I’d usually ignore him, and given my audience here at Good one, Wilson sways the opinion of literally tens of people, I’m sure that really stings Chez Ye. But today, I’ll do what he wants and take the bait. Today I want to mention author and shit-stirrer
’s excellent book ‘Squat’ and his sure to be excellent stage show ‘Squatting at Kanye’s and other adventures’, and understanding Safran as a provocateur works better if you understand Kanye as an anti-Semitic asshole.So these were a few of Ye’s comments in an hours long rant on X this week1:
“I’m never apologising for my Jewish comments. I can say whatever the fuck I wanna say forever”
“Be clear, you Jewish n****s don’t run me no more.”
“[Any] Jewish person that does business with me needs to know I don’t like or trust any Jewish person… and this is completely sober with no Hennessy,”
“I’m a Nazi”
“I love Hitler. Now what bitches?”
“Hitler was soooo fresh”
“You can get money with Jewish people but they always gonna steal”
It’s another sickening instalment to add to the ‘fuck I wish I hadn’t glanced at the news’ file that’s been filling up with bilge post election as the billionaire bros polish their dicks in a world without woke. [If you want to read a great piece on this, check today] An antidote for me has been reading books, and one of the best books I read this summer is Safran’s Squat.
It’s about what it says it’s about on the cover. ‘A week squatting in Kanye’s mansion’. He actually did it. He jumped across a stream like some middle aged Julian Dick or Anne in the Famous Five and landed in Kanye’s backyard. From there he makes it to the big blue mansion, and then … well (spoiler alert) eventually he’s lying on the world’s most famous antisemite’s bed, drinking his sake.
It sounds wrong, is wrong, by all of the standards that teach us that a man’s house, his home, his double bed, his sake, are his own. I’ve looked at Reddit threads that belittle John, that condemn him as ‘lame’ and an ‘attention seeking meaningless shit’.
From my perspective, I’m a twenty-five year friend, a twenty-six year fan, and I’m immensely glad he didn’t get shot. I also knew that I was going to love this book, because he’s a sublime writer, somebody who can be simultaneously funny, provocative, interesting and unpredictable, and he always avoids being preachy or didactic. Squat is laced with attempts to understand Kanye’s positions, and whatever preconceptions the reader might have about the rights or wrongs of this stunt, I promise John has anticipated that judgement, has weighed it up, and judged himself in ways that you might not have even have thought to.
And throughout he weaves a story about being a Jew and what that means. There are two moments in the book that almost had me shedding tears. One comes when John enters a place he calls The Cottage and finds a whole room filled with copies of Kanye’s mother’s autobiography, He concludes that Kanye bought the books to boost his mother’s sales, and feels a moment of connection because this is something John’s own mum has done for him, and he says some things about her that I thought were beautiful.
The other was this passage relating to Safran’s Holocaust survivor grandparents:
‘Kanye isn’t a fan!’ a friend told me a few months ago, offering a clip where Kanye muses over the Jew: ‘They’ll take us and milk us until we die’
The Jew extracting a pound of flesh.
It doesn’t end there. This goes deeper and deeper, reaching toward the centre of the earth of me.
As a kid, when these wisps were first being whispered into my ear, I was living with my grandparents. They fled Poland for the Soviet Union in 1939, where they were imprisoned in a work camp — a forest in northern Russia — where trees were chopped down and milled. They were the only ones left standing in their families; parents, siblings, cousins, uncles and aunts, all had been extinguished back in Poland.
If you reckon Jews go on about the Holocaust too much, you should have been in my grandparents’ lounge room — they never spoke about it. And you knew not to bring it up.
The last section of the book reads something like Castaway meets The Phantom of the Opera meets Fiddler on the Roof meets The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The history of antisemitism both generally and of the Ye variety are teased out, and Safran does the Safran thing of committing wholly to his art, of blurring the line between creation and crazy. It’s something 2015 Kanye might have appreciated — the Kanye that received his honorary doctorate from the Art Institute of Chicago with the words:
I am a pop artist. So my medium is public opinion. And the world is my canvas. ‘I'm sorry’ is something you can use a lot. it gives you an opportunity to give your opinion, apologise for it, and give your opinion again. People say you should not be sorry for your opinions. George Bush has some very cool self portraits., I didn't know he was an artist.2
2015 Kanye was a dickhead too.
If you like John Safran you’ll love the book. if you love the book, you’ll adore his live storytelling show Squatting at Kanye’s and Other Adventures. It’s part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, 12th April, Comedy Theatre. There are also shows in Canberra, Adelaide and Hobart.
The video at the top of this page made me laugh in the way John has always made me laugh:
Kanye, you're a bad anti-Semite.
And by that I mean, you're bad at being an anti-Semite.
The number one Jew on your list of Jews, Jamie Dimon from JP Morgan Bank, is in fact a Christian, a Greek Orthodox Christian.
As I am always telling neo-Nazis, when making your list, be sure to do your Jew diligence.
Ah Safran, you get me every time.
Let me throw a plug in for our upcoming ‘Ange & The Boss’ season starting the weekend March 13-16th and yes, Safran might have provided a shout quote:
Nova Carlton selling fast, 14th March, 6.30pm (special guest Paul Trimboli)
First chance for people from Adelaide, Canberra, Perth, Brisbane and Geelong to see the Puskás in Australia story.
Kanye ‘Ye’ West professes love for Hitler and claims ‘dominion’ over wife Bianca Censori, Euronews.com
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