“Biggest movement since the Nazis”
Sacha Baron Cohen sees Tiktok as a hotbed of Jew hatred
November 17, 2023, 9:23 p.m
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Young US Palestine supporters are currently celebrating Al-Qaeda ideology and spreading hatred of Jews. British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen accuses Tiktok of creating a huge anti-Semitic movement, the scale of which he compares to Nazi Germany.
The British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen has accused the short video platform Tiktok of having created the largest anti-Semitic movement since the Nazi era since Hamas’ attack on Israel. At a virtual video meeting, the “Borat” actor confronted the platform’s leading US managers with examples of Jew hatred that are currently flooding Tiktok. Cohen said, according to a report from the “New York Times”, Tiktok can flip the switch at any time and stop anti-Semitism. “Shame on you,” he shouted to the managers.
Together with actresses Debra Messing and Amy Schumer, Cohen demanded effective countermeasures from those responsible. “Hamas terrorists were able to behead young people and rape women on October 7 because they were fed images that incited hate as children,” Cohen said, according to the paper. Schumer, who herself has numerous followers on Tiktok, demanded that the slogan “From the river to the sea” be banned on the platform. The actress argued that it should be interpreted as a call for the destruction of Israel. Tiktok is the main platform for spreading hatred of Jews.
Osama Bin Laden goes viral
Cohen, Messing, Schumer and other Jewish Tiktok users described how a flood of anti-Semitic comments appeared under their posts, such as “Hitler was right” or “I hope you become like Anne Frank,” without Tiktok preventing this. Tiktok had previously found itself in need of explanation because thousands of US Palestine supporters were celebrating a 20-year-old anti-Semitic pamphlet: In it, Al-Qaeda boss Osama bin Laden describes the terrorist attacks of September 11th as an anti-Zionist liberation strike and calls for further violence on. Young users posted videos in which they said that reading the bin Laden letter had “opened their eyes.” The platform rejected the allegations that this was a trend.
Tiktok faces suspicion that it is deliberately promoting pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel content through its powerful feeds. The platform belongs to the Chinese internet company Bytedance. Even before the war in Gaza, the company was under strong political pressure in the USA. The background is concerns that Chinese authorities and secret services could use Tiktok to collect information about Americans and influence them politically.