Lupe Fiasco #racist everydayantisemitism.com

Rapped Lupe Fiasco has apparently decided to quit music after having released an antisemitic track.

The Chicago-born rapper, 34, released a track on his Soundcloud earlier this week, which included the line “Artists gettin’ robbed for their publishing / By dirty Jewish execs who think that it’s alms from the covenant”.

The idea that Jews are obsessed with money and exercise undue influence over various areas of business is an inherently antisemitic one, yet is an idea which is very common.

However, media coverage has tended to focus on the first line about “dirty Jewish execs”, whilst ignoring the accusation that such behaviour is “alms from the covenant”. The idea that Jews are led to extract money from others due to a perceived sense of religious superiority is clearly antisemitic, and is in fact a common theme found in the antisemitism of white nationalists. Here two antisemitic stereotypes co-exist; the idea of Jews as baseless cosmopolitans, influencing, dominating and exploiting the world of business; and the idea of Jews as backwards religious traditionalists, who allow everything to be directed by religious precepts, many of which are painted as supremacist in nature.

He faced a backlash from fans after releasing the freestyle track, and fired back against accusations of antisemitism in a series of tweets, saying “I’ve walked inside the ovens of Auschwitz” and “I’ve studied the Hebrew bible”. However, clearly studying the Bible and visiting Auschwitz does not exclude one from being antisemitic, particularly when one makes blatantly antisemitic comments such as these without apology.

Instead of apologising for his comments, he instead claimed he was “getting beat up for telling the truth”.

He went on to say that he would not release any more music.

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Confused?

So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!

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