Over the past month, Meta has been undergoing a MAGA metamorphosis. In early January, internal memos outlining updates to Meta’s content moderation policy indicated a new willingness to tolerate hate speech and anti-LGBTQ+ content, including statements such as “Immigrants are grubby, filthy pieces of shit,” “Blacks are more violent than whites,” and transgender people are “mentally ill.” Meta’s concerning policy changes over the past few months include blocking teens from searching for LGBTQ+ related materials, a move Meta described as an “error,” and, in January, suspension of their fact-checking program, justifying it as a choice favoring “free expression” against “censorship,” apparently falling in line with President Trump’s views about online speech. The company also removed nonbinary and trans themes from its Messenger app, and scrapped their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) program.
In this new more permissive online environment, an investigation by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) has discovered neo-Nazi activity flourishing on Instagram, including degrading hate speech, antisemitic conspiracism, and even Nazi symbols being used to sell merchandise.
Meta’s policy on hateful conduct still supposedly prohibits content that supports political exclusion (such as women’s right to vote), “harmful stereotypes historically linked to intimidation or violence,” which includes claims that Jews “control financial, political, or media institutions,” mocking hate crimes, and “dehumanizing speech” that generalizes groups to “animals, pathogens, or other sub-human life forms.” Additionally, Meta’s Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy forbids the “glorification” of “violent or hateful acts of a designated entity,” and “celebrating the violence or hate of a designated entity.” It also targets and removes the “glorification, support, and representation” of “hateful ideologies,” which specifically include “Nazism,” “White Supremacy,” “White Nationalism,” and “White Separatism.”
But GPAHE’s investigation into Nazi content seems to indicate the company is not taking their own rules very seriously, as Instagram accounts have recently been posting overtly hateful material that collects hundreds of thousands of likes. In some cases, this content is being used to make money through digital storefronts accessible from Instagram.
Perhaps most concerning is that Instagram accounts are using Nazi content to advertise their storefronts, which are usually linked in the “bio” section of their profiles. For example, an account called european_victory, with over 2,000 followers, posted a reel on January 27 boasting over 26,000 likes, showing an apparent quote from chess player Bobby Fischer saying that “Jews are a criminal people.” In the reel, the account uses the “beverage box” emoji, used colloquially to say “juice,” to cover the word “Jew.” Using two similar-sounding words, like “Jew” and “juice,” to espouse antisemitism makes dog-whistling easy and provides a capable means of avoiding content moderation.
In another post, made on the same day to capitalize on their previous post’s virality, the account advertised t-shirts with the Totenkopf (Death’s Head) symbol, which was used during Hitler’s Third Reich as a symbol of the SS. The accompanying caption, “never lose your smile,” is used in conjunction with the symbol and also as a “motivational” phrase for neo-Nazis to spread their hateful ideology. The storefront, powered by Shopify and accepting payments from major credit card companies, sells clothing with the Totenkopf, Black Sun, a symbol also used by the Nazis, “good night left side,” which is a violent call to action against their political enemies, and “Make Europe Great Again,” a slogan popularized by the European far right, and pushed by Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán’s political advisor, Balázs Orbán.
The account “european_victory” advertises a shirt with the Totenkopf symbol, which was used by Hitler’s SS. The account links to a storefront selling the shirt on its profile page. (Source: Instagram)
Another Instagram account using white supremacy to sell merchandise is whitemen_hub, which describes itself as “pro-white,” a self-identifier used by neo-Nazis and white supremacists. The account has around 12,000 followers. One post, with over 2,000 likes, created on January 15 with the caption “when mass deportation fails and someone suggests 🚿🧼🔥,” was responded to by commenters as meaning “mass shower time,” and the “final solution,” the latter term was used by Hitler to justify his genocidal rampage against Jews and other minorities. This historical context leaves little doubt about the true meaning of the post – encouraging genocide against migrants in the United States.
Whitemen_hub posts a reel encouraging genocide as an alternative to Trump’s mass deportation plan, with commenters expressing their support (Source: Instagram)
To drive their point home, whitemen_hub included Erika, a song used by Nazi armed forces during World War II, as the post’s attached audio. Instagram has a feature allowing users to add audio to their content, which content creators use to bolster their views since the platform “favors content that incorporates its built-in tools.” Shockingly, Instagram has allowed at least four variations of Erika into its audio database, which have collectively been used in over 17,000 reels.
In Instagram’s “Audio” tab, there are four variations of the Nazi-era “Erika” military song (Source: Instagram)
The profile also links to a storefront powered by Shopify. Clothing advertised includes t-shirts that say “save a child kill your local abortionist” “repeal the 19th Amendment” (The 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote), “Was Hitler Right?,” a shirt depicting Elon Musk’s “Nazi salute,” a t-shirt called the “Sabrina Carpenter heil,” referring to the pop star and showing her holding her arm up (Carpenter is vocal about being anti-racist, saying “nobody is born racist, it is taught and if you can learn it, you can unlearn it. you must unlearn it, we must teach others to unlearn it), and a shirt titled “It’s the jeuice fault,” using the same dogwhistle as european_victory by equating the “beverage box” emoji, or “juice,” to “Jews.”
From Instagram, users can navigate a storefront, platformed by Shopify, advertising extreme racism and neo-Nazi symbols, including one that falsely implies pop star Sabrina Carpenter did a Roman Salute. Carpenter has, in fact, used her platform to promote anti-racism. (Source: Ballzwear)
These accounts aren’t limited to English-speaking countries. libreria vigente derrota mundial, a Spanish-speaking account, posts Hitler quotes and claims of a “Semitic Aristocracy” (i.e., Jews) who plan to “destroy Europe.” The account links to their Telegram channel, which shares antisemitic content blaming Jews for the COVID-19 pandemic and calling them “the enemies of all mankind,” and a digital storefront. The storefront sells books under categories such as “Adolf Hitler,” “gender ideology,” “Facism,” “National Socialism,” and “Holocaust Revisionism.”
Instagram is also filled with viral hateful content that doesn’t link back to digital storefronts. Hate symbols, especially the Black Sun, are easily found on the platform, including a January 17 post by muscular.jew2.0, which amassed over 143,000 likes. Some users commented “TND,” meaning “total n****r death,” along with several variations targeting other communities, such as “TKD,” meaning “total k*ke death,” “TMD,” meaning “total Muslim death,” and “TFD,” meaning “total fa***t death.” The same user made another post on January 19 featuring a cat with its arm in the Roman Salute position with a Black Sun behind it. That post got over 22,000 likes.
Reel on Instagram with over 143,000 likes depicting George Floyd, who was murdered by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, edited to look like the comic book character Cyborg with a Black Sun behind his head. (Source: Instagram)
Accounts advertising real-world activities by neo-Nazis, along with people involved in white supremacist “activism” are also on Instagram. Rob Primerano (“Rob Primo”) of the Canadian white supremacist movement Diagolon, who has over 80,000 followers, uses the platform to spread neo-Nazi content. After Elon Musk’s “gesture,” which was embraced by neo-Nazis as a Roman Salute, Primerano made a post saying “I didn’t have Elon tossing up Romans on my inaguration (sic) bingo card today. We are SO back! HAIL VICTORY 🫡 Blood & Honor!” Hail Victory is the English translation for “Sieg Heil,” a Nazi slogan. Similarly, “Blood & Honor” (“Blut und Ehre” in German) was popularized by the Nazi Party as a slogan for the Hitler Youth. More recently, Blood & Honor represents a neo-Nazi skinhead group of the same name banned in several countries including Canada, Germany, Russia, and Spain. Primerano has also advertised the activities of the white supremacist Patriot Front, White Lives Matter (WLM), and the Australian neo-Nazi National Socialist Network.
Rob Primerano (“Rob Primo”) makes a post to his 80,000 followers saying “HAIL VICTORY,” which is the English translation of the Nazi “Sieg Heil” slogan (Source: Instagram)
In Australia, an account with over 1,500 followers called “political_soldier” advertises the logos and actions of neo-Nazi Thomas Sewell’s National Socialist Network. Nazi symbols such as the Black Sun and of the transnational neo-Nazi Active Clubs, German neo-Nazi group Der III Weg (The Third Way), and the American white nationalist Patriot Front movements are all advertised on one post captioned “Invaders must die👌🏼.” Other posts feature Australian neo-Nazis like Jacob Hersant and Joel Davis. The “political_soldier” account includes “WH1T3 M4N, FIGHT BACK !” and two links on its profile, one to the National Socialist Network’s Telegram page, which advertises their group’s activism, and the other to their personal Telegram page, which is also filled with neo-Nazi content.
While online Nazis have capitalized on Meta’s recent policy changes, neo-Nazi content isn’t a new problem for Instagram. Posts from 2024 indicate Meta allowed content advertising the neo-Nazi propaganda film Europa: The Last Battle, which amassed over 6,000 likes. The account responsible for posting the content has almost 30,000 followers. Another post from July 2024 uses a euphemism to target Muslims (depicted as mosquitoes, which is against Meta’s hateful conduct policy banning comparisons of communities to insects), borrowing from the “TND” moniker, meaning “Total n****r Death,” and replacing it with “TMD” to mean “Total Muslim Death.” Black Sun imagery has shockingly been allowed to fester even before these policy changes, with several posts featuring the symbol dating as far back as 2021.
Meta’s clear history of allowing the proliferation of Nazi imagery on Instagram, and even institutionalized white nationalist content on Facebook, reflects a growing acceptance of hateful online content in the United States and abroad. Meta should enforce its hateful content rules and stop being complicit in the spread of extremist and antisemitic materials.
