After Kanye West’s plan to headline all three nights of London’s Wireless Festival was abandoned because of visa issues in the UK, the rapper announced he was adding another date to his upcoming European tour, in the Polish city of Chorzów. But now that show has been cancelled too, after the Polish government said it would also explore how it might stop West from performing in the country.
Controversy continues to surround other planned European tour dates in the Netherlands, Italy, Spain and Portugal, because of West’s antisemitic conduct and comments, and promotion of Nazi ideology. Not to mention ongoing skepticism about the sincerity of the rapper’s high profile public apology for that conduct back in January via a full page advert in the Wall Street Journal.
After the show at the Silesian Stadium in Chorzów had been announced, Polish culture minister Marta Cienkowska said that West’s “promotion of nazism” was in “manifest contradiction with Poland’s values”.
The politician noted that, in the past, West had “openly declared he loves Hitler”, promoted “Nazi ideology” and made money “selling t-shirts emblazoned with the swastika”. She then added, “in a country marked by the history of the Holocaust we cannot pretend that this is just entertainment”.
When announcing the Chorzów concert last week, promoter HAŁAS! said it was the event “Polish fans have been waiting for, for over a decade”. West, it added, “is an artist who has set new standards at every stage of his career - musically, visually and culturally”. But on Friday a spokesperson for the Silesian Stadium said the show had been cancelled for “formal and legal reasons”.
Planned performances by West in at least four European cities have now been stopped amid criticism about parts of the music industry rapidly rehabilitating the rapper after years of antisemitic conduct.
The boss of Live Nation’s Festival Republic division, Melvin Benn, initially defended the decision to have West headline all three days of the Wireless Festival in London, but the shows were then cancelled after the UK government revoked the necessary permit for the rapper to perform in the country.
Ministers in both France and Poland indicated they would do the same for their respective countries. In the case of France, that prompted West to voluntarily cancel a planned show in Marseille. In Poland, it prompted the venue to pull the plug.
Meanwhile, it has also emerged that West planned to play at the St Jakob-Park stadium in the Swiss city of Basel, but the city’s football club, which operates the venue, decided “we cannot, in accordance with our values, provide a platform for the artist in question within this context”.
It remains to see if any other dates currently on sale end up being likewise canceled. West is due to perform in India on 23 May and Turkey on 20 May, before two shows in the Netherlands on 6 and 8 Jun.
In the Netherlands, where the concerts are due to take place in Arnhem, politicians at both a national and city level have said there is currently “no legal basis” to stop West playing in the Dutch city.
The mayor of Arnhem, Ahmed Marcouch, told Dutch outlet NRC on Friday that, while he found West’s past antisemitic remarks “disgusting”, city authorities only have the power to block concerts on health and safety grounds. He added, “Within the framework of the law, the mayor should not pass judgment on the content of a cultural activity - that concerns freedom of expression”.