A YOUTUBER known as Sargon of Akkad has claimed that feminist trolls bombarded him with death threats and tried to break up his marriage.

The online star, whose real name is Carl Benjamin, was at the centre of a firestorm last month after prominent feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian called him a “garbage human” and a “s***head” during a live panel at VidCon 2017, the world’s largest gathering of YouTube content creators.

5 Sargon of Akkad and Anita Sarkeesian are bitter enemies

5 A picture of the YouTuber Sargon of Akkad in the front row of a discussion at VidCon Credit: Anita Sarkeesian

Now the popular YouTuber has spoken exclusively to The Sun about the abuse he claims to have received following his public humiliation.

Sarkeesian launched her verbal assault on Benjamin during a panel called “Women Online” which discussed the abuse many females have to endure on social media.

The two online stars stand on two sides of an ideological gulf which has opened up between gamers and feminist "social justice warriors" who believe video games are riddled with sexism.

At the panel, Sarkeesian described the YouTuber as "one of my biggest harassers".

But Benjamin said the reaction to the incident shows that feminists are also "capable of whipping up a cyber mob to bully and harass".

“The idea that she has the temerity to come along and say ‘other people are doing this to me’ is just hugely ironic," Benjamin told The Sun Online.

5 Anita Sarkeesian, one of the world's most famous feminist critics of video games

Sarkeesian laid into Benjamin whilst he was seated in the front row of the audience after the moderator asked to discuss her own experience with harassment.

“If you Google my name on YouTube you get s***heads like this dude who are making these dumb-assed videos,” said Sarkeesian.

“I hate to give you attention because you’re a garbage human."

Sarkeesian is best known for her “Feminist Frequency” YouTube series, which looks at video games through a feminist lens and attempts to expose the "sexism" that she believes runs through the gaming community.

I’ve participated on YouTube livestreams with Benjamin and played video games with him online.

He first began to upload videos questioning her assertions because he believes they are inspired by “radical feminist theory that comes from the sort of darkest and most marginalised corners of academia".

5 A picture of Sargon of Akkad (left) taken at VidCon

He added: “Her criticism doesn’t warrant the level of celebrity that she has: it’s really not very good.

"It’s universally decried as one-sided cherry-picking."

The YouTuber claims he dissected the feminist’s arguments with rebuttals based on his experience as someone who played and understood video games, adding that he thought he could contribute to the discussion.

He claims to have received vast numbers of death threats after criticising her.

“I’ve had loads,” he said.

“I never bother recording them because if someone’s threatening [to kill me] it’s probably never going to happen, in my opinion.

"They’re probably just trying to get some stress off their chest.

“But I’ve had people saying to me: ‘You won’t live to see the end of the year.’"

The YouTuber told us that some of his detractors even tried to wreck his marriage.

He explained: “They met my wife on Facebook and they spun a bunch of lies about me."

Benjamin claimed the trolls tried to tell his wife that he made a living from being nasty to women online.

"The assumption was that my wife didn’t know how my family was supported, which is ridiculous," he added.

“Trying to break up my marriage, where I have a young son, is quite a shocking thing,

“And for me, that’s beyond the pale.”

Benjamin also spoke out against online harassment and said people should be free to discuss their ideas openly without it turning into a social media melee.

“I don’t agree with her criticisms but I don’t think she should be harassed,” he continued.

“That’s not the focus of what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the criticism.

"I don’t agree that video games are making people sexist.”

Despite the online backlash against him from feminists and Anita Sarkeesian’s public call to blacklist him from future events, Carl Benjamin insisted his VidCon experience wasn’t all bad.

The YouTuber said he reconciled with Laci Green, a popular feminist YouTuber with over 1.5 million subscribers.

Benjamin admitted subjecting Green to even harsher criticism than Sarkeesian.

5 A screenshot from a video in which Sarkeesian slammed games which treated 'women as rewards'

In a statement, Sarkeesian wrote a long explanation about why she called Sargon of Akkad a "garbage human being"

She wrote: "Carl is a man who literally profits from harassing me and other women: he makes over $5,000 a month on Patreon for creating YouTube videos that mock, insult and discredit myself and other women online, and he’s not alone.

"He is one of several YouTubers who profit from the cottage industry of online harassment and antifeminism.

"Together, these people have millions of followers who are regularly encouraged by the videos and tweets of these individuals to harass me and other women who make videos daring to assert the basic humanity of women, people of colour, trans folks, and members of other marginalised groups.

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"Together, these people have millions of followers who are regularly encouraged by the videos and tweets of these individuals to harass me and other women who make videos daring to assert the basic humanity of women, people of colour, trans folks, and members of other marginalised groups."

She added: "Now, he and his followers are acting as if me publicly calling him a 'garbage human' is the equivalent to what he has done to me.

"In truth, he and his followers cannot begin to imagine what it is to have to constantly beg for and fight for your basic humanity in a culture that fundamentally refuses to acknowledge it.

"He cannot imagine what it is to spend years and years being the target of floods of harassment and hate, and then to still go out there and keep fighting."