Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, used a Super Bowl commercial on Sunday night to send people to his website as it sells T-shirts emblazoned with a swastika, the symbol of Nazi Germany which is still used by modern-day far-right extremists.
The white T-shirts have a black swastika on the front and were the only items for sale on the front page of yeezy.com as of Monday morning. No text or explanation accompanied the item, just the letters “HH-01.” They are available for $20.
The Super Bowl ad — which was not shown nationally but, according to multiple reports, was at least seen in the Los Angeles area — shows Ye in a dentist’s chair apparently undergoing treatment.
“So what’s up, guys? I spent, like, all the money for the commercial on these new teeth,” he said. “So once again, I had to shoot it on the iPhone. Um, um, um, go to yeezy.com.” The shirts were not mentioned in the ad.
A representative for Ye did not immediately respond to an NBC News request for comment.
The news comes as Ye’s X account, where he had 33 million followers and had been posting a string of highly offensive antisemitic messages in recent days, has been deactivated.
The Anti-Defamation League posted a statement Monday describing the shirt sales as further proof of Ye’s antisemitism. The organization, which was formed to combat anti-Jewish bigotry and discrimination, reiterated that the swastika was “adopted by Hitler as the primary emblem of the Nazis.”
“It galvanized his followers in the 20th century and continues to threaten and instill fear in those targeted by antisemitism and white supremacy,” the ADL said. “If that wasn’t enough, the t-shirt is labeled on Kanye’s website as ‘HH-01,’ which is code for ‘Heil Hitler.'”
The page for the @kanyewest account, which has existed since 2010, now says “This account doesn’t exist anymore.”
It wasn’t clear why the account was offline, but Ye said in a message Sunday: “I’m logging out of twitter,” referring to the original and still widely used named of the X social network.
“I appreciate Elon for allowing me to vent,” he continued. “It has been very cathartic to use the world as a sounding bound.”
The shirts appeared to go on sale on yeezy.com over the weekend — even though Ye said on X that he would never sell a shirt with a swastika.
“I would never sell a swastika tee because people could be physically harmed wearing it … I love my fans and supporters,” he wrote on Saturday.
Before his X account was taken offline, Ye posted a new round of antisemitic tweets on Super Bowl Sunday, including derogatory remarks and conspiracy theories about Jews.
On Friday, Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the ADL, said Ye was responsible for an “egregious display of antisemitism, racism and misogyny from Ye on his X account.”
Ye was locked out of his Twitter/X account in 2022 over antisemitic remarks.
