PewDiePie’s Troubled History With Anti-Semitism

Fostering a community with an appeal to Nazi imagery, as it turns out, is antithetical to the pursuit of acceptance.

From PewDiePie’s video announcing he rescinded the ADL donation, with the Iron Cross clearly visible. Courtesy of PewDiePie.

PewDiePie has made himself a habit of attracting controversy even when he tries to do good, and that was what happened when a $50K donation to the Anti-Defamation League backfired, as a sizeable chunk of his following voiced disapproval in the comments that PewDiePie (or presumably his team of moderators) had to routinely clean up due to the presence of an unwieldy amount of anti-Semitic remarks — among which is a conspiracy theory that the ADL had blackmailed PewDiePie into committing to this large of a donation — in its wake. This wasn’t the first time Felix Kjellberg had to recant an initiative because of a public backlash, but it is the first where his community was in huge part responsible for it.

Kjellberg’s passif doesn’t do him much favor in curtailing responsibility. The YouTuber currently sitting at above a 100 million subscribers was accredited the advent of the “Adpocalypse” when he paid two men to hold up a sign saying “Death to All Jews”. This took place during what is commonly referred to within PewDiePie’s community as his “Edgy Pewds” era, wherein Kjellberg would routinely border the line of offensiveness by featuring memes and…