propaganda speeches by Adolf Hitler, without any context or historical reminder, generate millions of views on the platform

Videos featuring speeches by Nazi German Chancellor Adolf Hitler have proliferated on TikTok since the beginning of September, according to Media Matters.

This is the worrying observation of the American NGO Media Matters in a report published on September 17: speeches by Adolf Hitler, taken without context, generate millions of views on the TikTok application, making Hitler seem like the German chancellor. , founder of Nazism who killed millions of people during the 19th century, mostly Jews, for a man who would have been demonized, by denying or minimizing the seriousness of what he did.

These videos sometimes show archive images of Adolf Hitler, others stigmatize migrants, others a black background. What they have in common is that they all broadcast extracts of Hitler’s speeches, translated into English by an artificial intelligence, which reproduced the sound of his voice. All set to electro instrumental music with descriptions such as “just listen” Or “what if he had won”.

“Media Matters has identified several videos with these Hitler speeches translated into English since April. However, since the beginning of September, these videos have proliferated on the platform. TikTok has removed some of these identified videos, but only after they have hundreds of thousands, or even more than a million views”describes the report.

In one of these videos, Adolf Hitler talks about art and the decline of German culture. In another, the German chancellor explains that he was forced to go to war, that he tried to negotiate in vain, that he wanted to save women and children.

The dissemination of these propaganda speeches, without any context or historical reminder, represents real disinformation. This trivializes and gives excuses for the Second World War, Nazism, even the Shoah. Especially since Internet users adhere to it. Some comment on the posts writing that “he was a hero”, “maybe he’s not the bad guy in the story”, “I understand that this has never been translated before” or even that “the winners write history”. For them, these speeches show another face of Adolf Hitler, less horrible than the one described in school textbooks. Other Internet users, on the contrary, share these speeches to deride them, but they contribute to their dissemination.

The report shows that the TikTok application is struggling to combat the broadcast of Adolf Hitler’s speeches online, even though this violates its rules of use, because these videos are difficult to spot and often go under the radar. The audio extracts do not contain profanity or overtly racist or anti-Semitic remarks. In addition, it is not always specified that these are speeches by Adolf Hitler, sometimes he is referred to by nicknames “the great painter” Or “the great Austrian painter”in reference to his failed career as a painter and his birth in Austria.

The problem is that the sounds in these videos are repeated over and over again. The TikTok application allows you to take the audio from a video to put it in the background of a new publication. Usually, we see hundreds, even thousands of videos of young users dancing to the same music. But in this case, users film themselves lip-syncing speeches by the Nazi chancellor.

The problem does not only arise for extracts from Adolf Hitler’s speeches. According to an investigation by the British media Sky News more than 70,000 TikTok posts use sounds of Nazi speeches. These publications have been liked more than 21 million times.