Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

PewDiePie Rescinds $50,000 Donation To ADL After Fans Object

(JTA) — The popular video blogger PewDiePie announced a donation of $50,000 to the Anti-Defamation League, then rescinded it a day later after fan feedback.

PewDiePie, whose name is Felix Kjellberg of Sweden, made the announcement of the donation on Wednesday during an online celebration of surpassing 100 million subscribers, saying he wanted to get past previous “controversies.”

“I made a lot of mistakes on the way but I’ve grown. I feel like I have at least. and I feel like I’ve finally come in terms with the responsibilities I have as a creator. 100 million subs too late,” he said during the announcement, “but, you know.”

Among those were in February 2017, when Disney and YouTube distanced themselves from PewDiePie after he broadcast a video of two South Asian men dressed in green loincloths holding a sign reading “Death To All Jews.” The video was viewed more than 6 million times before it was removed by Google, which owns YouTube. In addition, the shooter in Christchurch, New Zealand, said “Subscribe to PewDiePie” before carrying out his attack last spring.

Among the comments from his followers panning the donation were suggestions that he was blackmailed by the ADL in order to be in good standing again on YouTube and in the media, implying that Jews control the media. They also objected to him giving money to an organization that has criticized him.

In a tweet that has since been removed, but preserved in screenshot, the video blogger said: “Making a donation to the ADL doesn’t make sense to everyone, especially since they’ve outright spoken against me. I think it’s important, this just isn’t my fight anymore.”

PewDiePie said Thursday 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 percent my fault,” he said.

He said he still plans to donate the money and will take his time deciding.

The ADL said in a statement that it had found out about the donation when it was announced on PewDiePie’s channel and had not received any personal communication from the celebrity.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.