Earlier this month, Kanye West reactivated his Twitter account and used the platform to announce he's possibly live-writing a philosophy book and that he has a new album planned for June 1.
On Monday, however, West tweeted out nine video clips from a 22-minute Periscope by the controversial cartoonist behind Dilbert, Scott Adams.
Adams streamed the Periscope over the weekend. It's titled "Scott Adams tells you how Kanye showed the way to The Golden Age. With coffee."
Scott Adams tells you how Kanye showed the way to The Golden Age. With coffee. https://t.co/RCFwKuXjCA
In the video, Adams defines “the Golden Age” as “a time where everything is going right.” Adams argues that West serves as proof that things like racism aren’t actual issues and that they can be overcome by positive thinking.
Adams has regularly blogged about Trump, far-right politics, men's rights, and his particular homebrew version of behavioral science for years.
Since the 2016 election, he's become a prominent figure among the far right.
Here's how Adams responded:
Fake news Buzzfeed thinks I’m a men’s rights advocate because I mocked the men’s right movement once in a blog post. Good work. https://t.co/jlfi9IgkuO
@broderick @BuzzFeedNews Fake news again. I once wrote a blog post mocking men’s rights activists. That makes me the opposite.
Adams later told BuzzFeed News that he was totally shocked by West’s tweets.
“That’s not the sort of thing anybody can expect,” he told BuzzFeed News. “Nothing I could expect.”
He said that he believes he and West share the common viewpoint that history is a mental prison and that you can allow yourself to be freed by patterns of the past.
He also said that the idea that he’s a far-right thinker who has “redpilled” West is untrue. He said he considers himself left of Bernie Sanders on the political spectrum.
“I intentionally do not join a political party and intentionally do not vote,” he said. “As soon as you say ‘redpill’ you have to buy everything that's part of that label.”
As for his appearances on Infowars and his fanbase among the far right and men's rights communities, he said he thinks he spends more time doing interviews for places like CNN or MSNBC. His support for Trump, he said, is because he believes Trump has a tool set that we may never see in history again.
“I try as hard as I can not to embrace a label,” he said. The fact that his writings about persuasion appear ideologically similar to what’s written about within men’s rights communities, he said, is because persuasion is a broad umbrella.
The fact that Kanye West’s 12 million Twitter followers learned about Adams’ persuasion techniques for the first time, he said, isn’t that crazy. “In 2015, I identified him as a master persuader,” Adams said. “Someone who can change the fabric of reality.”
Adams is also a regular guest on Alex Jones' far-right talk show on Infowars.
When Kanye West tweeted Adams' videos on Monday, the reaction among far-right internet personalities, like Mike Cernovich, was immediate.
Cernovich began retweeting all of Kanye's tweets, writing, "Reality is ripped open again."
Infowars' editor-at-large, Paul Joseph Watson, was similarly excited by West discovering Scott Adams.
And Alex Jones went so far as to reach out to Kanye West, inviting him on Infowars.
The official account for Gab, the far-right Twitter clone, tweeted a photo of Kanye West meeting Trump from 2016.
Gateway Pundit contributor Cassandra Fairbanks began tweeting about it.
Fairbanks also wrote up the interaction between Adams and West, writing that West "continues to red-pill the masses."
And Lauren Southern, a far-right YouTuber who was recently banned from the UK, began retweeting West.
Reactions outside the far-right sphere have been less positive, with members of the Kanye West subreddit calling the tweets "right wing propaganda."
And people on Twitter are beginning to believe that Kanye West may have been "redpilled" by the far right.
And West tweeting Adams' videos does not appear to be totally random, either. Over the weekend, West tweeted his support for Candace Owens, a far-right YouTuber that goes by Red Pill Black.
