Long-shot Brooklyn Republican House candidate Joel Anabilah-Azumah got a boost last week with an endorsement from Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman — who hopes to unseat New York Gov. Kathy Hochul with an appeal to fellow New York Jews, particularly those discontented with Democrats’ declining support for Israel.

But Jewish Insider found that Anabilah-Azumah has criticized Zionism while defending a string of antisemitic remarks by rapper Ye, also known as Kanye West, who the now-candidate hinted was at risk of assassination by Jewish music industry figures.

Anabilah-Azumah — a rival to 10-term Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) whom Blakeman predicted would “make a great member of Congress” — offered his online apologia following the hip-hop star’s infamous string of social media posts and media hits in late 2022. These saw Ye threaten on Instagram to “go death con 3 [sic] on JEWISH PEOPLE,” praise Adolf Hitler on Alex Jones’ “InfoWars” show, insist to Chris Cuomo that “Jewish Underground media mafia” had attacked him for wearing a “White Lives Matter” shirt and rail in a podcast appearance against “Zionist Jews” and claim that Black people are the true descendants of the biblical Israelites.

But Anabilah-Azumah took to social media to assert Ye’s remarks were not in fact broadly antisemitic.

“The people @kanyewest is referencing isn’t the entire Jewish community. It is a specific power structure within music and the media KNOWS this because they are part of it,” wrote Anabilah-Azumah, then recently disqualified as a candidate against then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). “Don’t use ‘anti-semitism’ as a shield to ignore predatory systems that manufacture and distribute degeneracy through music. Jewish people that manage these types of systems are not exempt from criticism.”

The politician and small business owner went on to allude to alleged violent and sexual extortions underway in the entertainment business. 

“You don’t want to have a discussion about how many male rappers had to sleep with people to go to the next level,” he wrote, “You want to talk about killing rivals in the music biz? How about blood oaths, including sacrificing people you love?”

The depravity went all the way up to murder, according to Anabilah-Azumah, who suggested only God had protected Ye.

“People do die naming names in the music biz as well,” he wrote, a point he reemphasized in a response to a follower who suggested they knew the identities of the people the rapper referenced. “Probably the same people that invited him into a certain ‘organization’ that he seemed to have left. Typically, they kill people that leave that organization. Short of God’s intervention, that would have already happened.”

In a thread with the same follower about Ye’s comments on Zionists, the candidate further complained that “the meaning of Zionism has mutated over time” and agreed it was possible to separate the political movement for a Jewish state from the Jewish people, though maintained discussion was impossible in “the mainstream media.”

A few weeks later, the NYPD and federal authorities intercepted two men at Penn Station with weapons and a swastika armband, one of whom had posted online about plans to “shoot up a synagogue and die.” But Anabilah-Azumah suggested the arrests were themselves part of a sinister plot, linking it to the public reaction to Ye as well as to then-Brooklyn Nets guard Kyrie Irving, who had promoted an antisemitic tract online.

“Something about this sounds off,” he wrote on Twitter, now X. “Kanye and Kyrie get accused of being anti-Semitic, the black community starts to push back, and now two people get arrested for plotting attacks on the NYC Jewish community after one of their posts were seen online? Not buying it right now.”

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Speaking to JI, Anabilah-Azumah declined to distance himself from his past tweets, though he acknowledged some might understand them as an endorsement of Ye’s antisemitism. However, he maintained his own comments did not target Jewish people as a group, but only those Jewish people involved in what he described as a multiethnic “cartel” responsible for “poisoning the youth” with “addictive” rap.

“There are a lot of record companies that are owned by Jewish people. My opinion is that if there are Jewish people doing something wrong, you can’t use their Jewishness to shield them from criticism,” the candidate said in an interview with JI. ”One of the good things about the Jewish community is that they do not allow their children to consume damaging media the way the Black community does.”

“I’m not anti anybody except people who want to drag us into wars for no reason. That’s not a particular race or culture, that’s a mindset,” he added.

The Blakeman campaign did not respond to repeated questions from JI. The county executive, who initially said of Anabilah-Azumah that “we need fighters like that in Congress,” sought to distance himself from the House contender after other posts emerged in which Anabilah-Azumah alleged the 9/11 attacks were an “inside job.” However, Blakeman has yet to formally retract his endorsement.

Ye, for his part, renounced his own antisemitic tirades earlier this year and blamed them on his struggles with bipolar disorder.