Pewdiepie endorses controversial anti-semantic views to gain subscribers; stunt backfires big time

The Swedish content creator was later forced to scrub the particular comment and clarify his stand.

Pewdiepie's recent attempt to gain more subscribers has backfired big time. The Swedish creator, whose channel has been in news recently over his subscriber war with Indian record label T Series, was embroiled in a controversy after his shoutout endorsing antisemitic views.

In his latest video, Felix 'Pewdiepie' Kjellberg spoke in favour of another youtube creator E;R (EsemicolonR) who's channel often includes anti-Semitic, sexist, homophobic content. “You also have E;R, who does great video essays. He did one on Death Note, which I really, really enjoyed,” says Kjellberg.

While this comment gained Pewdiepie subscribers, several persons called out the act.

“Yesterday pewdiepie ended #Subscribetopewdiepie in a video where he promoted some of his favorite channels. one of them was straight up a neo-nazi's yt page where he makes video essays on children's cartoons with added nazi propaganda”, tweets Hasan Piker, a host on The Young Turks – a Youtube news show.

yesterday pewdiepie ended #Subscribetopewdiepie in a video where he promoted some of his favorite channels. one of them was straight up a neo-nazi's yt page where he makes video essays on children's cartoons with added nazi propoganda https://t.co/KBIfpVdfXi

— Hasan Piker (@hasanthehun) December 10, 2018

Given PewDiePie's outreach and young followers, it was flagged up by media across the world.

Another person tweeted: "PewDiePie says he promoted one little video, that he didn't mean to promote a white supremacist in the process. Too bad that one little video jokes about Heather Heyer's death and makes fun of the "autistic black guy" in a movie, etc. There's no excuse."

PewDiePie says he promoted one little video, that he didn't mean to promote a white supremacist in the process.

Too bad that one little video jokes about Heather Heyer's death and makes fun of the "autistic black guy" in a movie, etc. There's no excuse.https://t.co/OXR25sFHbN — Andy Campbell (@AndyBCampbell) December 11, 2018

Kjellberg was later forced to scrub the particular comment and clarify his stand.

“Obviously, if I noticed that, I wouldn’t have referenced him in the shoutout. Not because I have a problem with Nazi references being offensive in themselves, but because I said that I was going to distance myself Nazi jokes,” he said in another video titled “PewDiePie’s biggest Oopsie”.

Thanks to PewDiePie's controversial past, he was even missing from Youtube Rewind 2018 as well.