Sky News investigation finds over 70,000 TikTok posts using Nazi recordings

Warning: This story contains offensive language, including antisemitic content.

The rant by Adolf Hitler is full of antisemitic vitriol, saying that Jewish people are working to undermine peace in Europe.

What's unusual is the fast-paced music laid on top, and the fact that the combined audio is available on more than 100 posts on TikTok - and is attracting likes.

Sky News has found Nazi speeches and marching music have been turned into popular 'sounds' (audio used as the basis for multiple videos) on TikTok and are being used as soundtracks on at least 72,534 posts.

Videos using these sounds have attracted high levels of engagement on the platform, with some receiving millions of likes from TikTok users.

Examples include one post blaming Jewish people for the 'Islamisation of Europe', and another that contains the text "by mixing white with black, white disappears" next to a stock image of an interracial couple.

Nazi speeches

Searching TikTok between 2-3 September revealed 50,023 posts using sounds incorporating speeches from Nazis including Adolf Hitler and his chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

To appeal to a wider audience, most of the speeches are set to a type of music popular on TikTok called Drift Phonk - without the creators' permission or knowledge.

One post, which shows an image of a Nuremberg Rally accompanied by a Hitler speech, has been liked by more than 56,700 users.

In a shocking comment that has been liked 1,695 times, one user states "modern society absolutely needs him." Another says, "we miss you".

The most popular sound made using a Hitler speech viewed by Sky News has been used in over 10,300 videos.

Contacted by Sky News, an artist called Pastel Ghost whose music was repurposed to make Nazi content without her knowledge, said: "I was not previously aware that my music was being used in this way and I find it shocking and deplorable.

"My team and I are actively scouring TikTok and other platforms to take down all instances like this where my work is being used to promote hateful ideology."

Hannah Rose, hate and extremism analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told Sky News: "It's quite shocking but it's not particularly surprising. We know and we have known for a number of years that platforms have not adequately moderated the scale of hatred and extremist content on their platforms, which means that content such as Hitler speeches, such as antisemitic content, is across not only fringe things, but mainstream platforms as well."

Sky News forwarded the videos we found to TikTok.

A spokesperson said: "This content was immediately removed for breaching our strict policies against hate speech. We regularly train our safety professionals and update our safeguards to detect hateful behaviour on an ongoing basis, and we remove 91% of this type of content before it is reported to us."

Erika

A further 22,511 posts were found using sounds based on the German marching song 'Erika.'

While Erika does not have explicitly political lyrics, it has strong associations with the Nazi party, and German military during the Second World War.

Its composer, Herms Niel, joined the Nazi party in 1933. He wrote numerous songs for the military, including the SS, and served as conductor at the Nazi party's Nuremberg rallies.

The content of the posts using this sound often makes it clear it has been selected because of these associations, with many including images of Hitler and swastikas.

The images attached to the sounds when clicked and displayed on search results also heavily suggest the users are aware of this connection.

One version of Erika, attached to 405 videos, is labelled with a picture of a grinning skeleton resembling Hitler in front of a German flag.

Another recording of the song, used on 8,845 videos, is attached to an edited black-and-white photograph of Hitler.

Erika attracted widespread attention in the UK earlier this year. In June, the University of Warwick's Conservative Association faced criticism after attendees of a dinner hosted by the organisation were filmed dancing and singing along to the song.

At the time, the University of Warwick Conservatives Association issued a statement, saying it "wholeheartedly condemns the behaviour exhibited during this video and apologises for any offence that has been caused". The person who could be heard "actively singing lyrics" and several others involved were barred from future events.

High levels of engagement

To assess the popularity of posts using this audio, Sky News looked at the five most used sounds made from Nazi speeches and recorded the engagement on the 10 most popular posts using each one.

These 50 posts had a combined total of over 13.7 million likes.

When taken together, the posts with the most engagement on the top five Erika sounds had over 7.8 million likes.

The most liked post in these samples had over 2.5 million likes. It includes a recording of Hitler.

In total, videos using audio of Nazi speeches and recordings of Erika had over 21 million likes.

Sounds are a challenge for moderators

In August, Sky News reported that TikTok's 'sounds feature' was being used by ISIS supporters, with thousands of videos attached to audio produced by the group's internal media arm.

These sounds present a similar challenge for TikTok's moderators.

Most of the sounds using Nazi-related audio do not have explicit titles. However, when clicked on they instantly direct users to large numbers of posts using the same soundtrack.

In this way, users link extreme content easily while minimising their exposure to moderation.

Congregating under the radar

Dr Joe Ondrak, research, technology and policy lead at Logically, a company that monitors harmful online content, told Sky News social media users have known for a long time that audio content is harder for the platform to moderate.

On the harmful nature of this content, Dr Ondrak said "people are rightly worried about exposing new audiences to this and them going down the rabbit hole".

"I think the real function of content like this is more to round up the people that already understand the language."

"For those who already speak that language, this is a way to - under the radar - congregate."

On why the genre phonk has been adopted by people remixing Hitler speeches, Ondrak noted that communities of social media users adapt the musical styles they use as different genres and memes gain popularity.

-SKY NEWS