The leader of the largest group representing Jews in the UK has called for Kanye West to be banned from entering the UK to headline Wireless Festival this summer.
The controversial rapper, legally known as Ye, was announced as the headline act for all three days of the festival in Finsbury Park, London, this July.
It comes several months after Ye apologised for antisemitic remarks, which he said were made during a bipolar episode.
The Yeezy designer has worn swastika and “White Lives Matter” T-shirts, called himself a Nazi, released a song glorifying Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and said he was going “death con 3 on Jewish people” over the past few years.
Phil Rosenberg, President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, has now said it is “absolutely the wrong decision” to let West headline the festival and urged the government to consider “blocking him from entering the country”.
“We're in this moment of really high levels of antisemitism. So to have someone whose recent track record is, as you said, declaring himself a Nazi, putting out a song called 'Heil Hitler', seems to be absolutely the wrong decision and many Jewish people will worry that that will just inflame what is already a very febrile situation,” he told BBC Newsnight.
He added: “I'm very sympathetic to the challenges he has with mental health and bipolar disorder. But the challenge is maybe he's not in complete control of his ability to do those things.
“And we're really worried that on stage at the Wireless Festival, he'll suddenly come out with more of these things. And the organisers really need to think carefully about this.
“We've spoken to some lawyers about the liabilities that the organisers will have, what the insurance people have to think about. We think the government should consider, just as you said, the Australian government blocking him from entering the country.”
Last July, West was blocked from entering Australia after he released his Heil Hitler song in May.
Australia's home affairs minister Tony Burke revealed that his department had cancelled West's visa.
Asked if the government should ban West on the basis that he is an extremist, Rosenberg said: “Yes, because he's been involved in these hateful comments and his presence would not be conducive to the public good.”
“It will send absolutely the wrong signal if someone who declared himself a Nazi and had a song called Heil Hitler is entering this country,” he added.
“We're writing to the Wireless Festival to ask them to reconsider, speaking to the local authority to see what powers they might have and speaking to government. We need to look at every measure to make sure not just our community is safe but every community should be safe.”
The full interview will be aired on BBC Newsnight on Wednesday at 10.50pm.
The Standard has contacted the organisers of Wireless Festival for comment.
In 2022 West tweeted that he was going “death con 3 on Jewish people” - which got him dropped by his agency CAA, production company MRC, Adidas, Gap and Balenciaga.
The 24-time Grammy award-winning rapper spent the first five months of 2025 tweeting about being a Nazi and wearing KKK-style uniforms.
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In May, he released a song titled “Heil Hitler”, which was quickly adopted by neo Nazi groups as a “summer anthem”.
The rapper - who is married to Bianca Censori - apologised for his behaviour earlier this month in an open letter titled “To Those I’ve Hurt”.
He made his apology via an advert in The Wall Street Journal and said he wanted to “earn forgiveness”.
He said a car crash 25 years ago had led to him being diagnosed as bipolar.
The performer sustained a brain injury during the accident that went “unnoticed” at the time - with the “medical oversight” sparking his bipolar disorder.
West said: “In that fractured state (of his bipolar diagnosis), I gravitated toward the most destructive symbol I could find, the swastika, and even sold T-shirts bearing it.
“One of the difficult aspects of having bipolar type-1 are the disconnected moments, many of which I still cannot recall, that lead to poor judgment and reckless behaviour that (often) feels like an out-of-body experience.”
Ye said that in 2025 he fell into a manic episode that lasted around four months. This consisted of “psychotic, paranoid and impulsive behaviour that destroyed my life”.
