No, Macklemore has not joined the ranks of ISIS.
While the notorious Syria-based terrorist organization has allegedly recruited the likes of Deso Dogg, a Berlin gangsta rapper who’s popped up in a handful of ISIS beheading videos—and is reportedly being used as a recruitment tool—the mild-mannered “Thrift Shop” rapper has not followed suit.
On Thursday evening, the #MacklemoreJoinedISIS became the top trending topic on Twitter worldwide based on the strength of a bogus tweet that was circulated (and retweeted, and retweeted) through the Twitterverse, eventually going viral.
Behold:
horrified at news that macklemore has joined ISIS #MacklemoreJoinedISIS pic.twitter.com/N3PJO0ciWV
— Yohosie (@dawnyohosie) February 20, 2015
The 31-year-old Grammy Award-winning rapper—and recent father—formerly known as Ben Haggerty has supported a number of progressive social causes, including marching in Ferguson protests in his native Seattle and having a bunch of gay couples be married (by Madonna, no less) during his Grammys performance of “Same Love.”
On the opposite end of the sociopolitical spectrum, he's also a 9/11 truther who, on the track “Bush Song” off his 2005 EP The Language of My World, rapped the following: “Where’s Dick Cheney at? Probably off in Iraq / Findin’ some oil to tap, tell ’em I got up on that / And y’all still think it was bin Laden / When it was us and the Masons, plottin’ on oil profits.” The 30-year-old followed those bars up with the following tweet, which he unleashed in 2009:
911...bush knocked down the towers
— Macklemore (@macklemore) September 18, 2009
And back in May, Macklemore took it upon himself to dress up as an anti-Semitic Jewish caricature, sporting a giant prosthetic hooked nose, dark beard, and bowl cut wig, during a surprise performance at Seattle’s Experience Music Project.
The Twitter world, including actor Seth Rogen (who is Jewish), was not amused:
.@macklemore, first you trick people into thinking you're a rapper, now you trick them into thinking you're Jewish? pic.twitter.com/3rtaE4GHje
— Seth Rogen (@Sethrogen) May 18, 2014