US rapper Ye was stripped of a visa to enter Australia after he released his single Heil Hitler, a government minister has said.
Home affairs minister Tony Burke revealed that Ye - formerly known as Kanye West - has been travelling for years to Australia, where his wife of three years, Bianca Censori, was born.
Her family live in Melbourne.
West uploaded the songs “Heil Hitler” and “WW3,” another tune that glorifies Hitler, to X in May. While Spotify and SoundCloud rushed to remove the song from their platforms, Heil Hitler proliferated across the Elon Musk-led social media site and racked up millions of views.
In April, West showed up to an interview released on Rumble by internet personality DJ Akademiks dressed in a black Ku Klux Klan outfit. The hour-long conversation saw him make several controversial comments about other individuals in the music industry.
Later the same month, West was banned from streaming platform Twitch merely seven minutes into his first stream as he began a speech that included several slurs about the Jewish and the LGBT+ communities.
Mr Burke said the song promoted Nazism. It has been criticised as an antisemitic tribute to German dictator Adolf Hitler.
"He's been coming to Australia for a long time. He's got family here. And he's made a lot of offensive comments that my officials looked at again once he released the Heil Hitler song and he no longer has a valid visa in Australia," the minister told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
"We have enough problems in this country already without deliberately importing bigotry," he added.
Australia's Migration Act sets security and character requirements for non-citizens to enter the country.
Its largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, have seen a spate of antisemitic attacks since the war between Israel and Hamas began on October 7 2023.
