Sacha Baron Cohen sees Tiktok as a hotbed of Jew-hatred
Young US-American supporters of Palestine 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.
British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen has accused the short video platform Tiktok of creating the biggest anti-Semitic movement since the Nazi era following Hamas' attack on Israel. At a virtual video meeting, the "Borat" actor confronted leading US managers of the platform with examples of Jew-hatred that are currently flooding Tiktok. According to a report in the "New York Times", Cohen said that Tiktok could flip the switch at any time and stop the anti-Semitism. "Shame on you," he called out to the managers.
Together with actresses Debra Messing and Amy Schumer, Cohen demanded that those responsible take effective countermeasures. "Hamas terrorists were able to behead young people and rape women on October 7 because they were fed images as children that incited hatred," 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 could 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 users of Tiktok 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 having prevented this. Prior to this, Tiktok had already found itself in need of an explanation because thousands of US-American Palestine supporters were celebrating a 20-year-old anti-Semitic pamphlet: in it, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden describes the terrorist attacks of September 11 as an anti-Zionist liberation strike and calls for further violence. Young users posted videos in which they said that reading the bin Laden letter had "opened their eyes". The platform rejected the accusations that this was a trend.
Tiktok must fear the suspicion that it deliberately promotes pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli content via its powerful feeds. The platform belongs to the Chinese internet company Bytedance. Even before the war in Gaza, the company was already under strong political pressure in the USA. This was due to concerns that Chinese authorities and secret services could use Tiktok to collect information about Americans and influence them politically.
Innovatively, Sacha Baron Cohen has highlighted the concerning rise of anti-Semitic content on TikTok, likening it to the scale seen during the Nazi era in Israel. The celebration of Osama Bin Laden's anti-Semitic views and calls for violence by young US TikTok users, as well as the proliferation of hostile comments towards Jews, underscores the issue of hostility towards Israel on the platform.
Source: www.ntv.de
