Kanye West officially banned from entering Australia where wifes family lives
Kanye West has officially been banned from Australia, and his tourist visa has been cancelled in the wake of an anti-Semitic song that referenced Adolf Hitler.
The bombshell decision means that he will be prohibited from entering the country with his Australian-born wife Bianca Censori, who grew up in Melbourne.
She was most recently in the country over the summer, but her husband remained in Japan at the time amid reported marital tensions.
Government sources have said that the decision was made recently and communicated to Mr West, who has legally changed his name to Ye.
He had sought and obtained a tourist visa that could remain valid for up to 12 months, but it has now been cancelled.
Ye is the ex-husband of Kim Kardashian. He shares four children with his ex-wife, Kim Kardashian: North, Saint, Chicago, and Psalm.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke revealed his decision to cancel his visa on Wednesday afternoon, confirming it was cancelled after he released a song called Heil Hitler in May.
“He’s been coming to Australia for a long time and he’s made a lot of offensive comments,” Mr Burke said.
“But my officials looked at it again once he released the Heil Hitler song and he no longer has a valid visa in Australia.”
“It wasn’t a visa for the purpose of concerts. It was a lower level and the officials still looked at the law and said “you’re going to have a song and promote that sort of Nazism?”, we don’t need that in Australia.”
Asked on ABCTV if a ban on his visa was “sustainable” given his worldwide fame, Mr Burke said Australia would not tolerate anti-Semitism.
“I think that what’s not sustainable is to import hatred,’’ he said. “Some people say, oh, don’t you believe in freedom of speech and for Australian citizens, yeah, you’ve got full freedom of speech but we have enough problems in this country already without deliberately importing bigotry.”
Australia has repeatedly warned it may consider cancelling Mr West’s visa over his history of anti-Semitic rhetoric.
Originally, it followed Mr West’s decision to praise Adolf Hitler during an interview with far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
“I like Hitler,” West told Jones, later adding he saw “good things about Hitler”.
“I love Jewish people, but I also love Nazis.”
At the time, Labor frontbencher Jason Clare said to describe such comments as awful “would be an understatement”.
“I don’t know if he’s applied for a visa yet — but Google it, you will see that he seems like he’s a pretty big fan of a person who killed 6 million Jewish people last century,” Mr Clare told Channel 9.
“People like that who’ve applied for visas to get into Australia in the past have been rejected.
“I expect that if he does apply, he would have to go through the same process and answer the same questions that they did.”
The Australian Jewish Association has previously written to the government to demand that Mr West, who is legally known by the name of “Ye”, be banned from entering the country.
“He has become a lightning rod for extremists, for anti-Semites, for neo-Nazis as well, and he inspires a lot of young people — he has a massive following,” the association’s president, David Adler, said.
“He has a very strong record vilifying a segment of the community, namely, the Jewish community, he uses terms like going ‘DEFCON 3’ on the Jewish people.
“He’s used all sorts of anti-Semitic tropes — so yes, we think that’s a significant risk, and because of him being such a prominent and inspirational figure to youth, we think it is a risk in Australian society.”
