Pewdiepie dropped by Disney over YouTube star's anti-Semitic videos

Swedish vlogger has 53 million subscribers and earned $15 million last year

Disney has ended a deal with PewDiePie - the world’s highest earning YouTube star - after he posted allegedly anti-Semitic videos online.

Felix Kjellberg posted at least nine offensive videos to his channel in six months, including one that featured two Indian men paid to hold up a sign reading “Death to All Jews”.

The 27-year-old Swede has more than 53 million subscribers to his channel and his videos - which mostly feature him playing computer games - have been watched over 14 billion times, more than anyone else's on the site.

In 2016 he earned $15 million from advertising, sponsorships, appearance fees and merchandise. Part of his business was a joint venture with Disney’s Maker studios, agreed in 2014.

But he has now been dropped by the company for posting allegedly racist videos, which he described as “a joke gone too far”.

One features a man dressed as Jesus who says, “Hitler did nothing wrong”. Other videos show swastikas and photos of Hitler, while Mr Kjellberg wears a “Make America Great Again” cap.

In a 14 January video he played the Nazi Party anthem, and in a 5 February video he featured a Nazi salute voiceover.

A spokeswoman for Maker Studies told the Wall Street Journal: “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. Maker Studios has made the decision to end our affiliation with him going forward."

PewDiePie has taken down three of the nine videos. Google, the parent of YouTube, had previously pulled ads from at least one of them.

But YouTube did not remove any of the vlogs from the site, despite the platform's rule banning any video that “promotes or condones violence against individuals or groups based on race or ethnic origin (or) religion".

The specifics of the deal between Maker and Mr Kjellberg are not public, but it is likely that Disney helped with making merchandise, video production, and app creation, in return for a share of his revenue.

Mr Kjellberg will now have take care of these aspects of his business alone, or find a new partner.

On Sunday Mr Kjellberg wrote a blog post “to clear some things up”.

He said that his comments were jokes that have been taken out of context and that the video with the banner was created to show “how crazy the modern world is”. He said he used freelance marketplace Fiverr to hire two men in India to make the offensive sign.

“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,” he said. “Though this was not my intention, I understand that these jokes were ultimately offensive.”

“As laughable as it is to believe that I might actually endorse these people, to anyone unsure on my standpoint regarding hate-based groups: No, I don’t support these people in any way.”

PewDiePie’s comments have made him popular with neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, which has run a series of articles about the YouTuber, describing him as “our guy”.

“He could be doing all this only to stir things up and get free publicity,” wrote The Daily Stormer.

“Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, since the effect is the same; it normalizes Nazism, and marginalizes our enemies.”