Shopify has taken down a site advertised by rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, that sold swastika t-shirts.
The rapper ran an advertisement on Sunday during the Super Bowl that directed viewers to visit Yeezy.com, where it promoted a single product — a $20 t-shirt with a black swastika. The site was online until Tuesday morning.
A Shopify spokesperson said the Canadian e-commerce company took the site down for violating its terms of service. The storefront has been replaced with an error message that reads, “This store is unavailable.”
Shopify President Harley Finkelstein told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” Tuesday that the website’s owners “had an entire day” to prove they weren’t violating the company’s policies, “which did not happen.”
“The moment we realized this was not actually a real commerce practice, they weren’t actually engaging in authentic commerce, we pulled it down,” Finkelstein said.
Finkelstein called the site, which previously sold a broader selection of t-shirts, pants and jackets, “disappointing.”
“I’m a proud Jewish entrepreneur,” Finkelstein told CNBC’s Sara Eisen. “I’m a proud Jewish community member. You and I have talked about this in the past, that it’s a big part of my identity. So obviously I’m devastated by that.”
In the days leading up to the Super Bowl, Ye had shared posts praising Adolf Hitler and calling himself a Nazi on the social media site X, which is owned by Elon Musk. On Monday, his account on X was deactivated. His profile now reads: “This account doesn’t exist.”
The brief Super Bowl ad showed Ye reclining in a dentist’s chair. “I spent, like, all the money for the commercial on these new teeth,” he said. Ye then tells viewers to “go to yeezy.com.”
The Anti-Defamation League condemned the commercial on Monday, writing in a post on X that “there’s no excuse for this kind of behavior.”
Ye has previously been rebuked for making antisemitic comments, losing partnerships in 2022 with Gap and Adidas.
In 2022, Ye was suspended from X after he posted an image of a swastika merged with the Star of David, a prominent symbol of Judaism. Months later, his account was reinstated, a decision the company reportedly made after it received reassurances from Ye that he wouldn’t use the platform to share antisemitic content, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Musk, who acquired X, then known as Twitter, in 2022, has been embroiled in controversy over his own social media posts and activity. Musk has frequently amplified antisemitic posts on X, causing some advertisers to flee the site.
In December, Musk endorsed the far-right Alternative for Germany party. And last month, Musk attracted backlash after he repeatedly used a gesture at a rally for Trump that was viewed by many historians and politicians as a Nazi salute. Musk later made jokes about it using the names of historical Nazi party figures.
