Shopify’s Handling of Kanye West Nazi Shirt Sales Part of a Bigger Problem

Directing people to the website of his brand Yeezy, the landing page contained only one product: a plain white t-shirt with the swastika used by the German National Socialist party. Despite the immediate outrage, the site’s webstore remained operational at least until Monday evening.

The Canadian company that hosted Yeezy’s webstore, e-commerce giant Shopify, was slow to react to calls to pull down the page, part of a longstanding practice of the technology company to excuse selling far-right and even Nazi merchandise.

Shopify did not respond to a request for comment from the Canadian Anti-Hate Network.

The Logic reported that internally Shopify employees expressed concern that the company’s platform was being used to sell merchandise with Nazi symbols for so long without action by the company. 

A screen capture taken from Yeezy.com showing the shirt previously being sold using Shopify’s technology. Source: Yeezy.com

According to the article, a “member of staff, who is Jewish, had said on the company’s internal Slack messaging service they were uncomfortable that West’s store had been allowed to remain online for such a long time. The post had a number of supportive emoji reactions underneath.”

The same Logic article reports that Shopify support staff were instructed to give “no comment” in chats with merchant clients who asked about the company facilitating the sale of the shirt.

Multiple former executives and employees of Shopify have expressed public disappointment over the lengthy decision. 

“Neutrality Is Not A Possibility”

The store has since been deactivated, a decision implemented between Monday night and Tuesday morning. Visitors to the site are greeted by the words, “Something went wrong. What happened? This store is unavailable.”

Ye appears to have deactivated his X, formerly Twitter, account, which he had been using in the lead-up to praise Hitler and make antisemitic statements.

The question remains, why did Shopify allow the merchandise to remain in its store and what prompted the removal?

Journalist Rachel Gilmore reported that internal messages inside the company over the Ye controversy reveal that the site was taken down after Shopify determined the store was a publicity stunt, and “not a good faith attempt to make money.”

This is not the first time that Shopify has faced controversy for what they chose to sell.

A year after penning an article defending the company’s choice to provide services to the far-right media company Breitbart, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke posted in 2018 to his blog stating he had revisited his position on making Shopify “a platform without restriction.”

While previously vowing to only remove illegal content, Lütke wrote that “deferring to the law, in this age of political gridlock, is too idealistic and functionally unworkable on the fast-moving internet” and declared “neutrality is not a possibility.”

Based on this, the company released an acceptable use policy (AUP) to govern what is and is not allowed to be sold using their products. While some of the policies are fairly obvious—products must be legal in the region that is selling them—others are less apparent, and instruct merchants not to “break the social contract of commerce.”

“This means you can’t call for, or threaten, violence against specific people or groups,” the AUP reads. “And you can’t sell products that facilitate intentional self-harm.”

Nowhere in the current AUP are racist or hateful symbols listed as grounds for removal. This is a significant change from the policy as it existed until at least July 2024 according to the Internet Archive, which included specific prohibitions against hateful content, harassment and threats, and child exploitation. All of those were removed for the current, more limited, AUP.  

Nazi symbols are heavily associated with the violence and genocide carried out by the regime before and during the Second World War and often considered incitement to harm. The swastika and Nazi symbols are illegal to display in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Germany and many other nations, though not in Canada.  

Tech Bros in Arms

Also of growing concern is the increasingly cozy relationship between powerful technology companies and the far-right. Elon Musk’s rise within the current US presidential administration has seen the CEO, unelected to any position, and his team reportedly given access to internal government systems. 

Other heads of major technology and social media companies have made efforts to court the president. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg donated money to Donald Trump’s transition team and recently announced the company was removing fact-checking and rolling back moderation on Facebook. 

Lütke, who described himself as “liberal-minded” in a 2017 blog post about free speech, has repeatedly used social media to praise Musk and the hack-and-slash cuts being made to the US government. 

Reposts include a Canadian far-right media figure criticizing the funding of a sanitation project in Northern Ghana with the phrase “we need a DOGE right now.”

As pointed out by The Breach, Lütke has said that the US was “within its rights” to place tariffs on Canada and Mexico. He has reposted messages calling for social support programs to be cut because “Canada spends billions on illegals, asylum and refugees.”

His social media is currently a mix of self-praise for Shopify, and boosting for Musk, Trump and others. This is interesting as after the Jan. 6 Capitol Building riots in Washington DC, Shopify took down stores it says were associated with Trump’s campaign, citing violations of their AUP.