Kanye West concert cancelled in Poland following government threat to ban entry

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

A planned concert by rapper Kanye West in Poland has been cancelled by the venue where it had been due to take place. Its decision followed criticism by the country’s culture minister, who had threatened to have West banned from entering the country if the event went ahead.

She had pointed to his history of antisemitism, praise for Hitler, and use of the Nazi swastika symbol, saying that such actions are particularly unacceptable in Poland, on whose territory millions of Jews were killed by Nazi Germany in the Holocaust.

West had only added the Polish date to his tour two days ago, following news that his appearance at a festival in the UK this summer had been cancelled after the British authorities denied him entry, while a planned concert in France was also delayed amid talk of a potential entry ban.

He had been scheduled to perform on 19 June at the Silesian Stadium in Chorzów, which has a capacity of 85,000 for concerts. But, in a brief statement posted on social media on Friday afternoon, the venue said that the concert had been cancelled for “formal-legal reasons”.

Its decision came after strong condemnation of the concert by culture minister Marta Cienkowska.

“We are talking about an artist who has publicly expressed antisemitic views, downplayed atrocities, and profited from selling T-shirts featuring swastikas,” she wrote. “These are not ‘controversies’. This is a deliberate crossing of boundaries and the normalisation of hatred.”

“In a country scarred by the history of the Holocaust, we cannot pretend that this is just entertainment,” she added. “Culture cannot be a platform for those who exploit it to spread hatred.”

When it was under German occupation from 1939 to 1945, Poland was the primary location where the Nazis carried out the Holocaust, with around three million Polish Jews among the victims. A similar number of non-Jewish Poles were also killed by the German occupiers.

“I cannot imagine that in Poland, a country where people were murdered in Nazi German extermination camps, we can organise a concert of an artist who openly says that he likes Hitler,” said Cienkowska in further remarks on Friday.

She added that she “hoped the concert organisers will come to their senses”, and said that she had been in touch with them to express this view. But, if not, “the Polish state has tools to block people from entering the country…[and] we will use them”.

Cienkowska said she would write to the interior minister, Marcin Kierwiński, asking for West to be banned from entry if the concert was not cancelled. She added that she had the full support of foreign minister Radosław Sikorski.

Promoting fascism, including the display of Nazi symbols, is a criminal offence in Poland, punishable by up to three years in prison.

West has branded his planned series of concerts this year an “apology tour”. In January, he took out a full-page advert in the Wall Street Journal apologising “to those I’ve hurt”, saying that he “loves Jewish people”, and blaming his previous actions on bipolar disorder.

However, earlier this month, the Wireless Festival in London, where West had been due to headline this summer, was cancelled entirely after the British authorities refused him the right to enter the country.

Soon after, West announced that his planned concert in Marseilles, France, was postponed “until further notice” after reports that the French interior minister Laurent Nunez was seeking to prevent it from taking place.

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: NRK P3/Flickr (under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.