Earlier this week, Disneycut ties with YouTube celebrity PewDiePie (a.k.a. Felix Kjellberg) after multiple videos were found to contain anti-Semitic content.
The star has since taken some of these videos down, and in a separate video posted to his channel Thursday, he makes some accusations of his own. “I understand that these things have consequences, this video is not me trying to justify that,” Kjellberg said at one point in the video. “They don’t call it jokes, they call it posts. I made a point that the media takes what I say out of context, they take that to use against me to portray me as a Nazi.”
Https://twitter.com/pewdiepie/status/832275311756718080
Kjellberg spends more than four minutes running through his history with media outlets like the Wall Street Journal, which first published the story about his videos containing anti-Semitic and Nazi imagery. He claimed that despite making a living from his YouTube videos, which have been collectively viewed more than 14 billion times, the money is not his main focus — a detail he alleged journalists focus on more than anything else. He added that he’s been “fighting back” against the media and click bait.
In the middle of his response, however, Kjellberg apologizes those who were offended by his videos.
“I am sorry for the words that I used as I know they offended people. I admit that the joke itself went too far,” he said. “I do strongly believe you can joke about anything, but I also believe there’s a right way and not the best way to joke about things. I love to push boundaries but I would consider myself a rookie comedian and I’ve definitely made mistakes like this before.”
He called this a “growing and learning experience,” but also said the reaction to his videos “has been nothing but insanity.”
After Disney’s decision to sever ties, YouTube canceled the second season of his original series and removed the PewDiePie channel from the Google Preferred advertising service.
PewDiePie ends by assuring his viewers that he’s “still here, I’m still making videos.”