PewDiePie Responds to Petition Calling For His Ban After It Reaches 80,000 Signatures
Tom Pappert
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A Change.org petition demanding YouTube ban independent content creator and top YouTube channel PewDiePie, real name Felix Kjellberg, has reached 80,000 signatures.
The petition, started by a woman named Maria Ruiz, claims that PewDiePie must be banned after the mosque attack in Christchurch, New Zealand. Ruiz calls PewDiePie “one of the largest platforms for white supremacist content,” and says that Kjellberg has “proven once and again to promote and affiliate himself with white supremacist and Nazi ideologies.”
As evidence of her assertion, Ruiz writes that Kjellberg “used images of famous African-Americans (Neil deGrasse Tyson, Barack Obama) captioned with the wrong names,” and that Kjellberg “makes rape jokes.”
In a video response, Kjelbberg lambasted the evidence, calling them fictitious and laughing at Ruiz for failing to provide evidence. He also expressed incredulity that Change.org would allow the petition to remain on its website.
“We need to ban PewDiePie from YouTube,” the Swedish content creator joked, “That will stop all of the bad things.”
“Just by glancing over the points that they make against me, it’s so blatantly misrepresenting and misinforming people,” said Kjellberg. “A lot of these points are just flat out lies as well. Context, who needs that? Unimportant, I don’t care. Why would I need to link sources to any of the claims that defame some person? No!”
“Honestly, it’s amazing how Change.org is even allowing this to be up, because there’s nothing to back up any of the claims.”
With over 93 million subscribers to his channel, the petition represents roughly 0.08% per cent of his audience.
In recent months, as Kjellberg has been in a tight competition with the Indian mega corporation T-Series for subscribers on YouTube, he has drifted into the arena of social commentary. Kjellberg recently lambasted the infamous Gillette “toxic masculinity” commercial, and has received support from right wing media personalities including Alex Jones.
Kjellberg also recently revealed that T-Series, which enjoys unique partnerships with YouTube and Google, sent him a legally baseless cease and desist letter to compel him to stop creating content.
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