place for Ye to sing his heart — his dark little heart — out.

Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vos bataillons! If Ye manages to find another, privately-owned site in Marseille whose owners are willing to rent him the space for his performance, then kindly assemble at the venue ahead of time and yell your disapproval of that plan until the owners give in and withdraw their offer.