YouTube superstar Shane Dawson has been accused of anti-Semitism after several past videos emerged of him playing Adolf Hitler.
In one video, Dawson dressed up as Hitler says “We must all kill the Jews” before proceeding to read evil tweets about himself.
Shane Dawson called out for Anti-Semitism. I covered this extensively in my video on Shane—which someone attached to compilation. In 1st video, Shane literally plays Hitler. If anyone actually has gall to try to justify these jokes, are they Anti-Semitic? pic.twitter.com/BUdqkNL84I
— Def Noodles (@defnoodles) June 28, 2020
Another clip shows the YouTuber, dressed in drag, interviewing strangers in the street. He asks one man: “Say I wanted to get rid of, I don't know, all the Jews. How would I do that?”
The “kill the Jews” joke surfaces in yet another Hitler impersonation, and a fourth video apparently filmed in high school shows Dawson perform a Nazi salute while donning Hitler’s signature moustache.
“If anyone actually has gall to try to justify these jokes, are they Anti-Semitic?” inquired YouTuber Def Noodles, who published a compilation of Dawson’s jokes.
Another user wrote: “So, along with Shane Dawson being blatantly racist, and a pedophile, we can add anti-Semitic to the list. ‘Jokes’ about Hitler, Jews, and the Holocaust will NEVER be funny, and it’s things like this that normalized all the bullying that so many, including me, were a victim of.”
Dawson, who started out in 2005 and was once into edgy sketch comedy videos, found himself in a scandal last week after lashing out at the YouTube beauty community in a series of tweets about the infamous feud between beauty vloggers Jeffrey Star, Tati Westbrook and James Charles.
Following Dawson’s statement, which compared the beauty industry to a “circus”, users began to unearth his old bits and photos in which he played racial stereotypes, used blackface, or joked about paedophilia.
In one video which drew particular ire from social justice warriors, Dawson pretended to masturbate to a poster of Will Smith’s then 11-year-old daughter.
Dawson issued a 20-minute apology, admitting to having put out offensive content instead of dealing with his childhood traumas.
“When I say I hate that person, I mean it in the most intense way possible. I hate that person so much,” Dawson said of his past self. “That person was filled with sadness, filled with anger about their own issues, in the closet, constantly projecting on others. I don’t know ... that person is someone I don’t like seeing.”
