A Kanye West concert in Poland has been cancelled following government pressure and condemnation over a string of antisemitic, racist and pro-Nazi comments by the US rapper, the BBC reported on Friday.
West, who now goes by the name Ye, was scheduled to appear at the Silesian Stadium in Chorzów on June 19, his first performance in Poland for 15 years, but the venue said on Friday it would now not take place "due to formal and legal reasons".
Marta Cienkowska, Poland's culture and heritage minister, had described the decision to book West as "unacceptable".
West has faced repeated backlash in recent years for a series of antisemitic and pro-Nazi statements.
In 2022, the rapper threatened to go "death con 3 on the Jews" in an apparent antisemitic rant on X, which was then called Twitter. West followed this up by claiming that he can't be antisemitic "because black people are actually Jew."
Last year he bought a Super Bowl ad to promote T-shirts with swastikas on them, then released a song titled “Heil Hitler," which a group of far-right antisemitic influencers, including Nick Fuentes, recently played at a Miami nightclub in a viral incident.
He subsequently issued an apology, attributing his actions to episodes of manic behavior linked to his bipolar disorder.
West’s antisemitic comments caused a host of companies to cut ties with him, including Adidas, the Creative Artists Agency, Foot Locker and Apple Music.
The cancellation of his concert in Poland comes days after West postponed a gig in France and a week after the UK banned him from entering the country to headline Wireless Festival.
Promoting Nazi symbols is a criminal offense in Poland and anyone found guilty of publicly promoting Nazism can be imprisoned for up to three years.
Prior to the stadium announcement, culture minister spokesman Piotr Jędrzejewski told the BBC blocking the concert was not straightforward because there was no applicable law to stop it going ahead.
He added that the Polish foreign ministry agreed the concert should not happen.
(Arutz Sheva-Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)