April 7, 2023: “Swipe up for Jihad: TikTok’s Starter Guide to Religious Hate Crime” by Talya Ackerman
Executive Summary
The lack of community guideline enforcement has made TikTok a breeding ground for unfettered hate speech. Violent messaging is easily proliferated to users through the app’s algorithm, which suggests related content that appeals to the patron’s perceived interests. Short-form videos separate TikTok from other platforms and increase the likelihood of accidentally stumbling upon a dangerous video. Brutality is spread through hate groups, including Jihadists and Nazis, while individual users engage in antisemitic and Islamophobic tropes.
Jihad Lover
Jihadist groups exploit child friendly TikTok effects to make their violent or inappropriate content more palatable. 2019 videos sourced from the Wall Street Journal demonstrated the Islamic State’s ingenuity in appealing to a less sought after demographic: young girls [1]. Videos of jihadists adorned with hearts and flowers–in accordance with traditional gender norms–were plastered on targeted “for you pages.” TikTok’s all- encompassing algorithm pedaled images of women in burqas carrying the Islamic State Flag, captioned “Jihad Lover” [2]. Some of these videos were spliced with footage of Western men riding horses, appealing to the glorification of Western culture [3]. Indoctrinating young women with jihadist messaging ensures a generation of women that regurgitate these ideals and support their brothers, sons, or husbands should they join the Islamic State.
Videos found in 2021 by the Institute of Strategic Dialogue were less child-proof. These videos entailed drone footage of car bombings, beheadings, and suicide bombers [4]. The author of the ISD report found the content with ease. Since the publishing of ISD’s report, the specific videos were deleted. Restrictions can be circumvented by changing the spelling of banned keywords, such as typing “i$is” instead of “isis.” Simply typing “Hezbollah” in the search bar conjures more videos of beheadings, war footage and recruitment videos. Knowing how to evade the poorly enforced restrictions could allow a young child to find this footage and follow the wrong path provided by the algorithm.
Nazi Ideology
Focus will be placed on individuals and Nazi motifs rather than established groups. Individual accounts enact symbols and popular figures to proliferate antisemitism, while also using editing tactics similar to Jihadists. These tools include overlaying videos with trendy songs, which make the videos easier to find when the song is searched for. Users popularize Esoteric Nazism, which is rooted in the idolization of Hyperborea [5]. This mythological Greek land falsely represents an Aryan fairyland. Esoteric Nazism worships the swastika and the Sonnenrad, an innocuous Sun image that is distorted into a hate symbol. A popular video of Riley Williams, who was convicted for storming the Capitol on January 6th, displays the Sonnenrad hat while she performs the Sieg Heil [6]. To supplement these themes, clips of famous Nazis speeches circulate rapidly from the TikTok algorithm. Viewers can watch thirty second reels of Joseph Goebbel spitting vitriol against Jews in his classic speeches [7]. TikTok acts as a new propaganda machine to quickly brainwash young children who are exposed to Nazi messaging.
Six Million
Antisemitic content can be found within seventy-five minutes of scrolling after creating a new account [8]. Themes of ethnic discrimination, Jewish scapegoats, and holocaust denial are most prevalent. Similar to Jihadist word coding, using veiled language can assist in finding antisemitic videos. Another search term is “jewpilled.” This term is a play on the theme of “taking the red pill,” which signifies learning a difficult truth in a disturbing way. One video tagged with “jewpilled” shows a caricature of a Jewish man hallucinating gas chambers because he is labeled schizophrenic. There is dissonance among the TikTok hive mind regarding the existence of the Holocaust while simultaneously using it as a means to express antisemitism. For example, searching “six million,” yields videos that claim, “one oven can’t cook six million cookies,” in a less overt reference to holocaust denial.
Islamophobia
A significant portion of Islamophobic videos found were revering Ratko Mladic, a Bosnian Serbian general responsible for the mass execution of Bosnian Muslims [9]. One video depicted a soldier in a trench captioned, “Me when my Muslim friend tells me Jesus is a prophet and I’m going to go Ratko Mladic on him.” The search term, “Ratko Mladic,” is not regulated. Some comments outright denied the war atrocities. Different videos claimed that all Muslims were terrorists and were taking over Europe, playing into modern eurocentrism [10].
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Bibliography
[1] Wells, Georgia. “Islamic State Turns to Teen-Friendly TikTok, Adorning Posts With Pink Hearts –
WSJ.” The Wall Street Journal. Accessed April 3, 2023. https://www.wsj.com/articles/islamic-
state-turns-to-teen-friendly-tiktok-adorning-posts-with-pink-hearts-
11571680389?mod=article_inline.
[2] Wells, Georgia. “Islamic State Turns to Teen-Friendly TikTok, Adorning Posts With Pink Hearts –
WSJ.” The Wall Street Journal. Accessed April 3, 2023. https://www.wsj.com/articles/islamic-
state-turns-to-teen-friendly-tiktok-adorning-posts-with-pink-hearts-
11571680389?mod=article_inline.
[3] Wells, Georgia. “Islamic State Turns to Teen-Friendly TikTok, Adorning Posts With Pink Hearts –
WSJ.” The Wall Street Journal. Accessed April 3, 2023. https://www.wsj.com/articles/islamic-
state-turns-to-teen-friendly-tiktok-adorning-posts-with-pink-hearts-
11571680389?mod=article_inline.
[4] O’Connor, Ciarán. “Hatescape: An In-Depth Analysis of Extremism and Hate Speech on TikTok.”
Institute for Strategic Dialogue, August 24, 2021. https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2021/08/HateScape_v5.pdf
[5] O’Connor, Ciarán. “Hatescape: An In-Depth Analysis of Extremism and Hate Speech on TikTok.”
Institute for Strategic Dialogue, August 24, 2021. https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2021/08/HateScape_v5.pdf
[6] O’Connor, Ciarán. “Hatescape: An In-Depth Analysis of Extremism and Hate Speech on TikTok.”
Institute for Strategic Dialogue, August 24, 2021. https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2021/08/HateScape_v5.pdf
[7] O’Connor, Ciarán. “Hatescape: An In-Depth Analysis of Extremism and Hate Speech on TikTok.”
Institute for Strategic Dialogue, August 24, 2021. https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2021/08/HateScape_v5.pdf
[8] Rawnsley, Adam. “TikTok Served Nazi Propaganda, Jan. 6 Committee Found – Rolling Stone,”
January 5, 2023. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/tiktok-served-nazi-
propaganda-jan-6-committee-found-1234656268/.
[9] O’Connor, Ciarán. “Hatescape: An In-Depth Analysis of Extremism and Hate Speech on TikTok.”
Institute for Strategic Dialogue, August 24, 2021. https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2021/08/HateScape_v5.pdf
[10] O’Connor, Ciarán. “Hatescape: An In-Depth Analysis of Extremism and Hate Speech on TikTok.”Institute for Strategic Dialogue, August 24, 2021. https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-
content/uploads/2021/08/HateScape_v5.pdf
