Despite the denials of the billionaire who owns X, a key social network in the reconquest of the US president for his second term, the return of a favorable speech to Nazis ideas and glorifying Adolf Hitler multiplied, despite the fact that the world celebrates this year the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.
If there are no figures to quantify this phenomenon with precision, the non -suppression of more than a third of the hate messages in social networks suggests the reach of this phenomenon, which certain specialists emphasize.
“On the number of people who are, say, fans of the myth of Adolf Hitler, we have no specific figures, but since Trump’s arrival in power, we see online an impression of favorable figures for Hitler, or who have a position of relativization of their role during World War II,” explains the France Mendès, reading, reading associated with Paris and Co.
The rehabilitation of neo -Nazi profiles in question
For this false information specialist, who also participates in the Conspiracywatch project and in the Franceinfo Plurama program, the acceleration is “significant”, and even more specifically linked to the arrival of Elon Musk in the political game.
Because Elon Musk’s Nazi salvation is ultimately one more piece in a political machine that has forged, carefully, for many months. During Twitter repurchase, which has since become X, the businessman made his fight for total expression freedom, although in variable geometry, his fight.
But, above all, it also operated in a political turn at 180 degrees multiplying hate speech and interacting very voluntarily with faces of the US extreme right, then global.
With Donald Trump, he found the candidate that allows him today to defeat the thought, according to him. But if the US president has his role as head of state for him, it is the scope of Elon Musk’s publications what he now raises questions. Because if in the United States, freedom of expression is much more important, one can do Nazis greetings or glorify the white race in public space, in Europe, these acts are mainly considered as a criminal offense, which can increase up to five years in prison and 45,000 euros.
As well as fascist greeting, it perhaps considered a crime if it constitutes a risk of public order, the European Union said in February 2024.
This does not prevent multimillionaire speeches from having a globalized reach, impossible to circumscribe.
“The greatest influential people radiate through social networks come from the United States, visibly due to the cultural abyss that exists between Europe and the United States related to the first amendment. [concernant entre autres la liberté d’expression, ndlr]”Tristan Mendès France adds.
Growing indirect influence thanks to social networks
These influential, such as Elon Musk and their 200 million subscribers in X, take advantage of their popularity that has become possible thanks to the algorithm modified by the entrepreneur, to bring their hate messages far beyond the borders of the US Constitution. “This indirectly excites part of European public opinion, most of the time the most radical,” continues the researcher.
In addition, Donald Trump and Elon Musk have another common point: the two men regularly come to open the “Overton window” in general, saying that more crazy things so that the previous idea is finally considered more acceptable.
“Elon Musk has participated more specifically in the opening of an Nazi Overton window,” adds the academic, “which has rehabilitated the neo -Nazis accounts, and with what is similar to Nazi greeting, he is the most followed account of the planet and the head of X, of which he becomes the acceptable cursor for all users of the platform.”
For Tristan Mendès France, it is the way in which users, even those that are not acquired in their cause, see the publications all rounds of the billionaire, which can have an impact on the way in which the public will react to the rehabilitation desired by Adolf Hitler’s worshipers and Nazism.
When Elon Musk puts himself on the side of the German party on the extreme right, considered “extremist”, AFD, he also does so from his social network. Therefore, he transmitted many times the idea that Adolf Hitler was “socialist” (therefore, he left), as AFD could do, and did not hesitate to transmit or interact with memes in Nazism.
In 2024, more than 610,000 publications had amplified racist comments shortly before the US elections, without being moderate.
Elon Musk has become “a facilitator”
“Without promoting Nazism as such, Elon Musk becomes a scale of magnitude and viralization, even if he is not the only one,” he said.
Other influencers are in the same niche, and have a place of choice in X. This is the case of Alex Jones, founder of Infowars, who transmitted conspiracy theories that led to its closure, or even Candace Owens, Pro-Trump and follower of false information. Tristan Mendès France is concerned about the speech of “relativization” and the “rewriting” of the history of Nazism, with the sole purpose of acquitting Hitler’s acts during World War II.
Among the other figures, supported by Elon Musk and bent by Donald Trump, is also Joe Rogan. The influential animator of the podcast that bears his name, and who is the most popular in the world, and signed exclusively in Spotify, is no longer hidden to invite personalities disputed to question historical facts.
During a podcast transmitted in early April 2025, he received the Douglas Murray conspiracy columnist to support his idea that Winston Churchill was “the true villain” of World War II, and that the Nazis would never have intended to “kill millions of people.” An excursion that made the English conservative camp jump, very attached to the figure of the former prime minister.
But X is not the only interested platform: in September 2024, the Sky News channel revealed that more than 70,000 content, which represents 21 million “likes” that the glorifiers sounds that Nazism was accessible in Tiktok.
“It is not the role of historians to be influential”
“To viralize this content on social networks based on the American reading of freedom of expression, mechanically nourish communities that could be marginal in Europe, and will give them a second breath telling them that they are no longer so marginal,” said Tristan Mendès France.
Faced with these speeches, we cannot say that there is a crowd. Whether on televisions, newspapers or social networks, it is the lack of trained historians to respond to these attacks against a very real story that allows the extreme right of finding a real predilection camp.
“Let’s say that most historians who can bring a contract, is their role, or their specialty, which becomes influencers on social platforms,” says Tristan Mendès France, “is first of all researchers, but it is like health professionals during the COVVI-19 period.”
The fault of the trivialization of virulent debates, according to this specialist in digital culture, which is well established in the various social networks. Talking on these platforms is “risk” and “must have a thick leather.”
For those who do not hesitate to use the youtubeur noted in the standard bearer of the rational historical discourse, it is this difficulty in making the facts proven and impregnable against the omnipotence of influential people and personalities of the extreme right contribute to the trivialization of relativism. “It is never easy to be exposed to this type of speech on social platforms, for the simple reason that one gets directly in contact with those we denounce, which is not the case when universities works. Without forgetting the effect of the community that implies aggression.”
Tristan Mendès France is not tired: “It’s exciting although worried about observing,” he believes, “is a thermometer of the state of a society.”
And in the case of the United States and somehow in Europe due to the globalization of online information about platforms, this can also testify a brutalization of the debate and with it, “greater visibility of the disintegration of a society,” he concludes.
Source: BFM TV
