A Kanye West concert in Poland has been cancelled, the venue announced, following government pressure and condemnation over a string of antisemitic, racist and pro-Nazi comments by the US rapper.
West, also known as Ye, was scheduled to appear at the Silesian Stadium in Chorzów on 19 June, 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.
This 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.
In February last year, West started selling swastika T-shirts, prompting the commerce platform Shopify to take down his web store.
Three months later, he released the track Heil Hitler, in which he claimed a child custody battle and the freezing of his financial assets turned him towards Nazism.
In January, prior to the announcement of his European tour and the release of his latest album, the rapper apologized for his actions in a full-page advert published in the Wall Street Journal. I am not a Nazi or an antisemite, he wrote. I love Jewish people.\u00a0West also added that he had lost touch with reality due to his bipolar disorder.
Promoting Nazi symbols is a criminal offense in Poland, and anyone found guilty of publicly promoting Nazism can face imprisonment for up to three years.
The rapper's comments were particularly painful in Poland, where under Nazi occupation during the Second World War, the Germans operated concentration and extermination camps that led to the deaths of three million Polish Jews.
Chorzów was one of the first towns invaded by German forces at the start of the conflict in September 1939.
We are talking about an artist who has publicly expressed antisemitic views, downplayed crimes, and profited from selling swastika T-shirts, Cienkowska wrote on X. This is a deliberate crossing of boundaries and the normalization of hatred. Culture cannot be a space for those who exploit it to spread hatred.\u00a0
Before the stadium announcement, culture minister spokesman Piotr J\u0119drzejewski noted that blocking the concert was not straightforward because no applicable law existed to prevent it. The Polish foreign ministry also agreed that West's concert should not happen.
West was due to headline Wireless Festival in London and perform in Marseille as part of his European tour this year. However, Wireless was forced to drop him after the UK government blocked his visa, leading to the festival's cancellation.
The show in Marseille has been postponed until further notice.
