American
rapper Kanye West was suspended from Twitter on Friday, December 2, 2022, after his
tweets violated the social media platform’s guidelines and promoted ‘incitement to violence’,
according to Twitter CEO Elon Musk.

West,
who now goes by the name of Ye, tweeted an image of a symbol, that he aimed to
use as his Presidential election campaign symbol. As pointed out by many
Twitter users, the symbol was an intertwined sign of the Nazi Hakenkreuz with
the Jewish Star of David.

Also Read | Kanye West suspended from Twitter after posting Hakenkreuz interlaced with Star of David

His
symbol was perceived as anti-Semitic by many, while some people found out that
the symbol posted by Ye is actually one of the two symbols of the Raelian
movement.

The
Raelian Movement is a UFO religion that gained momentum in 1970 France and was
founded by Claude Vorilhon, also known as Rael, a French journalist. Religion
scholars consider Raelism as a cult and a new religious movement.

Raelism is an
atheistic religion, which claims that extra-terrestrial species known as Elohim
created humanity and have been historically mistaken for Gods. It claims that
throughout history, the Elohims have created forty human hybrids who have
served as prophets. Among those Prophets are The Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad. Rael
considers himself the fortieth or the final prophet.

Also Read | What Elon Musk said about suspending Kanye West’s Twitter account

After
Ye’s tweet sparked controversy and debate, one person by the name of Jennifer
Cross tweeted, “He needs to clarify. The symbol he is using is actually the Raelist
Raelian religious symbol, it’s not about Nazis. Nazis corrupted the Hindi Swastika
turning it into the Hakenkreuz.”

Another
Twitter user wrote, “Kanye West posted the Raelian Movement Cult’s Swastika +
Star of David logo on Twitter, and then his posts got taken down for a rules
violation. Starting to feel like Ye (or someone he’s close to) could have some
ties to this cult.”

Here are some of the tweets:

Although
the symbol for the Raelian movement was changed later on, the symbol interlacing
the Star of David and the Nazi Swastika still represents the cult.