Published
Mon, Jul 27, 2020, 14:40
- The Met Police are investigating dozens of tweets posted via the grime artist's account on Friday and Saturday.
Wiley has been temporarily banned from Twitter following anti-semitic comments on Friday and Saturday.
The pioneering grime artist, real name Richard Kylea Cowie Jr., MBE, sent dozens of tweets on Friday and Saturday, many of them containing anti-semitic tropes and abuse. His account was eventually banned by Twitter, first for only a few hours, and then again for a week, the Guardian reports. He was also dropped by his management company, A-List Management. (His long-time manager, John Woolf, who was repeatedly referenced in the tirade, is Jewish.)
Twitter has since hidden many of the most abusive tweets, in which Wiley called Jews "snakes," "cowards" and compared them to the Ku Klux Klan. Twitter has been widely criticised for being too slow to react and take action, with many users—including Planet Mu, Kirk Degiorgio and the Music Producers Guild—planning to stage a 48-hour boycott of the social media platform in protest.
The case is being investigated by London's Metropolitan Police, the Guardian reports. Yesterday, Wiley posted a video via Instagram confirming that "12 police" had visited his house.
This isn't Wiley's first Twitter controversy. In 2017, during a heated exchange with fellow grime star Dizzee Rascal, he was accused of inappropriate relations with multiple underage girls.