YouTube bars UK rapper after antisemitic remarks
Wiley’s tweets asserted that Jews systematically exploited Black artists in the music industry
The official YouTube channel of British rapper Wiley, who stirred controversy recently for a slew of antisemitic comments, has been removed from the video platform, a spokesperson for YouTube confirmed to The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.
“Following repeated violations, YouTube has terminated Wiley’s channels from our platform,” the spokesperson said.
While the decision was not publicly announced prior to the removal, searching for Wiley’s channel did not yield results, and when using a direct link to the verified page, a message appeared claiming that “this channel does not exist.”
The Post located and verified this link using an internet archive service – which keeps a hold of pages even if they have been deleted – to backtrack.
Additionally, any content previously shared by the page is deemed “unavailable.”
The YouTube removal followed a similar ban last week by Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The rapper’s Twitter account, which had half a million followers, published a series of tweets last month asserting that Jews systematically exploited Black artists in the music industry, continuing a pattern of exploitation dating back to the slave trade.
Last week, YouTube confirmed that it had already suspended monetization of Wiley’s videos following the
Twitter, Facebook and Instagram bans.
“Hate speech and content that promotes hate against religious groups is strictly prohibited on YouTube,” the video-sharing platform said following the decision to demonetize Wiley’s account. “We’ve worked hard to develop responsible and universal community guidelines that make clear what content is unacceptable on our platform, and we enforce our policies consistently, and regardless of viewpoint.”
“After Wiley’s antisemitic rants appeared on Twitter and Instagram, the Board of Deputies reached out not only to these platforms but to others as well, including YouTube, to ask them to preemptively block Wiley as it was obvious that he would seek to reoffend elsewhere,” said Board of Deputies vice president Amanda Bowman, alluding to the notion that YouTube was responsible for the removal.
“Sadly, we were proven correct and, although we would have wanted YouTube to take advance action on this, we welcome their decision today to terminate Wiley’s channels from their platforms for his repeated violations. There can be #NoSafeSpaceforJewHate,” she concluded.
Wiley, 41, whose real name is Richard Cowie, released a No. 1 single in Britain in 2012 and had several other top 10 hits as a leading figure in grime music, a British genre of rap.
The rapper’s former manager, John Woolf, who is Jewish, said he would no longer represent the artist.