Luc Bernard, a French-Jewish video game designer and founder of the Holocaust education charity, has accused Instagram of “pushing pure Nazism”.
Bernard, who works with Meta on efforts to identify harmful content, claimed extremist videos which breach the platform’s own rules were attracting vast audiences.
He added he felt compelled to speak out despite his existing relationship with the technology giant.
“Social media is turning youth into Nazis. I work with Meta, this is public, and I don’t want to throw them under the bus, but I have no choice,” said Bernard, who set up Shoah education group Voices of the Forgotten.
“Instagram is pushing pure Nazism and it’s radicalising youth on a scale which we haven’t seen before,” he said.
His comments follow an investigation by The Telegraph, which identified numerous Instagram posts and reels – a short-form video facility that lets users record, edit, and share clips lasting up to 90 seconds – promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories, praising Adolf Hitler and denying the Holocaust.
Among the material identified was a post featuring a woman holding a placard falsely claiming that the Talmud instructs Jews to kill non-Jews, alongside the assertion that it was acceptable to be antisemitic. One response beneath it read: “Make antisemitism great again.”
Another video, generated using artificial intelligence, imagined Hitler alive in the present day, signing autographs as crowds greeted him enthusiastically.
A separate reel showed a scenic landscape accompanied by the caption: “The world if the Austrian painter had finished his job”.
Other content denied the existence of Nazi gas chambers. One post, featuring Nazi officers beside an artillery gun, carried a caption falsely suggesting that the construction of gas chambers was historically implausible. It had attracted almost 80,000 likes, according to the report.
Bernard said the volume of the material was alarming.
“Thousands of videos are racking up hundreds of millions of views that are pro-Hitler and they are all over Instagram,” he said. “These videos violate Meta’s own terms of service but are not being taken down.”
He warned that the platform’s recommendation system could compound the problem, exposing users who engage with one extremist video to a continuing stream of similar material.
“Instagram as a platform is pushing Holocaust denial. Even worse, it’s pushing pure support for Hitler with these videos accessible across Europe where a lot of this content is illegal,” he said.
Meta’s own policies prohibit Holocaust denial and content that promotes hateful ideologies such as Nazism. In 2020, the company announced that it would remove content denying or distorting the Holocaust.
The company has nevertheless faced scrutiny over its enforcement decisions. In January 2024, Meta’s Oversight Board overturned a decision to leave an Instagram post containing false and distorted claims about the Holocaust online, ruling that it violated the company’s hate-speech standards.
Bernard said the apparent failure to remove similar material demanded urgent action.
“I don’t know what’s happened to the moderation team. There seems to be no more moderation team left. Maybe there is a moderation team left, but it seems like they don’t care,” he said.
“Instagram’s own terms of service ban this material. So, we’re making a public demand: enforce your rules and remove it or admit that your platform has become one of the biggest engines for spreading Nazi propaganda in the world today.”
He added: “Either platforms should enforce their own rules or admit they are responsible for growing Nazism worldwide.”
Rachel Moiselle, a researcher at a Holocaust memorial charity, said the problem was particularly pronounced on Instagram reels.
“Overt Nazi antisemitism is an urgent and growing problem on Instagram, in particular Instagram reels,” she said.
Moiselle argued that users could be exposed to a succession of extremist content after encountering a single video.
“As soon as you come across one Instagram reel containing Nazi content, you will be served an endless stream of reels displaying Holocaust denial, praise of Hitler, and even incitement to violence,” she said.
She also warned that Nazi imagery, music and language were being used to promote commercial products, potentially helping extremist aesthetics reach audiences beyond explicitly political communities.
Moiselle said some users appeared to be evading moderation through coded language and audio that automated systems might struggle to recognise.
A Meta spokesperson said the company was investigating the content brought to its attention, adding: “There is no place on our platforms for people or content that promote violence or extremist views.”
Meta said its policies prohibit hate speech targeting people "on the basis of religion and ban content that praises, supports or represents terrorist organisations and organised hate groups".
The company added that it removes content violating its rules and disables accounts where appropriate.
To get more news, click here to sign up for our free daily newsletter.