Bryan Sharpe, known as “Hotep Jesus” on social media, appeared on Infowars’ The Alex Jones Show to defend antisemitic rants by rapper Ye (formerly Kanye West). Sharpe, who has appeared on Fox News repeatedly over the years, most recently on the late night show Gutfeld, has a history of using racist and antisemitic rhetoric.

On Jones’ show, Sharpe claimed “There's no such thing as hate speech,” in his defense of Ye, because it is “subjective,” and the First Amendment was created to “protect so-called hate speech.” He went on to argue that “so-called hate groups” deserve “space to vent,” because, without it, “they go into hiding,” and “start plotting, and then you have terrorist events.”  

Sharpe argued that Ye made his unhinged antisemitic comments on Infowars because no other platform gave him “room to vent.” According to Sharpe, Ye was “spreading a message of love by the end of that interview,” because Jones let him speak freely. Explaining away Ye’s comments, Sharpe argued that Ye said what he said to test free speech advocates: “He wants people to look in the mirror and see how hypocritical they truly are.” He continued, “He wants to point out how easily people are disturbed. I think his real goal is to filter out who's with him and who's not.”

(Transcript is available here.)

Sharpe appeared on now-defunct Fox News Primetime in 2021 to argue that the Democratic Party is a racist group. In 2018, host Laura Ingraham brought Sharpe on to attack Starbucks’ diversity training. 

Right Wing Watch reported that in 2017, Sharpe blamed Jewish people for creating the white supremacy narrative. The Daily Beast reported Sharpe’s praise of the far right: “Alt right isn’t afraid to call out the Jews and their implications in the destruction of the black community in America.” The article noted that he applauded the “alt right’s potential to ‘unlock minds’” and he “tweeted that the term ‘Holocaust denier’ was ‘created to hide the truth.’”