Yesterday, Twitch suspended an account that belonged to streamer and famous YouTuber Zack “Asmongold” Hoyt after he made racist comments about the death of Palestinians in Gaza. Now, the YouTuber has responded to the temporary ban with a surprisingly clear-eyed assessment of the controversy and what led up to it.
“I don’t really want to mince words or, ‘oh I wasn’t justifying or promoting [the genocide],’” He said during a new 20-minute long video on the subject. “I said something about it that was disgusting.”
In a recent Twitch stream, Hoyt mentioned the war in Gaza and how he didn’t “give a fuck” about civilians killed by Israel, and added that Palestinians belonged to an “inferior culture in all ways.” The comments were clipped, widely circulated online, and roundly criticized by many viewers and other streamers. Twitch later banned Hoyt’s zackrawrr channel, one of his two main accounts on the Amazon-owned platform, reportedly for two weeks.
Hoyt walked the comments back in a response on X (formerly known as Twitter) that stopped short of a full apology. In his new YouTube video, however, he rebuked the remarks in much stronger terms. “I was making a criticism of religious extremism and I almost made an effort not to draw a distinction between the two things,” he said. “Whenever I categorize everybody in the area as this like group than I’m the asshole and I was the asshole.”
Hoyt, a life-long atheist, said that while he’s against religious fundamentalism he was wrong to generalize. He continued:
You know who reached out to me and they wanted to talk and have a conversation and see if I was okay?” he continued. “People who were Islamic and people who had fucking family in Palestine and how humiliating is that how absolutely humiliating is that and these ere the people I was trying to say were bad and I feel like such a fucking stupid asshole.
He also tried to situate the racist rant in a larger context of his career trajectory and a toxic online streaming culture that’s consumed his life over the last two years. ‘I’ve slowly been devolving into the most mean-spirited—I don’t really even know what the words is for it—just the most mean-spirited, rude, callous, psychopathic version of myself,” he said. “I look back at some of the things that I’ve said and done over the past two years and I don’t think I’ve been wrong about everything obviously but there have been ways that I’ve communicated and ways that I’ve acted that are indefensible.”
Hoyt, who originally blew up playing World of Warcraft, has a long track-record of fomenting toxic sentiment around certain games. Just last month he insinuated that diversity was ruing certain games. Now he plans to stop streaming so much to “fix my fucking life.”
That includes removing himself from the media company he co-founded, One True King (OTK), and its associated projects for the foreseeable future. When the Twitch ban is done, he said he’ll return but with an emphasis on fun content instead of being “mean.” Hoyt also said he plans to visit the Middle East at some point, while in the next breath calling cleaning his notoriously filthy bedroom as “penance” for his recent online behavior.
It’s unclear how much of the extended video is purely damage control, just another part of the content creator clout cycle, or a genuine attempt to reckon with his actions and accountability for them. “I’ll see you guys soon,” he said at the end of the video. “I’m going to try to take this time off to just really you know kind of fix my shit.”
Update 10/16/2024 4:10 p.m. ET: Hoyt followed up the video with a post on the Asmongold subreddit explaining the apology directly to his followers, saying that while he was sorry about the particular incident in question, he wasn’t going to back off other polarized discussions around gaming.
“The vibes and feel of the stream recently has been a lot more tense and a lot of that is my fault,” he wrote. “If you think that means my first stream back is going to be playing Dustborn and promoting Sweet Baby, I think you’ll be very disappointed. I’m not changing anything other than trying to be more positive and less mean-spirited.” This was a reference to an “anti-woke” backlash against an indie game that resulted in the developers getting death threats.
“Take a break,” responded one commenter. “Us Chuds will be here waiting for you to make streaming great again.” Hoyt wrote back, “Don’t worry, I’ll react to a DEI=DIE gaming video first day back to stream.”
Update 10/16/2024 2:20 p.m. ET: Added more context from Hoyt’s latest video.
