Van Lathan Jr., the former TMZ staffer who confronted Kanye West in 2018 after he suggested slavery sounded “like choice”, recently alleged that the controversial rapper and fashion designer also expressed his love for Adolf Hitler and the Nazis during the same encounter at the company’s office, Forbes reported.
The allegations against West come after both Twitter and Instagram restricted the 45-year-old’s accounts after he shared anti-Semitic posts over the weekend. In his Higher Learning podcast on Tuesday, Lathan claimed his former employer edited out the section of the 2018 interview where West expressed love for Hitler and the Nazis.
Lathan reportedly said that West making anti-Semitic comments on Twitter and Instagram did not come as a surprise to him because their 2018 encounter made him get to know the College Dropout rapper’s line of reasoning.
Lathan alleged that West “said something like, ‘I love Hitler, I love Nazis,’ something to that effect. And they took it out of the interview for whatever reason—it wasn’t my decision.” He added that the section in question was edited out after West was spoken to.
He also claimed that a producer at the office spoke to West and condemned his comments. Lathan said the producer told West, “I’m Jewish and that is offensive to me, what you just said.”
Lathan alleged producers edited out portions of his conversation with West. He added that they allegedly scrapped a part of the confrontation where he spoke about the people who lost their lives “because of Nazism and Hitler” because “it wouldn’t have made sense unless they kept in Kanye saying he loved Hitler and the Nazis.”
During the conversation, Forbes reported that West mentioned Jews and the Holocaust when he connected that genocide’s link with Jews to slavery’s connection to Black people. The 45-year-old also claimed “prison is something” that brings together “Blacks and whites as one race.”
This allegation also comes after The Shop talk show announced it wasn’t going to broadcast a recent interview with West because he allegedly came on the platform “to reiterate more hate speech and extremely dangerous stereotypes.”
