The Kanye West-Chance saga shows how the pro-Trump Internet looks for celebrity converts

When Kanye West shouted out a pro-President Trump YouTuber over the weekend and then praised Trump on Twitter on Wednesday, people wondered whether the president would tweet about it. By Friday, there was a different question: When would the president stop tweeting about Kanye West?

So far, the answer is not yet.

Trump has praised West three times this week on his personal account — the inevitable and fitting conclusion of West’s journey from one of the most celebrated rappers of his generation to #MAGA Internet phenomenon.

[‘The mob can’t make me not love him’: How Kanye West joined the pro-Trump Internet]

This story has a lot of aspects that appeal to the pro-Trump Internet: a black celebrity wearing a MAGA hat, a viral fake story about West losing Twitter followers that was shared by Trump’s opponents, the feeling of watching a celebrity get “red pilled” — or converted to their way of thinking about the world — in real time, and a bunch of deeply sad liberal fans who feel betrayed by the artist they loved.

In our divisive politics, the pro-Trump Internet can feel like a sovereign nation, with its own celebrities, media outlets, alternative facts and memes. But it also has a persistent missionary thread, particularly when it comes to demographics that, some Trump supporters believe, are only one great awakening away from being converted to their way of thinking.

The YouTuber whom West praised became famous for promising exactly this sort of mass conversion. Candace Owens, who is black, tells her viewers that the only reason black people vote for Democrats is because they’ve been brainwashed by the media. She presents herself as proof that a mass conversion to conservative thought is coming — if only her message can find a wider audience.

And that’s why the pro-Trump Internet is so excited about West. West didn’t just praise a pro-Trump YouTuber. He echoed many of her ideas in his own tweets, and then, in real time, tweeted out indications that he was diving pretty deep into this part of the Internet.

He filmed himself watching several clips of a Scott Adams Periscope video, in which the “Dilbert” creator says things like, “People are breaking out of their mental prison.” Of Trump, West tweeted that “the mob can’t make me not love him,” and tweeted out a picture of a MAGA hat signed by the president. And when the rapper tweeted a video of himself watching his own freestyle, while wearing the MAGA hat, the camera briefly shifted to reveal that he had a Jordan Peterson video open in another browser tab. Peterson is a huge celebrity on the right-wing Internet, for his self-help YouTube videos that have attracted a large audience of young, frustrated men.

Gateway Pundit’s headlines from the past week or so give a good idea of how the new West is being received on the pro-Trump Internet: “Liberals Go Ballistic After Kanye West Tweets ‘I Love Trump’ and ‘He’s My Brother,’” “KANYE WEST IS ON A ROLL: Trashes Barack Obama…,” “Hah! Trump Campaign Is Using Kanye West to Hawk Trump Merch.” West’s previous fan base loved him for his music and influence. The pro-Trump Internet loves him as a weapon.

With the exception of Roseanne Barr, whose successful revival of her sitcom prompted a congratulatory call from the president, the pro-Trump Internet doesn’t have a lot of mainstream celebrity supporters. But that hasn’t stopped it from trying to court the potentially like-minded, often with mixed results.

[TV Roseanne is a Trump supporter. Real-life Roseanne Barr is already a pro-Trump Internet mainstay.]

Alex Jones attempted, over the summer, to leverage a viral video made to mock him into an opportunity to convert a young audience to his worldview. The video remixed his rants as a Bon Iver song; Jones made a big show of talking about how much he loved the video. When PewDiePie, a massive YouTube star, tweeted out that he liked the video, Jones tried to get in touch:

PewDiePie has been the subject of pro-Trump Internet speculation for about a year, ever since a Wall Street Journal report about Nazi jokes on his channel resulted in huge financial consequences for him. PewDiePie’s response was to lash out at the media in rants that, for some Trump supporters, sounded a lot like their own anti-media beliefs.

Although PewDiePie seemed to flirt with his new far-right audience, the YouTuber never really materialized as a true Trump Internet convert.

[In the great ‘meme wars,’ Alex Jones doesn’t care if he makes them or is them]

This week, even as #MAGA celebrates West, another celebrity’s response to pro-Trump flattery has been a good example of that kind of false start. Chance the Rapper tweeted out a defense of West, that “black people don’t have to be democrats,” as other celebrities effectively disowned West for his embrace of Trump. “IT’S SPREADING=> Chance the Rapper Joins Kanye West, Tweets ‘Black People Don’t Have to be Democrats’,” said a headline on the Gateway Pundit. The article begins, “Oh my. The elitists at the DNC didn’t expect this.”

But when Trump praised Chance in his latest tweet about West, Chance said that he had been misunderstood:

“My attempt to support Kanye is being used to discredit my brothers and sisters in the movement and I can’t sit by and let that happen,” Chance said in a statement apologizing for his defense of West.

“I’d never support anyone who has made a career out of hatred, racism, and discrimination,” Chance said. “We have to talk honestly about what is happening and has been happening in this country and we have to challenge those who are responsible, as well as those who are giving them a pass. If that happens to include someone I love, someone who is my brother-in-Christ and someone who I believe does really want to do what is right, It’s not my job to defend or protect him. It’s my job to pick up the phone and talk to him about it.”

More reading:

A non-gamer’s guide to that time Drake played a video game on Twitch

Who are Diamond and Silk? How two small-town ex-Democrats found fame as ‘warriors’ for Trump.

A fake photo of Emma González went viral on the far right, where Parkland teens are villains

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