What's going through Kyrie Irving's head?

Considered a role model for many young basketball players in the making, NBA star Kyrie Irving goes on conspiratorial slippages and sharing content conveying hate speech on his social networks.

What's going through Kyrie Irving's head?

Considered a role model for many young basketball players in the making, NBA star Kyrie Irving goes on conspiratorial slippages and sharing content conveying hate speech on his social networks.

• Read also: What's going on in Kanye West's head?

• Read also: Kanye West: "It's anti-Semitism, it's hate"

• Read also: The anti-Semitic problem of North American conservatism

Irving did it again last weekend by posting a film on Twitter promoting hateful and anti-Semitic theories. Now deleted, this publication continues to make people talk.

This event only accentuated the concerns that some observers have about the impact that the words of the American star can have, concerns that Kyrie Irving swept aside in a press conference by considering them as dehumanizing.

While the gaming community struggled to comment on the news throughout the weekend, and Silver Tour offices denounced the hate speech, without naming Irving, he nevertheless received strong support, that by Kanye West.

Slippage on social networks and chaotic defense at a press conference

So what is this new controversy from the basketball star? It concerns the sharing on Twitter of a promotional video for the film Des Hébreux aux Nègres.

Directed in 2018 by Ronald Dalton Jr. – and as Rolling Stone magazine reminds us – the film wishes to reveal the “true nature of the sons of Israel”, explaining that this “nature” and that of black people are confused, and that the Whites like the Arabs, by controlling the black population of Africa during the slave trade, hid this nature.

In fact, according to many scholars, this conspiracy theory follows the same lines as those promoted by some members of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, discussed in a previous article.

As a reminder, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center or the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the assertions made by the most extreme fringes of this sect are, for the vast majority, hateful and anti-Semitic.

Beyond the elements advanced above - and as Rolling Stone also explains - Dalton's documentary argues that the mass media help Satan to dominate the world, that white Jews control all facets of society, and that the latter also helped dispossess blacks of their Jewish nature by helping Arab and European slave traders in their trade to retain full control over society.

When journalists presented him with this detail of the comments conveyed by this film, Kyrie Irving reacted by saying that he does not consider his publication as hateful, “because the documentary is available on Amazon”.

He added that because this content is not hateful to him, it does not undermine his role in the community.

An athlete little stranger to controversial remarks

This controversy is not the first for the athlete.

The basketball star, linked to the anti-vaccine fringe of American society, argued that compulsory vaccination was the greatest disenfranchisement in human history.

His opposition to compulsory vaccination against COVID-19 led him to experience seasons where he was not seen in action often, namely in 2020-2021 and 2021-2022.

In 2017, Kyrie Irving also explained that he didn't know if the Earth was round or flat, saying that there was no real image of the Earth taken from space. He thus argued that we would be lied to by being told that the Earth is round.

He is also a fervent admirer of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, sentenced to pay more than $1 billion in damages for spreading the lie that the Sandy Hook shootings were a hoax.

Presenting himself as a free thinker, Kyrie Irving tried to defend himself in a tense exchange with a reporter concerning the remarks of the American conspirator, with which he would agree. The athlete had been able to cheer them on, as seen above in a video of Jones 'warning' us of the 'new world order' that would rule our lives.

Positions that worry

All of this was denounced by sports legends like Kareem Abdul Jabbar, who called on Irving's backers to drop him.

This also worries many associations fighting against hate speech and the impact it can have on our young people when it is conveyed by stars.

For the Quebec Vice President of the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Eta Yudin, the accumulation of such stories at this time is “disturbing.”

"When you have people like that who are in positions of influence and who have fun promoting these kinds of theories, it's worrying," she explains.

She adds that “nevertheless, what is reassuring is to see that the repobration by a huge majority of the population as well as by all the partners of these people is immediate. People are reactive in refusing to see such hatred conveyed. Ms. Yutin is referring here to the abandonment of Kanye West by almost all of his partners, and to the immediate disapproval of Kyrie Irving's posts by the owner of his team Joe Tsai.

Ms. Yutin concludes by explaining that this type of case must make people understand "the importance of combating hate online, whether it is through action with governments, or whether it is through constant vigilance on the part of citizens to to ensure that this kind of discourse does not become democratized.”

The face-to-face support for these theories and hate speech comes at a time when Black Israelite Hebrew thinking and Elders of Zion Protocol Theory are experiencing a new surge of interest thanks to Kanye West.

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