YouTube star PewDiePie accused of using racial slur
September 11, 2017 10:39 am
The world’s highest-paid YouTube star, PewDiePie, has used the “n-word” during an online broadcast. The 27-year-old Swede - real name Felix Kjellberg - could be heard using the racial slur while he was playing a video game during a live streaming.
After using the term, he apologised and said: “I don’t mean that in a bad way.”
He has previously had to defend himself over allegations of anti-Semitism, and was suspended from Twitter for making jokes about so-called Islamic State.
In February, some of his videos were found to contain Nazi references or anti-Semitic imagery, which resulted in Disney cutting ties with him.
PewDiePie has more than 57m subscribers on YouTube.
He is reported to have made $15m (£11m) through YouTube last year - he gets billions of views per month and generates vast amounts of income from advertising.
He had been associated with Disney via Maker Studios, a company with a network of YouTube stars.
In February, Disney said that while Mr Kjellberg had a reputation for being provocative and irreverent, some of the videos he made were “inappropriate”. In one of the controversial videos, Mr Kjellberg paid two people through a crowd-sourcing website to hold up a sign which read “Death to all Jews”.
PewDiePie accepted the material was offensive, but said he did not support “any kind of hateful attitudes”. He said that the anti-Semitism claims were “insane” and “unfair”, adding: “I am sorry for the words I used as I know they offended people.”
YouTube cancelled the release of Mr Kjellberg’s new series Scare PewDiePie 2.
- BBC NewsBeat
