Schoolyard humor or ‘Nazi’ sexism? PC police come for German YouTuber
A German YouTuber and critic of Angela Merkel has been deemed a sexist Nazi and accused of trivializing violence against women, all over a game of ‘Kiss, Marry, Kill’ with his pals.
Rezo, a 27-year-old music producer, is a big deal in Germany. Amassing 1.17 million subscribers in little over a year, Rezo made waves this summer with an hourlong tirade against Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU party and its coalition partner, the left-wing Social Democrats.
The video, entitled ‘The Destruction of the CDU,’ gathered more than 16 million views, and earned Rezo a rebuke from the party itself, which said that “politics is more complicated than Rezo would have it.”
Now, the blue-haired vlogger is back in the news again, and this time for a far more trivial video. In ‘Kiss, Marry, Kill,’ Rezo and a pair of equally hip-looking YouTubers sort through photos of celebrities – male and female, deciding whether they’d rather kiss, marry, or kill them. ‘Kiss,’ in this case, means “f**k,” Rezo clarifies.
The game is a familiar one to bored schoolboys the world over. But bored schoolboys usually don’t get called “Nazis” for playing it. Internet moralists took particular offense to the vloggers’ discussion of one pregnant YouTuber.
“I can not kill pregnant women,” co-star Julien Bam said. Rezo’s other guest, Taddl, jokingly replied: “Double Kill!”
Also on rt.com Goodbye Ultima Thule, welcome Arrokoth! NASA renames distant space rock after woke outrage over ‘Nazi connotations’Rather than joking, Rezo and his friends were perpetuating “a patriarchal system under which people really suffer,” according to one commenter who lists her pronouns in her Twitter bio. Another described the video as a “monstrosity” that promoted “femicide.” Feminist activist Sibel Schick accused the vlogger of “problematic behavior,” and naturally, several commenters called Rezo a “Nazi.”
Some supporters chimed in to defend Rezo, and the YouTube star himself offered to chat with one critic via Skype, an offer that she refused.
Before the latest controversy, Rezo was awarded a prize by an environmental organization for raising awareness about climate change in his ‘Destruction of the CDU’ video. He had been profiled by the New York Times and the Guardian, all while churning out similar ‘Kiss, Marry, Kill’ videos. However, the latest scandal demonstrates how fickle the favor of the internet is, and how quickly one joke can make today’s hero tomorrow’s Nazi.
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