Twitch streamer and famous YouTuber Zack “Asmongold” Hoyt has had his zackrawrr account banned after a racist rant about Muslims and Palestinians killed in Gaza went viral on social media. “My bad,” he shared on X (formerly Twitter) following an online backlash. “Looking back on it, I was way too much of an asshole about the Palestine thing.” His other Twitch channel, Asmongold, remains up.
In addition to playing games, Hoyt frequently livestreams extended chat sessions where he comments on other people’s YouTube videos or whatever topics are gaining traction on his dedicated subreddit. In the midst of a recent livestream, he began talking about Israel’s war on Gaza, which the Gaza Health Ministry says has killed over 40,000 Palestinians since it began just over a year ago following the October 7 attack by Hamas.
“If you want to consider a genocide as a systematic killing of a group of people they have genocide built into Sharia law right now so no I’m not going to cry a fucking river when people who have genocide that’s baked into their laws are getting genocided,” Hoyt said during a portion of the stream that was clipped and shared on social media (the original VOD doesn’t appear to be online). “I don’t give a fuck. They’re terrible people. It’s not even a question. It’s crazy people don’t see it that way. They’d be doing the same thing.”
It is actually enough to twitch, as the ban supposedly only lasts 14 days. In my opinion that’s just not enough though. Genocide can never under any circumstances be justified. Every human is the same. I cannot compromise on that. Influencers like him have a responsibility to society equal to their reach and “influence” (and they truly do influence some people), and any vile comment from him is going to get many more followers than a vile comment from you. Even if he believes that genocide can be justified and that a people can be concentrated and murdered for decades and that’s okay, he should never be allowed to say it and get away with that. That’s a permanent infraction.