PewDiePie has encouraged his followers to subscribe to a YouTube channel that publishes anti-Semitic video content, including footage that lists a series of Jewish celebrities before stating that they control “96% of the world’s media.” The endorsement from PewDiePie has now caused the YouTube channel E;R to gain nearly 20,000 new subscribers at the time of this writing.
PewDiePie — real name Felix Kjellberg — made the endorsement during a video titled ‘DON’T Subscribe to Pewdiepie,’ in which the YouTuber lists a series of other channels for his 75 million subscribers to watch.
“We also have E;R, who does great video essays … he did one on Death Note which I really, really enjoyed,” the YouTuber said. The video which PewDiePie was referencing features a description that contains a racial slur.
“The truth about why this took so long is because I thought it was so funny to call Black L “N**let” throughout all my recordings (obviously because it’s an ingenious pun on Lawliet [pronounced Law-let]),” the description reads. “I eventually got it through my thick f***ing skull that YouTube’s looking for A N Y reason, so I redid all the audio to erase my speech crime, but then I got bored and put the project on pause. Now I’m going to finish it.”
In another video titled ‘Pearl Lies Shamelessly to Steven,’ E;R uses the animated show Steven Universe‘s alien race the Gems as a metaphor for Jewish people. The video features a slideshow of Jewish celebrities, before concluding with an anti-Semitic message telling viewers to “Cut the (((Gems))).” The triple parentheses are used by anti-Semites used to highlight the names of those with a Jewish background.
The E;R video concludes with the following message: “We’re running out of time. The invasion was never called off. It continues from within. Gems are, without a doubt, the single greatest threat to humanity’s survival. We must secure our existence and a future for human children.”
The last line is a reference to the Fourteen Words, a slogan made by white supremacist David Lane, which concludes: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”
In the Death Note video essay that PewDiePie says he enjoyed, E;R includes a clip of the murder of Heather Heyer, who was killed while protesting against the neo-Nazi and white supremacist marches in Charlottesville.
“So, for example, say you write the name of a woman and that she’ll die by being struck by a car. However, there’s too much s*** in the way for a car to hit her, because the situation is impossible and thus the cause of death as well. The woman would die of a heart attack.” This is in reference to a conspiracy theory circulated by alt-right supporters, who denied that Heyer was killed by the car and instead claimed she died as a result of her being “out of shape.”
All of these videos are still visible on E;R’s channel and remain some of his most popular content. In his most-viewed video, titled ‘Star Wars: The Farce Engorges,’ E;R labels the Star Wars character Finn a “friendly n***o” in an on-screen caption, and also refers to director JJ Abrams as “Jew Jew.”
In a now-deleted video, E;R adds edits four minutes of footage of a Hitler speech atop an image of Steven Universe. The clip can be seen at the 14-minute mark of a video published by The Young Turks’ host Hasan Piker:
Though PewDiePie doesn’t acknowledge E;R’s anti-Semitic views during his endorsement of the channel, that the YouTuber is pointing his 75 million subscribers to a channel housing such hateful rhetoric is troubling. As Piker points out in the above video, even if PewDiePie did not realize the views E;R was espousing in some of his content, this information is readily available to those who visit the channel. Only a cursory glance of E;R’s channel reveals videos containing racism and anti-Semitism.
The video in which PewDiePie endorses E;R’s channel can be viewed below:
