Profane 14-Year-Old YouTuber Spreads Hate And Far-Right Conspiracy Theories
Image by youtube
A 14-year-old girl is the newest face of hate speech and conspiracy theories on YouTube.
A Bay Area high school freshman who goes by “Soph” on the platform has amassed more than 800,000 followers with videos making racist, Islamophobic and homophobic comments, BuzzFeed News reported. She also spreads conspiracy theories about George Soros, the Jewish liberal billionaire who has been become a boogeyman for the far-right. She has said her videos, which she edits, scores, and co-writes, are comedic.
YouTube reviewed Soph’s channel — which has been active since she was 9 — in the midst of Buzzfeed’s reporting and removed one video, which included a death threat against YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki. Others remain, like “Be Not Afraid,” a 20-minute video about ignoring criticism online, has Soph mockingly wearing a chador (a traditional Islamic headdress). Instead, she was given a “strike,” which banned her from uploading videos for a week.
Most of the videos feature hate toward Muslims, other forms of racism and fearmongering about pedophilia. Soph’s language is apparently worse on the gaming chat app Discord — she has written that she hoped for “a Hitler for Muslims” to “gas them all.”
At the end of “Be Not Afraid,” Soph had a message for her critics: “You could beg me kicking and screaming to stop disseminating the ideas I believe in, and it wouldn’t make a f—-ing difference.”
Alyssa Fisher is a writer at the Forward. Email her at fisher@forward.com, or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher
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