Adidas said Tuesday it was severing ties with artist and fashion designer Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, following a series of anti-Semitic comments made in recent weeks.
Ye’s nearly decade-long partnership with the German sportswear giant helped make the rap superstar a billionaire and bring his Yeezy brand of sneakers to a global audience.
After mounting pressure on Adidas to drop it, the company announced that it will not tolerate anti-Semitism or other forms of hate speech. “Your recent comments and actions are unacceptable, hateful, and dangerous, and they violate our company values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness,” the company said in a statement.
Adidas will no longer manufacture Yeezy products and will stop paying Yeh and his companies, according to Adidas, which estimates that the decision is expected to affect its net income by about $250 million in 2022. Slavery was a choice and there was a leaked interview between Yeh and Fox News host Tucker Carlson, in which he said, “I’d rather have my kids know. Chanukah than Kwanzaa, at least it comes with some financial engineering.”
Adidas has been reviewing its partnership with Ye since he wore a “White Lives Matter” shirt at Paris Fashion Week. The Anti-Defamation League considers the slogan, embraced by white supremacists, to be a symbol of hate speech.
As the company probed its relationship with Ye last week, the ADL asked in a letter, “What further review do you need?”
Jonathan Greenblatt, who leads the ADL, said in a statement Tuesday that Adidas’ actions “send a powerful message that antisemitism and bigotry have no place in society.”
The controversy brings attention to the Adidas founder’s Nazi ties
Attention also brought new scrutiny to Adidas’ history.
Brothers Adolf and Rudolf Dassler began manufacturing shoes in Bavaria in the 1920s, including the boots that became the Nazis’ shoe of choice.
In 1933, they both joined the Nazi Party and during World War II, their factory was turned into an ammunition plant for the war effort. The American sprinter Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin wearing a pair of track spikes from the Dassler brothers, bringing the brothers’ shoes to international fame.
A sharp rift between the two led to a split: Adolf Dassler, known as Adi, founded Adidas in 1949. And his brother, who accompanied Rudy, started rival shoemaker Puma around the same time. Under German law, spreading hatred against people of a certain race or religion, denying the Holocaust, and spreading Nazi propaganda are crimes that can be punished with imprisonment.
Displaying a swastika in public is also illegal in the country and can lead to prosecution.