Hitler-glorifying surges on TikTok and X as moderators turn a blind eye

Forget TikTok dance battles – millions are now tuning in for their daily dose of Holocaust revisionism, and AI-translated speeches from Adolf Hitler himself, a study shows.

Adolf Hitler invading social media is hardly a new idea. Back in 2015, German director David Wnendt released a movie titled Look Who’s Back, exploring just that. The black comedy portrays the chief Nazi coming back to life, and eventually back to power, harnessing the power of Youtube.

Life imitating art rings loud as social media gives the long-dead dictator of Nazi Germany multiple platforms and millions of listeners to spread his hateful ideology.

According to the latest analysis from the London-based international non-profit, The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), pro-Hitler and neo-Nazi content is on the rise, receiving tens of millions of views across major social media platforms.

“In assessing the rise of pro-Hitler and neo-Nazi content, ISD analysts found that content glorifying Hitler, questioning facts about Hitler’s intent, or including English audio versions of his speeches, received over 50 million views across X, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram throughout 2024,” the study said.

What’s perhaps most disconcerting is that not only do social media platforms spread Nazi ideology, but they quickly adapt to algorithms to trap users inside an information bubble consisting mostly of Hitler-glorifying and antisemitic information, the report’s author founds.

Thanks, Tucker Carlson

The ISD study, first reported by the Washington Post, claims that revisionist World War Two posts surged after right-wing personality Tucker Carlson, hosted historian-podcaster Darryl Cooper on his September 2nd show.

The interview with Cooper, who often portrays Adolf Hitler as a peacemaker, reached tens of millions online. The ensuing online controversy sparked a surge in pro-Hitler content, which the researchers believe could ride the wave of a general rise in antisemitism after the October 7th Hamas attacks followed by Israel’s retaliation.

The interview, initially promoted by X’s owner Elon Musk, focused on vilifying Winston Churchill, portraying the British Prime Minister as the main villain of the largest war in human history.

“Good guy Hitler”

White nationalists quickly jumped in on the action, accusing American schools of teaching the wrong version of history, peppering posts with slogans such as “fake news” and “vengeance by the Jews.”

The report’s authors note that the trend of downplaying the Nazis’ role in the Holocaust did not start with Carlson’s interview, but it did boost the spread of the narratively similar content.

Researchers note that many Hitler-glorifying narratives, often followed by supportive comments, align with another guest on Carlson’s show, Russian President Vladimir Putin. Specifically, ones concerning the double invasion of Poland, facilitated by the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact that divided Eastern Europe between the Nazis and the Soviets.

While debunked by historians, Putin’s claims suggest that Poland provoked the Nazi invasion, which cost the Polish state six million lives out of a population of 35 million. In this narrative, Hitler had no choice but to occupy “non-cooperative” poles.

Heil X

ISD analysis of how pro-Nazi content spreads via different social media platforms shows that Musk’s X is far more accommodating to it. Not only are pro-Hitler posts more easily accessible, but they also have a “significantly higher reach” compared with TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube.

“The content seemed to be more readily available and attained higher reach on X than other platforms assessed, with just 11 posts garnering 11.2 million views in a one-week period,” researchers noted.

Audio content most often features AI-translated Hitler speeches, where the dictator can be heard speaking in English. Meanwhile, visuals differ from platform to platform. While visuals on X primarily feature Hitler himself, TikTok videos include images of young Western influencers.

The Swastika bubble

According to the researchers, even though all popular platforms feature content supportive of Nazi policies, X, run by the free speech enthusiast Musk, allows it to penetrate far deeper. For example, researchers noted that engaging with several pro-Nazi posts quickly adjusts the algorithm to serve more of the same.

Researchers conducted a test and found that a staggering 52% of posts present in the ‘For You’ feed featured content including Hitler, praise of Nazis, or overt antisemitism (such as claiming anyone using an Israeli flag image or emoji is a pedophile).”

“The rapidity of the algorithm change, particularly when content included hateful iconography that should be easily identifiable by machine moderation (such as swastikas), is a stark example of the ability of algorithms to almost immediately create a filter bubble of harmful content, in violation of the platform’s own community guidelines when policies are not being consistently enforced,” researchers note.

The disastrous nature of allowing hate to permeate political narratives can be summed up with the words from a letter of Joseph A. Wyant, a US soldier, sent back to his father after visiting the Dachau concentration camp in 1945.

“This particular crime has been uncovered, Pop – but a worse crime seems to me to be the spreading of the thought that leads to this type of thing. It has happened on mass proportions here in Germany, but who knows how far the idea has spread, or where else it may break out?”