Kanye West entry visa revoked by Australia after ‘Heil Hitler’ song release
Global News
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said that the rapper had been travelling to Australia for years, where his wife Bianca Censori was born.
Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, has been barred from entering Australia following the release of his pro-Nazi song Heil Hitler.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said Ye had been travelling for years to Australia, where his wife, Bianca Censori, was born. Her family lives in Melbourne.
Burke said Heil Hitler promotes Nazism. The song, released in May, has been criticized as an antisemitic tribute to German dictator Adolf Hitler. It’s also been banned in Germany and from online platforms including Apple Music, YouTube and Spotify.
The song includes a direct sample from a speech Hitler gave in 1935 and repeats the slogan hailing the German dictator.
“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,” Burke told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“If you’re going to have a song and promote that sort of Nazism, we don’t need that in Australia,” Burke added. “We have enough problems in this country already without deliberately importing bigotry.”
He noted that the Australian government had not banned Ye from entering Australia permanently because “every visa application gets reassessed by my officials each time.”
“I’m not taking away the way the act operates, but even for the lowest level of visa, when my officials looked at it, they cancelled that following the announcement of that song,” he added.
