Viacom CBS has fired Nick Cannon after the actor, rapper, director and TV host propagated anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has an extensive history of making anti-Jewish remarks, announced the company on Tuesday.
“ViacomCBS condemns bigotry of any kind, and we categorically denounce all forms of anti-Semitism,” said the company in a statement.
In the June 30 episode of his YouTube podcast, “Cannon’s Class,” the host of the Fox show “The Masked Singer” spoke with Richard Griffin, a member of the hip-hop group Public Enemy until the late 1980s.
Fox did not respond to a request for comment.
Early in the podcast, Griffin—also known as “Professor Griff”—said that both Semitic people and languages “have absolutely nothing to do with any white people.”
“We have spoken with Nick Cannon about an episode of his podcast ‘Cannon’s Class’ on YouTube, which promoted hateful speech and spread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories,” said ViacomCBS, where Cannon produced the comedy improv series “Wild ’n Out” for VH1, a ViacomCBS-owned cable channel.
“While we support ongoing education and dialogue in the fight against bigotry, we are deeply troubled that Nick has failed to acknowledge or apologize for perpetuating anti-Semitism, and we are terminating our relationship with him,” stated the company.
During the podcast, Cannon, who previously hosted “America’s Got Talent” on NBC, agreed that “the Semitic people are black people.”
He also said that “it’s never hate speech; you can’t be anti-Semitic when we are the Semitic people. When we are the same people who they want to be. That’s our birthright,” adding that “we are the true Hebrews.”
He also talked about “giving too much power to the ‘they’—and then the ‘they’ turns into the Illuminati, the Zionists, the Rothschilds.”
Cannon referenced “going as deep as the Rothschilds, centralized banking, the 13 families, the bloodlines that control everything even outside of America.”
Regarding Farrakhan, the actor said that “every time I’ve heard him speak, it’s positive, it’s powerful, it’s uplifting … for whatever reason, he’s been demonized.”
In 2013, the Anti-Defamation League criticized Cannon for being in a video by the New Black Panther Party, which the ADL has said is “the nation’s largest anti-Semitic and racist black militant group.”