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Feb. 15, 2017 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
30:40
#PewDiePieDidNothingWrong
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PewDiePie did nothing wrong.
You're probably already aware of a man named Felix Kjellberg, otherwise known as PewDiePie on the Internet.
And since that's easier to say, that's how I'm going to refer to him.
He is the biggest channel on YouTube, and he's incredibly famous, and when he does something, it makes the mainstream media.
For example, if you go to Google and type in PewDiePie anti-Semitic, you will find, and I'm not exaggerating, hundreds of different outlets, all with the same essential headline.
PewDiePie is an anti-Semite.
It will come as no surprise to you that this is fake news.
This is not true, has been taken 100% out of context, and is being used to smear the man.
Before making this video, I didn't know all that much about PewDiePie because I don't watch his videos.
He's, as far as I was aware, a comedian who used to film himself playing video games and reacting to these video games, and I'd watched a couple of them back when I first heard of him, found they weren't to my taste, and carried on with my day.
I guess he must have changed his format slightly since then, because now he appears to do mostly random comedy videos with him talking about whatever it is he wants to talk about in front of the camera.
As already noted, PewDiePie is a comedian, and he caters to a younger audience, a younger, very internet and meme-savvy audience.
These young people have grown up with the internet, they are immersed in the internet, they understand memes and meme culture, and so does PewDiePie.
In addition to doing comedy on apolitical subjects, PewDiePie does involve himself occasionally with political topics, and in the course of watching his videos in preparation for making this video, I found myself rather liking the man.
I found myself finding him to be a man of integrity and to have been on the right side of issues that I have also been concerned about and spoken about myself, such as people getting fired over tweets.
We used to fear, more, sickness, starvation, getting eaten by porcupines, today there's a different kind of threat.
Shitty tweets that will get you fired.
And like a fairly reasonable person, he doesn't really think that people should be fired for their tweets.
Given that he has the single largest channel on YouTube, it's no surprise that YouTube paid close attention to what he says.
And PewDiePie uses this power responsibly.
Because he knows that they will listen to him, he often advocates on behalf of other people that he knows they will not listen to.
If you don't know what happened, basically YouTube started unmonetizing people's videos without any notice.
Now that's good.
You've done it.
You've really done it.
Like, it doesn't make any sense.
Whatever, I'll be fine.
But there's a ton of other channels, smaller channels, whose livelihood depend on this, and you just go ahead and add this without telling anyone.
That's just insane.
It's crazy.
And it seems like they don't- YouTube don't care about their creators.
But PewDiePie himself genuinely does seem to care.
Now, I myself have had many videos demonetized, as I know that many other channels have as well.
And when you're at our size, that's a big issue.
That's something that really does affect you.
And he recognises this.
I mean, this man makes about $16 million a year.
So the fact that he would even take the time is very telling.
And as I said, he's been very consistent at calling YouTube out on their bullshit.
And as far as I can tell, he's always been on the right side of these issues as well.
The name's Flagmaster64.
I'm a level three YouTube hero.
I do work hard in my videos, but now I'm gonna work hard on making better for everyone.
I'm not the hero that YouTube needs.
I'm the hero it deserves.
When I first became a YouTube hero, it was the happiest day of my life.
Almost like being a real YouTuber.
But without putting any of the effort.
Because of the size of his channel and the style of his content, PewDiePie has been involved in many controversies in the past.
And the one that I found most interesting recently was due to a change from the YouTube algorithm, which apparently prioritized some channels over others based on different factors.
I personally don't know a lot about it, but a lot of people found their views going down on average.
PewDiePie made a video about this, and it was satirical in nature, but there were points in it when he was clearly making a solid point.
Even though afterwards, after being confronted on this, he did again claim it was satirical.
But listen to this for yourself and tell me whether you think it's satirical, what he's saying.
I'm always complaining to them.
I don't have family-friendly content.
I clickbait too much, huh?
Is that it?
It all makes sense.
YouTube wants my channel gone.
They want someone else on top.
Someone really extremely cancerous.
Like Lily Sinks.
I'm white.
Can I make that comment?
But I do think that's a problem.
As I said, he later said that this was a satirical statement.
And maybe it was, but it really didn't seem like it.
And given the current political climate, it's a perfectly valid thing to be worried about.
Because PewDiePie will never be included in any kind of diversity quota.
And if there are people at YouTube who are particularly concerned about diversity, especially among the prominent voices that are displayed, then maybe his white skin would be an issue.
Because it's not diverse.
Needless to say, PewDiePie copped a huge amount of shit in the progressive press for this statement, which again, I think is a genuinely legitimate thing to ask, even if it's not correct.
Even if this isn't anything to do with the color of his skin, the current political environment does compel one to ask, is this because of my race?
Because so much else is done on that basis.
PewDiePie received a quite severe backlash in the left-wing press for merely asking the question.
And this is not really that surprising given the size of his channel and the reach of his videos.
He's had a very adversarial relationship with the press, as I will let him demonstrate for you.
Mom.
Mom, no, I'm not a Nazi.
I promise, it's just a stupid article.
Okay, my book too.
Hail Hydra.
I'm used to getting hate comments and just generally really dumb comments.
That's normal.
now we got some next-level shit this is this is kind of impressing you know I've seen bad articles but now they all just came out at once YouTube removing PewDiePie's subscribers after news comes through that he is in favor of the Nazi party.
Okay, no, that one is clearly fake.
Okay, fake article.
What else do we got?
PewDiePie says YouTube is killing his channel because he's white.
Okay, clearly another fake comp.
Oh PewDiePie, more like PewDieWine.
You see what I mean.
And as someone who regularly has hit pieces written on him in places like Vice and BuzzFeed, I know what this feels like.
Except this probably feels much worse to him because I imagine he gets this on a far grander scale than I do.
But he is experiencing exactly the same problem that the rest of us are.
And when I say the rest of us, I mean anyone involved in Gamergate, anyone involved in the alt-right, anyone involved in Justice Democrats, anyone involved in any kind of counter-cultural movement that is seeking to challenge the narrative hegemony of the progressive left.
Are they so desperate for clickbait that they will literally literally slander someone else's name in the process?
You know, they're clearly taking my name, shoving it into the ground, just to get more clicks on their shitty fucking website.
It's disgusting.
It's absolutely disgusting.
How desperate can you be?
This clickbait journalism is just the purest form of cancer.
Sport rages.
What the fuck is that?
Why is sport rages posting that I'm racist?
PewDiePie racist, Christian Mark.
What the fuck is this?
How is this a thing?
How?
They never seem to end for some reason.
They always, you know, every year there's something coming out like this where just insane claims about me.
You know, I've read articles about me, about all kinds of shit.
I'm racist now, that I'm sexist.
I think that there's been like I've been a pedophile.
So many insane claims.
Oh, that I was hitting my girlfriend.
It's like these like horrific claims I just keep have to take from the media.
It will get them clicks.
And who cares?
Who cares if there's a real person behind it, right?
I mean, media has been doing this for years, literally slandering people.
So what's the fucking difference now?
Hmm?
Who cares about YouTube?
Oh, I don't like YouTube.
Oh, gotta write an article.
Oh, he's racist now.
I don't like that.
He's making more money than me.
Oh, it's not fair.
Getting in the media's public attention.
If anything, I realize is that whatever I've learned about other people through media, it's clearly been skewed while growing up.
And because I've seen how they represent me in the media.
And you know what?
It's fine if I'm not perfectly represented in the media.
But when there's just pure fucking slander like this, I'm not gonna just stand like step aside for her and take it.
This is this too dumb.
This is what people would actually think if I didn't have a chance to, you know.
Because people just read the title.
People just read this and they're like, oh, okay.
I see.
Peter Pai's a Nazi, now that's...
Alright...
Basically, what I'm saying is, the regressive media have red-pilled PewDiePie so hard that he is now woke.
The media's constant misrepresentation of PewDiePie has put him in the same position as Donald Trump.
But I will tell you some of the media outlets that I deal with the fake news, more so than anybody.
I could name them, but I won't bother.
But you have a few sitting right in front of us.
So they're very, very dishonest people.
But I think it's just something we're going to have to live with.
I guess the advantage I have is that I can speak back.
When it happens to somebody that doesn't have this, doesn't have that kind of a megaphone, they can't speak back.
It's a very sad thing.
I've seen people destroyed.
I've seen people absolutely destroyed.
And I think it's very unfair.
And this is exactly the same position that PewDiePie is in.
Now, I'm of the opinion that the media's trustworthiness by the general public is at an all-time low because I think that they have, at this point, lied about more people than they haven't lied about.
The ideological conformity of the left-wing media puts them all in basically the same position on every single issue.
And so on any one subject, you will see headlines that are essentially exactly the same, with articles that contain almost exactly the same content on any given subject.
And I've said this before, but one thing we learned from Gamergate and the Game Journal Pros mailing list that was the secret list by which competing outlets would coordinate with each other is that they didn't actually need to conspire to produce a cascade of very, very similar articles.
It is in fact a way of virtue signaling amongst themselves to establish a dominant narrative with which to control the dialogue.
And PewDiePie and Donald Trump are both people who have been on the raw end of that, as have I and many other people involved with other social causes I'm interested in.
And like myself and Donald Trump, PewDiePie has discovered that the best way to stick it to the progressive powers that be is by trolling them.
And what does the far left hate more than anything?
That's right, they hate the far right.
They think that everyone is a fucking Nazi.
So PewDiePie, and he's been doing this for quite a while, is not afraid of putting Adolf Hitler in his video thumbnails.
Undoubtedly for the cliques, but also for the kecks.
But he doesn't stop there.
Nazi jokes have become a staple of his videos because, frankly, they're funny.
It is time that we fight back!
It is time that we put our foot down and say NINE!
NO!
So, Herr Fuhrer, with a level 3 flag system, don't you think people might abuse them?
I ran out of ideas!
So today, I'm...
So, from now on, I'm going to...
So from now on, I'm going to report the news.
Reporting.
I'm doing the news now.
You know, at this point, I'm just starting to think that you guys like to complain.
secret summoning ritual well Jesus here Just want to let you all know that Hitler did absolutely nothing wrong.
That last video was a video that he had purchased from a website called Fiverr, where content creators go on there and for £5, you can pay them to make a short video, which is what he did by telling him to say that Hitler did nothing wrong.
Obviously, a joke.
And it's through this website and service that he has become embroiled in his latest and I think most serious controversy.
Sighing to behold.
Death to all.
Tell us how to pronounce your given message.
Sub scrab to keen star star funny guys.
PLEASE, DELIVER The fuck is this?
I paid for this what what's with the Christmas i like the editing subscribe to game star it was at this point that i personally really started warming to pewdiepie
The audacity of the man to actually go and order a video in which they write death to all Jews on a sign and then pretend to be shocked that they've done it.
That's really great.
That's some amazing grade A trolling.
Because that's what this is.
I think that a lot of what PewDiePie is doing is a deliberate attempt to get under the skin of the highly progressive, highly racially aware left-wing press.
And I think he's well aware that they have absolutely no sense of humor whatsoever.
This is a clip from the Twitter video I showed earlier, in which he shows a bunch of tweets that he has saved in his drafts but never sent because he was worried about the controversy that would kick up.
Vote trunk.
Sorry, it's just as a European, this whole election thing, as an outsider perspective, is just funny, and that's why it's funny to joke about.
But I realize if I ever tweeted that shit and someone would retweet it, it would look bad.
It would look bad.
I'm sure you've noticed already he's been wearing his Make America Great Again hat, and I think that he does this when he's in the mood to piss off some of those self-righteous, moral busybodies who spend an excessive amount of time writing defamatory pieces about him.
And who can blame him?
I would do exactly the same thing.
I don't feel good.
I don't feel too proud of this.
I'm not gonna lie.
Like, I'm not anti-Simatic or whatever it's called.
Okay, so don't get the wrong idea.
It was a funny meme, and I didn't think it would work.
Okay, you can't hold me.
You can't hold me.
The Verge, please stop.
Stop.
No.
I swear I love Jews.
I love them.
The fact that he specifically calls out The Verge, a particularly regressive online outlet, by name, shows that he knows exactly what's going to happen with this.
And he's probably doing it deliberately to annoy them.
But this trolling and this particular video saying death to all Jews has got a lot of people's panties in a tight bunch.
Presumably because it's been noticed by those good people at the Daily Stormer, the world's number one neo-Nazi website.
Or as it has recently rebranded itself, the world's number one PewDiePie fan site.
I'm not gonna lie, this is funny.
And if I didn't know better, I would assume the whole site was a parody.
But if it wasn't obvious enough, despite the fact that these are clearly Andrew Anglin's sincere beliefs, he is still trolling.
And there is only one way to defeat the trolls.
That's right, you ignore them.
Of course, radical left-wing activists can't do that.
And so PewDiePie was forced to put this blog post up.
Just to clear some things up, it came to my attention yesterday that some people have been pointing to my videos and saying that I'm giving credibility to the anti-Semitic movement, and my fans are part of it as well for watching.
I don't want to cite the sources because I don't want to give them any more attention.
This originated from a video I made a couple of weeks ago.
I was trying to show how crazy the modern world is, specifically some of the services available online.
I picked something that seemed absurd to me that people on Fiverr would say anything for $5.
I think it's important to say something and I want to make one thing clear.
I'm in no way supporting any kind of hateful attitudes.
I make videos for my audience.
I think the content I create as entertainment and not as a place for serious political commentary.
I know my audience understand that and that is why they come to my channel.
Though this is not my intention, I understand that these jokes were ultimately offensive.
As laughable as it is to believe that I might actually endorse these people, to anyone unsure of my standpoint regarding hate-based groups, no, I don't support these people in any way.
Now, to anyone who isn't looking to assassinate PewDiePie's character, that doesn't need to be said.
It's obvious that he is trolling.
It's obvious that he is just doing this for the fun of it.
And he may well not have known that Hitler is actually quite a popular person in India and there aren't very many Jews there and they're not very politically correct.
So why wouldn't they do it?
But either way, it doesn't matter.
It's just a joke.
It's just making fun and there's no one who has been hurt from this.
That is of course apart from PewDiePie himself.
For reasons unknown, the reputable publication that is the Wall Street Journal decided that they had literally nothing better to do than send three of their journalists to go and watch PewDiePie's videos from August last year until now to go through and cherry-pick any examples of anti-Semitic content that he has posted.
Aka jokes.
And as you can see by the title of the article on the screen there, Disney, one of PewDiePie's main sponsors, have decided to sever ties with him over this.
Since August, PewDiePie has posted nine videos that included anti-Semitic jokes on Nazi imagery, according to a review of his channel by the Wall Street Journal.
Oh.
Oh well, if he's making jokes, then that's something you should really be spending your time on.
I mean, it's not like there's a need for real journalism in the world or anything.
It's not like there aren't already millions of people who watch his channel and can tell you exactly what he posts because they watch it every fucking day.
No no no, you guys need to go through there and do your own analysis, a review of the channel.
Because God forbid he does whatever the fuck he wants on his channel that's within the terms and service of YouTube.
What you need to do is contact Disney about these videos.
Which is precisely what they did.
And unsurprisingly, after now having framed him in what is self-evidently a hit piece and put into the context of PewDiePie's ongoing war with the media, clearly a very aggressive attempt to cut his funding, they decided to cut their ties with him.
I mean the very description of PewDiePie here really makes it obvious that he is a comedian.
PewDiePie rose to prominence via clips of himself playing video games or performing skits and making crude jokes.
Yes, that's right.
Crude jokes that maybe Disney wouldn't like, except Disney knew exactly what his content was like when they bought the network that he was a part of, and they bought it specifically to get access to him, because he's so famous.
Now, this economic attack on PewDiePie, and that is exactly what this is, undoubtedly cost him millions of dollars.
The interesting thing is that PewDiePie doesn't appear to be the sort of person who cares about money.
And I'm not just saying that because he's a multi-millionaire, I honestly get the impression from him that money was never a motivating factor for him in the first place.
But what was the motivating factor of these three quote-unquote journalists from the Wall Street Journal?
Social media companies are wrestling with how to address darker forms of speech, whether it is jihadist propaganda or rhetoric from an emerging white nationalist movement.
Oh!
Oh, I see.
We're dealing with a bunch of progressive moral busybodies.
Right, well that's my speciality.
They say that this dilemma is especially troublesome, haha, one might say problematic, when it involves prominent figures like Mr. Kjellberg.
Twitter Inc., for example, has stepped up efforts to suspend accounts for violating its hate speech and harassment rules.
It recently banned Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos for violating its abusive content policy, for example.
YouTube said it prohibits videos that violate its rules, which include a ban on content that promotes or condones violence against individuals or groups based on race or ethnic origin or religion.
But presumably they figured that PewDiePie's jokes didn't violate it, because I don't believe for a second that you guys didn't report into YouTube as well.
And I know this because you say YouTube declined to comment specifically on PewDiePie's videos.
Oh, but I know what you're going to say.
It's okay though, because look, he's had praise from neo-Nazi websites like the Daily Stormer, which the Southern Poverty Law Center on Thursday dubbed the top hate site in America.
And according to the Internet Archive, as in someone had saved one of their pages and sent it to you, they're celebrating Mr. Kjellberg for making the masses comfortable with our ideas.
So let's just summarise exactly what you've done here, and let's see if this is the right thing to do.
So first, you cherry-picked some troublesome, quote-unquote, jokes and took them out of context.
You then sent these misrepresentations of his work to both YouTube and Disney to portray him as promoting anti-Semitism.
Then you publicized these lies by omission in a widely read and well-respected newspaper and you did all of this because of something someone else did.
And the objective of all of this was the control of quote dark speech of which these journalists did not personally approve.
While I'm sure I don't need to say this, I'm going to say it anyway.
This was a deliberate attack on PewDiePie in an attempt to censor him to prevent certain words being spoken.
Words that aren't illegal, that aren't immoral, and certainly aren't prohibited on the platforms on which they are being spoken.
And this attack on him by these three journalists of the Wall Street Journal cost him, personally, millions of dollars.
This article, this report, was a fucking disgrace.
It's masquerading behind the veneer of objective, neutral, impartial journalism.
And the journalists in question are prepared to pretend as if the existence of these jokes is somehow a major issue.
As if PewDiePie is responsible for what other people do and he is no longer allowed to make the jokes he wants to make that are permitted on YouTube's platform.
But these journalists clearly felt morally entitled to do this, because their entire argument for doing it was a moral argument.
They thought it was acceptable to censor PewDiePie and attack his income on the basis of what someone else is doing, because his jokes, in their opinion, should not exist.
This article was nothing more than a pernicious hit piece designed from the outset to damage PewDiePie's credibility, to damage his earnings, and to promote the agenda of these journalists.
This was a cunningly constructed hit piece.
This was a deliberate attempt to try and ruin PewDiePie and I think that the main driving force for this was probably the fact that PewDiePie doesn't give a shit about your opinions.
He doesn't care what you find morally reprehensible.
He doesn't find what you consider troublesome or dark or worrying and he certainly doesn't care about your political opponents.
But the Wall Street Journal certainly cares about PewDiePie because PewDiePie is powerful.
PewDiePie has an enormous audience.
He has an enormous reach and he's a good person.
PewDiePie, like Donald Trump, will actually stand up to the bullies in the media.
He will actually stand his ground and speak truth to power on behalf of the very people who need it the most, and he has done this consistently.
You need him gone.
That's your problem.
There's nothing wrong with what he's done.
He's telling jokes, silly, silly jokes.
And I really want to stress this point the most.
Nothing, not a fucking thing that the Daily Stormer does gives you any justification to do anything to him.
And so to wrap this up, you might be thinking, well shit, this has really pissed me off.
I would really like to know more about the people behind all of this.
And that's easy, because these three men decided to put their names to these articles proudly.
They were thrilled with their work.
They were thrilled with their power play.
And I know this because I checked their Twitter feeds.
So watching PewDiePie's videos was a collaborative effort between Ben Fritz, Jack Nicias and Rolf Winkler, three journalists for the Wall Street Journal.
Now, of course, I would not recommend at all that you contact these men.
They are obviously not going to be interested in discussing any of these things with you.
But you might think, I'd really like to write a letter to the editor.
I might want to complain in great length and explicitly detail my consternation with what these three men have so proudly done.
You can send a letter to the Wall Street Journal's editors at wsj.ltrs at wsj.com.
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