Rapper Kanye West has landed at the center of a series of fresh controversies that began when he paraded his nearly nude wife, Bianca Censori, down the Grammys red carpet earlier in February and the latest backlash involves a run of swastika T-shirts listed for sale on his online storefront — which Shopify swiftly pulled the plug on.
As of Tuesday, users attempting to access yeezy.com were met with an all-white screen and the words, “Something went wrong. What happened? This store is unavailable” after a darkening of the site which the e-commerce platform explained in the following statement:
“All merchants are responsible for following the rules of our platform. This merchant did not engage in authentic commerce practices and violated our terms, so we removed them from Shopify.”
According to Forbes, “It’s unclear if any of the swastika shirts being sold on the website were shipped to customers in the two days they were available for purchase,” but screenshots of the offensive merchandise have spread across social media.
Prior to West’s storefront being taken down, he created a bizarre ad that ran the weekend of the Super Bowl in which he showed off a new set of what appeared to be overly large, overly white pointed teeth in an effort to promote his swastika shirts.
According to Variety, the ad “shocked the station execs who ran it and media buyers who approved the spot” when West “immediately flipped the website after the ad aired, replacing its previous content with just one item: A swastika T-shirt for sale, at $20 each.”
Per the outlet’s reporting, the ad ran on three Fox-owned stations, including KTTV Los Angeles, and may have been seen in a few more local markets.
Read more
about this topic
