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A petition has been launched calling on the mayor of Bratislava to prevent Kanye West – legally known as Ye – from headlining a festival in Bratislava, calling the planned appearance “an insult to historic memory, a glorification of wartime violence and debasement of all victims of the Nazi regime”.
The Rubicon festival in the Slovakian capital claimed that they had secured an exclusive performance by the “hip-hop visionary, cultural icon and controversial genius” for mid-July.
More than 3,500 people have signed the petition, endorsed by representatives from organisations such as Peace for Ukraine and Cities for Democracy, calling for West’s removal from the bill, accusing him of “repeatedly and openly adhering to symbols and [an] ideology connected with the darkest period of modern global history”.
The petition calls West “one of the world’s most famous antisemites” and cites him selling a T-shirt depicting a swastika on his website.
On 8 May, the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in the second world war, the 48-year-old musician released a song called Heil Hitler. It ends with a sample of a speech given by Adolf Hitler in 1935 in the original German, which ends with the Nazi leader calling for supporters to “stand up for me like I have stood up for you”.
The song was banned in Germany on the grounds of laws against extremist symbolism and hate speech and removed from most mainstream streaming platforms, but proliferated and found support on Elon Musk’s X.
The petition calls it “unacceptable that Bratislava should be the only city in Europe” to host a performance by West, “not because of his musical expression, but because of his dangerous public attitudes that are in direct conflict with European memory and historical responsibility.”
It stressed that the performance could attract “radical and extremist groups from Slovakia and abroad” and cited “legitimate concern about the appearance of Nazi symbolism, violent behaviour or the spread of ideology that is unacceptable in a democratic society and criminal in our country”.
During the second world war, more than 70,000 Slovak Jews were put in concentration camps, turned over to German authorities and murdered.
In June, West briefly appeared at the ongoing sex-trafficking trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs in support of the music mogul. He is expected to release a complete edition of his 12th album Bully imminently after various incomplete versions appeared earlier this year.
