I know, someone you never heard of. You're not 12. Enough info in the article for you to get the gist.The latest controversy over online anti-Semitism is not about white supremacists or neo-Nazis, but about a 27-year-old Swedish YouTube star who goes by the nickname “PewDiePie” (aka Felix Kjellberg). Last week, Kjellberg , who has more than 53 million subscribers for his video channel that mixes comedy with videogame play and rambling cultural commentary, lost lucrative business deals with Disney and YouTube after being accused of anti-Semitism. The offensive jokes and skits by PewDiePie were brought to the two companies’ attention when they were approached for comment by reporters for the Wall Street Journal who were working on a story on the subject.
But is the outrage at Kjellberg’s antics a welcome response to bigotry or a potentially harmful overreaction?
Kjellberg’s main offense, in a January 11th video, was unquestionably tacky. As part of an experiment to see just how far he could get people to go by paying them though a website called Fiverr, which lines up gigs for free-lancers, he contracted two South Asian men to unfurl a banner with the words “Death to all Jews” on video. As the clip played, Kjellberg reacted with apparent shock, then apologized and said that he “didn’t think they would actually do it.” However, he still showed the clip, even though the segment was not a live broadcast.
On January 22, Kjellberg aired another video he solicited via Fiverr, in which an actor dressed as Jesus declared that “Hitler did absolutely nothing wrong” (a running joke in the more juvenile circles on the Internet).
The Journal found several other instances of Kjellberg using Nazi symbolism, from swastikas to a Nazi-style uniform to a clip of a Hitler speech, in a quest to get a laugh. The article also reported that The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, had praised Kjellberg for “making the masses comfortable with our ideas” and even briefly used the motto “The world’s #1 PewDiePie fansite.”
Kjellberg, who took down three of the offending videos, released a video response apologizing for the jokes gone too far. But he also lashed out at the media, charging that they “misrepresent” and “viciously attack” for profit.
Several commentators have compared Kjellberg’s statement to Donald Trump’s diatribes against the media. But first of all, even if Kjellberg has a massive audience, he is hardly the President of the United States. Secondly, he apologized for screwing up, which puts the 27-year-old gamer way ahead of the 70-year-old President in maturity.
Furthermore, while Disney was certainly within its rights to drop Kjellberg, some of his treatment by the media has been grossly unfair. The Journal story catalogued offensive moments in his gags without providing the full context (and may have misinterpreted an innocuous pointing gesture as a “Nazi salute”). Wired ran a piece [titled] “Pewdiepie Was Always Kinda Racist — But Now he’s A Hero To Nazis.” (After push back, that was changed to “PewDiePie’s Fall Shows the Limits of ‘LOL JK’.”) A headline on SheKnows, a lifestyle and parenting website, called the YouTube star “a horrible racist.”
Read more:
http://forward.com/opinion/363701/is-pewdiepie-more-like-mel-brooks-than-milo-yiannopoulos/Posting this for two reasons: The underlying and unexamined assumptions of the author, and the display of cracks in the normally fairly monolithic left.
