For tweeting the swastika, Ye was subsequently booted off of Twitter by Elon Musk. But I think this was a mistake. Musk should have ensured the tweet with the swastika was taken down for violating Twitter’s Terms of Service. But banning Kanye misses how crucial letting him have his say has been to the resounding repudiation of his hate speech we’ve seen across all sectors of the public square.

Ye’s rants are, of course, horrifying, factually untrue, and hateful. But it still doesn’t vindicate proponents of “cancel culture” who have called for Kanye to be de-platformed. The opposite: It actually shows why free speech works.

By interviewing Kanye and giving his terrible ideas an audience, hosts like Tim Pool and even Alex Jones have given Ye the opportunity to immolate his own career and credibility. Now, after he’s gone so far as to literally praise the Nazis and Hitler, almost nobody will continue to take Ye seriously. And any future political career he may have had is almost certainly dead-on-arrival.

A few weeks ago, when the extent of his antisemitism was still more subtle and less open, countless fans and followers were still taking Ye seriously, meaning his ideas were much more dangerous. But if he had been “deplatformed” like critics called for, his public deterioration would’ve been frozen in its pre-total-implosion state. It also might have vindicated his conspiratorial claims that the powers that be are out to get him, at least, in the minds of those keen to believe such things.