Kim Kardashian, Khloe, and the Jenner Squad Announce They Support Jewish People

I’ve watched enough Kardashians content to know what this family stands behind. They stand behind the “uncancellable” Dolce & Gabbana. They stand behind brands that warp concepts of beauty. They stand behind heavily editing their photos. And now, they apparently stand behind my people: the Jewish people.

Over the weekend, neo-Nazis hung signs on a Los Angeles overpass that read “Kanye is right about the Jews,” while performing Nazi salutes. By Sunday, Khloe Kardashian shared a graphic on her Instagram story that read, “I support my Jewish friends and the Jewish people,” making her the first of the Kardashian-Jenner brood to kinda-sorta condemn the antisemitic gibberish of her former brother-in-law, Kanye West. She also tweeted the same image of text with two blue hearts—the most Jewish-adjacent heart emoji, in my opinion.

The IG story broke the Kardashians’ silence as Kim’s ex-husband has spread dangerous antisemitic messaging, at one point threatening to “Go death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE”—but saying the reality stars even indirectly denounced antisemitism would be generous. Jessica Seinfeld originally crafted and posted the message that Khloe shared in support. Seinfeld’s post was then reposted by Amy Schumer, who added a reminder that “1 in 2 people don’t know the holocaust happened” with the hashtag #neveragain.

Hours later, Kylie, Kendall, and Kris Jenner followed suit, sharing Schumer’s post without further commentary.

On Monday morning, Kim Kardashian posted a statement—the only sister to produce an original post on the matter—to her own Instagram story, decrying the Jewish hate the father of her children has been spewing for weeks. “Hate speech is never OK or excusable. I stand together with the Jewish community and call on the terrible violence and hateful rhetoric towards them to come to an immediate end,” she wrote.

While Khloe, Kylie, Kendall, and Kris couldn’t seem to find the time or brainwaves to put their “support” into their own words—let alone say something specific about why they support Jewish people and what exactly they are condemning—we are living in a time so ass-backwards that simply reposting the equivalent of “I like Jews and I have friends who are Jews” is both the bare minimum and behavior worth celebrating and amplifying in the fight against antisemitism.

West, of course, didn’t invent antisemitism, and there’s been a steep increase in white supremacist and neo-Nazi violence around the country long before he opened his mouth. According to the Anti-Defamation League, there were a total of 2,717 antisemitic incidents of assault, vandalism, and harassment of Jewish people and communities in 2021, marking the highest number of reported incidents on American soil since the ADL began tracking data in 1979. The pandemic also reignited hateful stereotypes about Jewish people, including the antisemitic trope that Jews control the media and the banks.

Now a celebrity—an apparently mentally unwell celebrity with a history of hateful outbursts, but a celebrity with millions of followers nonetheless—has platformed that hate. While brands and companies like Balanciaga, CAA, and even his own documentary have dropped West, he’s somehow still managed to make the antisemitism once sequestered to black holes on the internet real and urgent—centered in the public eye and so impossible to ignore that the historically apolitical Kardashian family has no choice but to express their milquetoast support for the Jews.

Because I have inherited both anxiety and humor as coping mechanisms from my relatives who fled Europe to escape the Holocaust less than a century ago, I have no choice but to laugh at a situation in which I, a privileged Jew fearing for the physical safety of her family, must sit here and praise the Kar-Jenners, of all fucking people, for doing some re-posts on social media. There really is no right or wrong way to acknowledge the pain and suffering of the Jewish people in this country, and at least they’re doing…something.