Holocaust denial and falsification “are abundant on Telegram,” with nearly half (49%) of public content on the subject “denying or falsifying the facts,” says a UNESCO report released Wednesday in partnership with the World Jewish Congress (WJC).
“These posts, easily accessible to anyone looking for information on the Holocaust, are often explicitly anti-Semitic”, regrets Unesco after the study of 4,000 messages on the Holocaust published on five major platforms, including Telegram, “known for its lack of moderation and clear recommendations for its users”.
This rate exceeds 80% for messages in German on Telegram, and reaches nearly 50% for those in English and French, continues the UN agency, whose report was produced thanks to the work of the Oxford Internet Institute.
Effective moderation on other networks
Denial and falsification are also present on the other networks, but to a lesser extent because they are moderated: some 19% of Holocaust-related content on Twitter is Holocaust denier, compared to 17% on TikTok, 8% on Facebook and 3% on Instagram, underlines Unesco. “Obviously, when the platforms act in concert to tackle this specific form of hate speech, the results obtained are conclusive,” remarks Ronald Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress.
To escape moderators, Holocaust deniers now dress up their speeches with humor, points out the UNESCO report. By using “memes (images or photomontages declined massively on the Internet) humorous and parodic”, they attempt to “normalize anti-Semitic ideas, giving them the appearance of commonly accepted ideas”, he denounces.
Six million Jews died in the Holocaust, Hitler’s Germany’s attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe during World War II.