Kanye West has taken out a full-page advert within the Wall Street Journal apologising for his antisemitic behaviour. “I am not a Nazi or an antisemite,” he wrote. “I love Jewish people.”
In a letter titled “To Those I’ve Hurt,” he attributed his inflammatory actions, together with making profoundly offensive statements and promoting T-shirts bearing swastikas, to his bipolar-1 dysfunction, which he mentioned he developed as a results of medical oversight failing to diagnose a frontal-lobe harm sustained in a automobile crash in 2002.
West — now legally generally known as Ye — mentioned that as a results of the dysfunction, he “lost touch with reality,” prompting him to gravitate in the direction of “the most destructive symbol I could find, the swastika.”
Despite a earlier apology to the Jewish group in 2023, in February 2025, West began promoting the swastika T-shirts, prompting the commerce platform Shopify to take down his webstore. In May, he launched a tune referred to as Heil Hitler, which sampled a speech by Hitler and praised the Nazi chief. The tune was banned in Germany owing to legal guidelines in opposition to hate speech and extremism, however went viral on-line. Last week, rightwing influencers together with Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes have been filmed making Nazi salutes to the tune because it performed in a Miami Beach nightclub. West additionally engaged in Holocaust denial.
“One of the difficult aspects of having bipolar type-1 are the disconnected moments — many of which I still cannot recall — that led to poor judgment and reckless behavior that oftentimes feels like an out-of-body-experience,” he wrote. “I regret and am deeply mortified by my actions in that state, and am committed to accountability, treatment, and meaningful change. It does not excuse what I did though.”
West traced his situation again to the automobile accident in 2002. He had his jaw wired shut within the aftermath, which impressed his debut single, that 12 months’s “Through the Wire.” “At the time, the focus was on the visible damage — the fracture, the swelling and the immediate physical trauma,” he wrote. “The deeper injury, the one inside my skull, went unnoticed.”
He mentioned that his mind harm wasn’t correctly identified till 2023. “That medical oversight caused serious damage to my mental health and led to my bipolar type-1 diagnosis,” which he acquired in 2016.
West wrote that in early 2025, he skilled a four-month manic episode “psychotic, paranoid and impulsive behavior that destroyed my life,” which brought on him to expertise suicidal ideation. He wrote that after hitting all-time low in latest months, his spouse, the Australian architect and efficiency artist Bianca Censori, whom he married in 2022, inspired him to get assist.
West wrote candidly about his psychological well being experiences, and highlighted the mortality price — “on par with severe heart disease, type 1 diabetes, HIV and cancer” — related along with his situation. “Bipolar disorder comes with its own defense system. Denial. When you’re manic, you don’t think you’re sick. You think everyone else is overreacting. You feel like you’re seeing the world more clearly than ever, when in reality you’re losing your grip entirely.
“The scariest thing about this disorder is how persuasive it is when it tells you: You don’t need help. It makes you blind, but convinced you have insight. You feel powerful, certain, unstoppable.”
He confessed to treating his family members — presumably amongst them his ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, and notably their eldest daughter, North West — “the worst,” writing that they “endured fear, confusion, humiliation, and the exhaustion of trying to have someone who was, at times, unrecognizable.”
West additionally apologised to the Black group. In latest years, he made feedback suggesting that slavery was “a choice,” wore a T-shirt bearing the slogan “white lives matter” and appropriated the Confederate flag. “The Black community is, unquestionably, the foundation of who I am. I am so sorry to have let you down. I love us.”
He mentioned that he had discovered solace in Reddit boards studying of different individuals’s experiences with manic and depressive episodes. “I read their stories and realized that I was not alone. It’s not just me who ruins their entire life once a year despite taking meds every day and being told by the so-called best doctors in the world that I am not bipolar, but merely experiencing ‘symptoms of autism.’”
West wrote that medicine, remedy, train and “clean living” had helped him discover readability, and inspired him to channel his efforts into making “positive, meaningful art.”
West’s present slated album is named “Bully.” Its launch has been delayed a number of instances, and at one stage was scheduled for Jan. 30.
“I’m not asking for sympathy, or a free pass, though I aspire to earn your forgiveness,” West concluded. “I write today simply to ask for your patience and understanding as I find my way home.”
By Laura Snapes