How can a festival host Kanye West in 2026 without reaching out to Jews?
Kanye West's Nazi periods are well known, as are his struggles with mental health. What is truly hard to comprehend is the Wireless Festival's lack of care, or any risk mitigation
This summer, one of the UK’s largest music festivals will feature a singer who, less than a year ago, released a song called “Heil Hitler”. A rapper who last year was selling merchandise on his website featuring swastikas will headline major concerts in London. Even in the bizarre, freakish dystopian global landscape of 2026, this decision has raised eyebrows and dropped jaws.
Kanye West occupies a very strange place in the music industry. He is indisputably a huge star – one of the most influential artists in the history of the rap genre – but his personal behaviour has been repeatedly despicable, particularly towards Jewish people. This is unambiguous; even people who often try and dismiss examples of antisemitism as “merely” being anti-Zionism cannot do so here. West has rarely focused on “Israel” in his rants (although it has happened on occasion). They have almost always been directed, very openly, at “Jews”.
It is at this point that I will acknowledge that Kanye West has apologised for his behaviour. “I sincerely apologize to the Jewish community for any unintended outburst caused by my words or actions”, he has said.
“It was not my intention to hurt or disrespect, and I deeply regret any pain I may have caused. I am committed to starting with myself and learning from this experience to ensure greater sensitivity and understanding in the future.”
Except – oh yes, that was his 2023 apology. That was followed in 2025 by what we might term Kanye’s second Nazi period (quite literally, with comments such as “I am a Nazi”), various hideous statements about Jews, and of course the release of a song called “Heil Hitler”, which rapidly became the anthem of some sort of bizarre post-racial far right. And because this has now happened multiple times, a lot of Jewish people I know have adopted a “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me” approach to the man.
Mental health is a serious issue – Kanye attributed his first Nazi period (2022) to bipolar disorder. In a full page apology ad in the Wall Street Journal earlier this year, he ascribed his second Nazi period (2025) to a previously undiagnosed brain injury from two decades ago. Some will ask, with a degree of justification, whether it is fair to hold West’s behaviour against him, given the demons he appears to be wrestling with.
As part of that, it seems apposite to refer back to what happened last month at the Baftas. John Davidson, the subject of a film around his life story of grappling with Tourettes syndrome, shouted anti-black racial slurs at the Baftas, during a segment when Michael B Jordan and Delroy Lindo were presenting. Many black people were understandably angry about this. Some were scathing about Davidson himself (though he has no way of preventing his coprolalia), but many more were furious at the BBC, which hosted the show. The Corporation appeared to have taken no care at all to mitigate potential risk. It had not avoided positioning microphones near Davidson, nor did it bother to cut the outburst itself from the broadcast.
The situations are not identical, by any means. But what seems to be similar is the total lack of responsible behaviour by the organisers of the events.
The Wireless festival, which announced this week that West would be headlining three nights in July, appears to have made absolutely no effort whatsoever to engage with the Jewish community in the UK. British Jews, understandably, might be somewhat taken aback by having Kanye West headline concerts in front of tens of thousands of people, just a five minute drive away from one of the largest Jewish communities in the country. All of the major Jewish communal groups in the UK have condemned the announcement by Wireless festival – and it is clear that the festival did not bother to reach out to them in any way prior to its announcement that West would be headlining.
Neither the festival itself or its key sponsor, Pepsi, have, at the time of writing, bothered to respond at all to inquiries from the paper I work for. The questions we asked them were as follows:
- Did you at any point consider whether it was a good idea to invite a rapper who has repeatedly engaged in antisemitic and Neo-Nazi behaviour – most lately less than a year ago – to headline your festival?
- Do you understand that there is a significant chance that West may engage in antisemitic and/or Nazi remarks before an audience of tens of thousands of people, at your festival?
- Do you have anything to say to the tens of thousands of Jewish people living in London – many of whom live quite close to Finsbury Park?
Given the circumstances in question, it seems like the least that Wireless could do is have some sort of plan in place to mitigate the risk that West might use the (literal) platform at their festival, underneath their logos and branding, to engage in the same behaviour he has repeatedly exhibited in the past. Will there be a psych evaluation beforehand? Will there be medical officers backstage? Is there a plan to immediately cut the microphones and the electrics if he starts to engage in awful behaviour? Given the circumstances, planning for this seems like the absolute least that a responsible festival should be doing. But we have received no reply whatsoever. Whether that is due to incompetence, panic or something else, we can only speculate.
Personally, I would prefer that West does not perform. Whatever he is dealing with personally, his song from last year has become an anthem of hate for this generation’s far right. But that’s not my call. What is truly unforgivable, however, is that a prominent music festival appears to have decided to simply announce his presence, here in London later this year, without doing any of the necessary work to address the very specific circumstances here. Wireless doesn’t just owe that work to the Jewish community, or wider society – it owes that work to West himself.
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