Earlier this week, famous YouTube personality Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg got in trouble when The Wall Street Journal put together a story on a number of anti-Semitic jokes he’s made in his videos, including paying two men in India to hold up a “Death To All Jews” sign and paying a man dressed like Jesus to say that Hitler “did nothing wrong.” In response to the WSJ story, Disney and its Maker Studios brand—which produced the YouTube Red series Scare PewDiePie, among other things—cut ties with Kjellberg, and YouTube itself also pulled his channel from its Google Preferred premium advertising program and formally cancelled plans for a second season of Scare PewDiePie.
Now, PewDiePie has issued a half-hearted apology in a new video, saying, “I’m sorry for the words that I used, as I know they offended people, and I admit that the joke itself went too far.” He also notes that he believes people “can joke about anything,” but there is “a right way” to do it.
Of course, PewDiePie is famous now, which means he can never simply apologize for doing something wrong, so he continued his video by taking a page from another famous guy with a significant neo-Nazi following by attacking the media for reporting on the bad things that he did. He says the Wall Street Journal story took his jokes out of context so they could make a “personal attack” against him, adding that “old-school media does not like internet personalities” because they’re “scared” of the huge followings that people like Kjellberg have. Then, just to underline how sincere his apology is, he told The Wall Street Journal: “Try again, motherfuckers.”
You can see Kjellberg’s video below: