The clothing chain Gap Inc. said Tuesday that it was taking immediate steps to remove products from its Yeezy Gap line created in collaboration with Kanye West and that it has shut down YeezyGap.com after the rapper’s anti-Semitic comments.
This comes shortly after Adidas ended its partnership with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, over his offensive and anti-Semitic comments, the latest company to cut ties with Ye and a decision that the German sportswear company he said he would get to his bottom line.
“Adidas does not tolerate anti-Semitism or any other type of hate speech,” the company said in a statement on Tuesday. “Ye’s recent comments and actions have been unacceptable, hateful and dangerous, and violate the company’s values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness.”
The company faced pressure to cut ties with Ye, with celebrities and others on social media urging Adidas to act. She said earlier this month that she was putting her lucrative sneaker deal with the rapper under review.
The last company to cut connections
Adidas said Tuesday that it conducted a “thorough review” and would immediately halt production of its Yeezy product line and halt payments to Ye and his companies. The sportswear company said it expected to take a hit of up to 250 million euros ($338.5 million Canadian) to its net income this year from the move.
The move by Adidas, whose CEO Kasper Rorsted will step down next year, comes after Ye was suspended from Twitter and Instagram this month for anti-Semitic posts that the social networks said violated their policies .
He recently suggested that slavery was an option and called the COVID-19 vaccine the “mark of the beast,” among other comments. He was also criticized for wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt to his Yeezy collection presentation in Paris.
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Left by his agent
Ye’s talent agency, CAA, dropped him, and studio MRC announced on Monday that it is putting together a full-length documentary about him.
Fashion house Balenciaga cut ties with Ye last week, according to Women’s Wear Daily. JPMorganChase and Ye have ended their business relationship, although the bank breakup was underway even before Ye’s anti-Semitic comments.
In recent weeks, Ye has also ended his company’s partnership with Gap and told Bloomberg that he plans to cut ties with its corporate suppliers.
After being suspended from Twitter and Facebook, Ye offered to buy the conservative social network Parler.
The rapper, who has won 24 Grammy Awards, has built a reputation less for his music and more for stirring up controversy since 2016, when he was hospitalized in Los Angeles for what his team called stress and exhaustion. It was later revealed that he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Jewish groups have pointed to the danger of the rapper’s comments at a time of growing anti-Semitism. Such incidents in the United States reached an all-time high last year, the Anti-Defamation League said in a letter to Adidas last week urging it to break with Ye.
Protesters at a Los Angeles overpass on Saturday unfurled a banner praising Ye’s anti-Semitic comments, sparking an outcry on social media as celebrities and others said they stand with the Jewish people.
Jewish groups welcomed Adidas’ decision, but said the move was too late. The World Jewish Congress noted that during World War II, Adidas factories “produced supplies and weapons for the Nazi regime, using slave labor.”
In Germany, where Adidas is headquartered, the head of the country’s main Jewish group welcomed the company’s decision but said the “step was long overdue.”
“I would have liked a clear position before a German company that was also entangled with the Nazi regime,” Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of German Jews, said in a statement. “Adidas has done a lot to distance itself from its past and, like many sports brands, is one of those companies that runs big campaigns against anti-Semitism and racism. That’s why an earlier separation from Kanye West would have been appropriate.”
LISTEN | Kanye West’s move on social media:
7:39 Toronto culture critic Stacy Lee Kong has something to say about Kanye West’s latest social media move
Rapper Kanye West is blocked from Twitter and Instagram. Now it has proposed buying Parler, the social media platform popular among American conservatives. Stacy Lee Kong is a writer, editor and cultural critic based in Toronto. She is the founder of Friday Things, a weekly pop culture newsletter. He spoke with guest host Eli Glasner about Kanye’s latest move.