On Friday night the Grime star, Wiley, shocked followers with a series of tweets and was given an hours-long ban and has also been dropped by his management.
Wiley resumed posting on Saturday morning much to the chagrin of more users; the offending tweets were still available to view on the site.
After resounding calls for Twitter to step in, Wiley has now been slapped with a seven-day ban from the platform. Also, Twitter has removed a number of his posts.
Amid the controversy, Wiley took to Instagram on Saturday morning; saying “Crawl out from under your little rocks and defend your Jewish privilege.”
Earlier on Saturday, the 41-year-old musician, whose real name is Richard Cowie, was dropped by his management company. His manager John Woolf said A-List Management had “cut all ties” with the musician; following the series of social media posts made on accounts belonging to him on Friday.
Woolf, who is Jewish, wrote on Twitter on Saturday morning: “Following Wiley’s antisemitic tweets today we at @A-ListMGMT have cut all ties with him. There is no place in society for antisemitism.”
The Campaign Against Antisemitism has asked police to investigate the content and called for the shutdown of Wiley’s accounts “to prevent the further outpouring of anti-Jewish venom”.
A spokesperson for the campaign group according to The Mirror said: “Our Crime Unit has reported this matter to the Metropolitan Police Service as we consider that Wiley has committed the offense of incitement to racial hatred, which can carry a substantial prison sentence.”
“We have additionally asked Twitter and Facebook, which owns Instagram, to close down his accounts which have hundreds of thousands of followers; to prevent the further outpouring of anti-Jewish venom.”
“Wiley has many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media. We have seen today that many of them truly believe the unhinged hatred that he is spreading. We are treating this as a very serious matter which must be met with the firmest of responses.”
Richard Kylea Cowie Jr. AKA Wiley is a British grime MC, rapper, songwriter, DJ and record producer from Bow, East London. He is considered a key figure in the creation of grime music and often labelled the “Godfather of Grime”
