Youtuber PewDiePie Pulls A $50k Donation To Jewish Anti-Hate Group After Alleged Fan Backlash
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A New YouTube Scandal
Controversial gaming Youtuber Felix "PewDiePie" Kjellberg is at the center of a scandal once again. After initially pledging $50,000 to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Kjellberg has pulled his donation after backlash from many of his subscribers.
He initially made the announcement during a video unboxing a special YouTube Play button when he reached 100 million subscribers, claiming that he wanted to move beyond past controversies.
Retracting His Promised $50K
In a video that he uploaded on Thursday, Kjellberg claimed that he "didn’t know a lot of things that surfaced throughout this whole thing about the charity."
"I made the mistake of picking a charity that I was advised to instead of picking a charity that I’m personally passionate about, which is 100% my fault."
In a now deleted tweet, Kjellberg claimed that "making a donation to the ADL doesn’t make sense to everyone, especially since they’ve outright spoken against me."
No Stranger To Scandal
Kjellberg still intends to donate the $50k, but has not announced which charity that he is going to patronize. As for the ADL, they released a statement on the matter:
"ADL learned about the potential donation from Felix Kjellberg when everyone else did: when he made the announcement on his channel earlier this week. We have not received any communication from him beyond that."
This is not the first time that Kjellberg has found himself in hot water. He drew criticism when he hired two men on Fiverr to hold up anti-semitic signs for a bit and was seen using a racial slur in a gaming video. Also, the meme "Subscribe to PewDiePie" was used by the Christchurch terrorist in 2019, although Kjellberg has worked to distance himself from that incident.
