Disney Cuts Ties With PewDiePie After Posting a “Death to All Jews” Video

Disney’s Maker Studios has ended their deal with one of the most popular YouTubers of all time, Pewdiepie.

Why did Maker Studios break their relationship with Pewdiepie?

Apparently, the YouTuber posted a video on January 11th for which he paid two men to hold a sign that said, “Death To all Jews.”

In the “Death to All Jews” video, Pewdiepie hired people through the freelancer website Fiverr. Pewdiepie reportedly said: “I didn’t think they would actually do it.”

However, the two Indian gentlemen later apologized, “we really don’t know what the message meant when making the video.” But, that did not stop Fiverr from banning the two men. Pewdiepie has called for the freelancing service to un-ban the two Indian men from Fiverr. But, Fivver does not look like they will be unbanning the two gentlemen any time soon.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Pewdiepie worked independently, but this video was too much for the company.

“Although Felix has created a following by being provocative and irreverent, he clearly went too far in this case and the resulting videos are inappropriate,” said a spokeswoman for Maker Studios.

PewDiePie’s history of Anti-semitic jokes

PewDiePie has posted nine videos with anti-Semitic content since August, according to the WSJ. Three of the videos have been taken down. One of the videos featured a man dressed as Jesus saying, “Hitler did absolutely nothing wrong.”

Pewdiepie addressed the controversy on Tumblr. He said, “I think it’s important to say something and I want to make one thing clear: I am in no way supporting any kind of hateful attitudes.”

Pewdiepie added, “I make videos for my audience. I think of the content that I create as entertainment, and not a place for any serious political commentary. I know my audience understand that and that is why they come to my channel. Though this was not my intention, I understand that these jokes were ultimately offensive.”

What is Maker Studios?

Disney acquired Maker Studios three years ago for $675 million. Then in 2016, Pewdiepie threatened to leave the company. But, the studio allowed for him to create his own network called Revelmode, which is an entertainment media platform for him to create content.

Who is PewDiePie?

There’s no denying how popular PewDiePie is. The Swedish Youtuber became the most subscribed user on YouTube by 2013 and by 2017, his channel has had over 14 billion video views.