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US President Joe Biden on Friday appealed to the country's political leaders to denounce anti-Semitism, in the wake of Donald Trump hosting a Holocaust denier and rapper Kanye West declaring his admiration for Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

The warning was issued by Biden at a time when concerns are being raised over anti-Semitic discourse's normalisation in the United States.

"I just want to make a few things clear: The Holocaust happened. Hitler was a demonic figure. And instead of giving it a platform, our political leaders should be calling out and rejecting antisemitism wherever it hides,” tweeted Biden.

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"Silence is complicity," he added. Biden made the statement a day after West, who is now known by the name Ye, was thrown out of Twitter after he tried to incite violence with his post which displayed a Nazi swastika interlaced with a Star of David.

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This Twitter ban was immediately followed by another unhinged interview taken by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, in which West was seen covering his complete face with a black mask and professing his "love" for the Nazis and strongly stating "I like Hitler."

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Previously, Donal Trump faced backlash from the White House for hosting the Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and West at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida last week.

In his defence, Trump said that West brought along several of his friends uninvited, among which one was Fuentes, who is an outspoken anti-Semite and a white supremacist and whose YouTube channel was suspended permanently over hate speech in 2020.

West has not been the only celebrity to have caused an uproar with an anti-Semitic statement of late, another such celebrity is NBA star Kyrie Irving who recently faced suspension and apologised for linking to a movie, which was labelled as anti-Semitic.

White supremacist ideology

Elon Musk's decision to cut back moderation after he bought Twitter has led to an exacerbation of unease about the spread of hate speech.

The Anti-Defamation League published data on Friday which said that there has been a surge of more than 60% in anti-Semitic tweets which are related to Judaism and Jews in the past two weeks after Musk's takeover of Twitter.

The rhetoric matches the steady increase in the occurrence of hateful incidents targeted towards Jews. It was discovered by the Anti-Defamation League that reports related to vandalism, harassment and violence against Jews increased drastically, reaching an all-time high, in the United States in 2021.

In 2019, the country had to deal with a shocking incident of deadly shootings which targeted synagogues in Pittsburgh and California.

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In both scenarios, the attackers belonged to the far-right that supports hate against African Americans, Jews, Muslims and immigrants and advocates for a Christian, Caucasian society which is based on European culture.

After the twin attacks, concerns were reinforced about anti-Semitic hatred becoming a rallying point for resurged white supremacists, who had received encouragement after Trump had failed to condemn their ideology unequivocally.

The former president's critics, which include Republican rebels like Liz Cheney, have slammed the party for enabling anti-Semitism and white supremacy under Trump's sway.

Biden, who has himself claimed that he decided to run for president after hearing Trump's refusal to denounce a neo-Nazi rally organised in Charlottesville in 2017, has spoken repeatedly against the ideology which he believes "tears at the soul" of the nation. 

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