Ye is the rapper formerly known as Kanye West. Even more formerly, he was known as Yeezus, back when he was dropping tracks like ‘I Am A God’. But Kanye is not the messiah; he’s an extremely naughty boy.  This week he appeared on US television show Tucker Carlson Tonight to attack Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner’s role in the Abraham Accords between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain. Kanye claimed this was done ‘to make money’ and said of the Kushner family, who are Jewish:

‘I just think that’s what they’re about, is making money. I don’t think that they have the ability to make anything on their own. I think they were born into money.’

In case that was too subtle, Kanye then tweeted:

‘I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE The funny thing is I actually can’t be Anti Semitic because black people are actually Jew also You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda.’

Twitter locked his account. Vice published unaired footage from the Carlson interview. This included a garbled restatement of Black Hebrew Israelite ideology (black people are the true descendants of the Israelites) and his wish that his children learn about Chanukah rather than Kwanzaa in school because ‘at least it will come with some financial engineering’.

Kanye’s haphazard political journey has brought him from an Obama-supporter who once famously declared ‘George Bush doesn’t care about black people’ to a Trump fan pictured sporting a ‘White Lives Matter’ T-shirt in Paris last week. Left and right alike have tried to claim him. Each has been happy to excuse his behaviour.

Right-wing influencer Candace Owens has defended him over his ‘death con 3’ tweet, arguing:

‘If you are an honest person, you did not think this tweet was anti–Semitic. You did not think that he wrote this tweet because he hates or wants to genocide Jewish people. This is not the beginning of a Holocaust.’

While it’s reassuring to know that another Shoah isn’t imminent, it’s rather a low bar. Suggesting that those pointing out anti-Semitism are being disingenuous is a familiar tactic for downplaying Jew-hatred, as appears to be Owens’ assertion that ‘honest’ people had ‘no idea what the hell he was talking about’. As such, she said, Kanye’s tweet ‘inspired questions, not answers’. The question I’m inspired to ask is whether Candace Owens rehearses this stuff or just makes it up on the spot.

It’s reasonable to consider whether Kanye’s remarks are sober statements of anti-Semitism or whether, as Hadley Freeman wonders, they are simply the ravings of a man who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. They could be both. It’s difficult to tell. But whatever the reason, it does not alter the malign effect his anti-Semitic statements has on Jews.

Owens isn’t the only apologist for Kanye’s ramblings. David Horowitz, a conservative writer, says that: ‘Jews in Hollywood and Big Tech and in the donor base of the Democrat party and in the media’ are out to ‘destroy’ Kanye. ‘Realising that his words would be twisted by the fascist left, Kanye added that blacks are Jews,’ he added.

Progressives can’t claim the moral high ground. Vanity Fair snarks that Republicans are ‘curiously silent on Kanye West’s plans to go “death con 3 on Jewish people”’ while Vice frets that ‘Ye has recently displayed an intense negative fixation on Jews’. There is nothing recent about it. Back in 2013, when he was a cookie-cutter celebrity Democrat, Kanye told a US radio show Barack Obama was struggling to make good on his promises ‘because he ain’t got those connections. Black people don’t have the same level of connections as Jewish people’.

As the Anti Defamation League (ADL) pointed out, one of the first newspapers to report this as a story was the Israeli daily Haaretz. When the US media finally picked it up, there was some very vigorous tutting. A Think Progress piece described the comments as ‘unfortunate and frustrating’ but decided ‘it’s worth parsing what West actually said, rather than dismissing him as a crude anti-Semite’ because ‘his remarks do capture a number of important anxieties’.

Complex ran a hand-wringing article that determined Kanye’s assertion was not ‘completely wrong in every way’ but ‘wrong in more than a few ways’. The author, however, was keen to stress: ‘Like a lot of other Jews, I think the ADL is an organisation that quite often only works to antagonise cultural tensions and find anti-Semitism where it doesn’t exist.’

Whether on the left or the right, when political convenience requires it, the instinct is to question the integrity of those objecting to anti-Semitism. Progressive millennial culture, which back then treated Kanye like the god he claimed to be, was unusually relaxed about this particular instance of racism. Six weeks later, BuzzFeed published a lighthearted listicle entitled ’18 Awesome Benefits Of Having A Jewish Best Friend’. Benefit number eight was: ‘According to Kanye West they have a lot of connections.’

What conclusions can we draw from all this? One is that the new right, the very-online millennial right that calls itself conservative but is really just anti-liberal, is not doing enough to patrol its own boundaries. Not so long ago that responsibility would have fallen to someone like William F Buckley, who, stuffy and WASPy though he was, understood that a broad-tent conservatism could have no room for anti-Semitism. Buckley demonstrated this when he removed Joseph Sobran from National Review. The online right sorely needs a Buckley today.

Another conclusion is that Kanye’s anti-Semitic statements only became a problem for progressives when he stopped being one. This volte-face is another reminder of Jewish invisibility in the politics of anti-racism, a problem that afflicts progressives but many others too. Whether Kanye is a hate-filled anti-Semite or a desperately disturbed man – or whether the truth lies somewhere in between – he is not the only one who needs to reflect. He’s been saying these things for years and his fans, old and new, have told him it was okay.