Anti-Semitism campaigner accuses Instagram of ‘pushing pure Nazism’
An anti-Semitism campaigner who works with Instagram has accused the company of “pushing pure Nazism” by hosting Holocaust denial on its platform.
Luc Bernard, the founder of the Forgotten Voices charity, which helps teach young people about the evils of the Nazi regime, said pro-Hitler posts were being openly viewed and shared hundreds of millions of times.

Despite working with Meta to identify harmful material, he said the platform was “pushing pure Nazism” and was helping to radicalise a new generation of extremists.
He said a huge volume of material violated Meta’s own “hateful conduct” terms of service but moderators were not removing it.
Analysis by The Telegraph found numerous posts and reels peddling anti-Semitic rhetoric or promoting pro-Hitler material.
In one post, a woman is seen holding a poster that reads: “The Talmud tells Jews to kill all non-Jews. It’s OK to be anti-Semitic.”
A comment underneath reads: “Make anti-Semitism great again.”
Another AI-generated film imagines if Hitler were still alive today, under the headline: “If he had been alive, this is how he would be treated”, with the German dictator signing autographs while adoring crowds welcomed him.
Another reel depicts a picturesque meadow scene with a river and mountains in the background under the headline: “The world if the Austrian painter had finished his job.”
In one Holocaust-denial post, an image shows a group of Nazi officers standing in front of a huge artillery gun with the caption: “World’s best engineers used wood doors on the ‘gas chambers’.”
The post has been liked almost 80,000 times and has numerous user comments that read: “There were no gas chambers.”
Campaigners point out that because of Instagram’s algorithm, once a user has clicked on one post, they are then bombarded by similar material.
Any content that is removed is quickly replaced by other reels, some of which carry a “For Educational Purposes Only” disclaimer to try to avoid removal.
Mr Bernard, a French game designer who focuses on Holocaust remembrance and Jewish history through digital media, accused Instagram of allowing the promotion of neo-Nazi material.
He said: “Social media is turning youth into Nazis. I work with Meta, this is public, and I don’t want to throw them under the bus, but I have no choice. Instagram is pushing pure Nazism and it’s radicalising youth on a scale which we haven’t seen before.
“Thousands of videos are racking up hundreds of millions of views that are pro-Hitler and they are all over Instagram. These videos violate Meta’s own terms of service but are not being taken down.
“Instagram as a platform is pushing Holocaust denial. Even worse, it’s pushing pure support for Hitler with these videos accessible across Europe where a lot of this content is illegal.”
‘Enforce your rules’
Mr Luc added that moderators did not appear to be removing content that violates Instagram’s terms of service.
He said: “I don’t know what’s happened to the moderation team. There seems to be no more moderation team left. Maybe there is a moderation team left, but it seems like they don’t care.
“Instagram’s own terms of service ban this material. So, we’re making a public demand: enforce your rules and remove it or admit that your platform has become one of the biggest engines for spreading Nazi propaganda in the world today.
“Either platforms should enforce their own rules or admit they are responsible for growing Nazism worldwide.”
Recommended
Auschwitz battles to preserve the truth against a surge of Holocaust denial
Read more
Rachel Moiselle, a researcher at a Holocaust memorial charity, said: “Overt Nazi anti-Semitism is an urgent and growing problem on Instagram, in particular Instagram reels.
“Nazism is significantly worse on Instagram than on other social media platforms, for example TikTok and X.
“As soon as you come across one Instagram reel containing Nazi content, you will be served an endless stream of reels displaying Holocaust denial, praise of Hitler, and even incitement to violence.
“Users are also using Nazi aesthetics, music and rhetoric to sell products on Instagram. This Nazism clearly breaches Meta’s terms of service on hateful conduct, which is one that strictly prohibits Nazi ideology, hate speech and the promotion of dangerous individuals or organisations.”
Using ‘coded language’ to avoid removal
She added that users were circumventing Meta’s terms of service “through coded language and, crucially, audio”.
“This indicates Meta’s AI models are not equipped to identify the methods through which Nazism is being promoted and spread on the app, and this issue must be addressed as a matter of urgency,” she said.
A spokesman for Meta said the company worked to remove any language that incited or facilitated serious violence.
The spokesman said: “There is no place on our platforms for people or content that promote violence or extremist views, and we have removed the pages that violate our policies.”

