But it's not just one tweet, it's a very concerning pattern of behavior; the other two examples I gave were much worse than the tweet, and much more recent than 13 years ago.

I did a cursory google to see what he had to say about Marxism himself, and found this:

SR: There’s been a revival of Marxism: for example, commentators have noted that since 2008, sales of Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto have risen. You describe yourself as a ‘non-Marxist socialist’. Can you elaborate?

CW: I think that a Marxist analysis is indispensable for any understanding, not just in the modern world but for our historical situation. I think in the end it’s inadequate but it is indispensable because how do you talk about oligarchy, plutocracy, monopolies, oligopolies, asymmetrical relations of power at the workplace between bosses and workers, the imperial tentacles, profit maximizing and so forth. That’s not Adam Smith. That’s not John Maynard Keynes. That’s Karl Marx.

It’s inadequate in the end because of the cultural issues. You have to deal with death, you have to deal with dread, despair, and disappointment. You have to deal with anxiety, insecurity, fears and so forth. And Marx just didn’t go in that direction. And people say, ‘well, you can go with Freud’. Yeah Freud got some interesting things to say, no doubt about that. But it’s indispensable and, in the end, inadequate. But it’s a beautiful thing to see the revival of a Marxist analysis. I think Marx was the great secular prophet of 19th century Europe. And that makes a difference.

Cultural issues and their solutions are not mutually exclusive from Marxism, that's literally a fundamental part of base and superstructure. That's not to say Marxist analysis of culture doesn't have room to be further studied and expanded upon, but to say "Marx just didn't go in that direction" feels like he just doesn't actually understand Marxism. Kwame Ture explains it best, I think, when he describes scientific socialism not belonging to any one person, including Marx and Engels. West, however, seems to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater when he accepts the material harm caused by capitalism, but rejects/ignores the superstructure it both influences and is influenced by. And that misunderstanding/ignorance/whatever seems to have led to him saying and doing weird, Western chauvinist shit like cozying up with LaRouchites and giving praise to fascist ghouls like Reagan and Desantis for things they most certainly do not even deserve critical support for.

Open to hearing more if he's articulated it better elsewhere, but he just strikes me as more of a "compatible leftist" type; one who can talk at length about how harmful capitalism is, but always stops just short of identifying actual material, revolutionary actions that need to be taken to overcome the forces of capitalism. And most concerning, he's demonstrably been susceptible to red-brown/patsoc association.