The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) awarded to British rapper Wiley is under review by the United Kingdom's Cabinet Office after he made a slew of antisemitic comments garnering global blacklash, The Jewish Chronicle reported.
The Honours Forfeiture Committee, the officials in charge of the review, said they're considering rescinding his award "for a variety of reasons" which include “being found guilty of a criminal offence” and “behavior that is deemed to bring the honors system into disrepute," according to the Chronicle.
Wiley was appointed an MBE the 2018 New Years Honours for his services to music, the Chronicle reported.
In a Sky News interview, Wiley said that the MBE has never really been in his possession. According to a spokesperson for Wiley's former manager John Woolfe, who is Jewish and stepped down after the initial incident, the MBE is in Woolfe's possession waiting for Wiley to collect it.
In the Sky News interview, Wiley added: “Now who’s the MBE for, really? Don’t think I was sitting there like ‘Where’s my MBE? Where’s my OBE? I need my knighthood. Where’s my Richard Branson? No.”
Wiley's Twitter account was permanently suspended in late July, his Facebook and Instagram accounts removed just a day before, and later The Jerusalem Post identified earlier this week that his YouTube channel been taken down, all in consequent response to a long string of antisemetic comments he made on his Twitter account.
However, Twitter's immediate reaction to the incident wasn't to permanently suspend Wiley's account, but rather to delete only some of the comments, leading to a 48-hour walk out of prominent Twitter users. The walkout campaign was dubbed #NoSafeSpaceForJewHate, and was in response to Twitter removing a partial number of the comments.
After Twitter removed Wiley's account, the social media website released a statement stating it was sorry it “did not move faster” and was “continuing to assess the situation internally."
In some of Wiley's tweets, the rapper claims that Jews control "the Law," and that Israel is not a Jewish country, "Listen to me Jewish community Israel is not your country I'm sorry."
He later doubled down on the comments, stating, after being confronted: "Anti Semetic? What's it called the way you rip us off in business then? What's that called when you tell us there is 1 rule for us and another rule for you lot? What's that called?" He added "Anti Semetic? Are u stupid? Do you know what these people do to the world?"