Draft:Save Europe (online movement)

  • Comment: Most sources talk about online neo-Nazism in general, not even mentioning this movement. The sources that do are user-generated. "Stuff" and other words are also informal for an encyclopedia. UserMemer (chat) Tribs 17:48, 20 November 2024 (UTC)


Profile picture used by far-right people, depicting a totenkopf and the text Never Lose Your Smile above

Save Europe (or Never Lose Your Smile, Aryan Classic) is a right-wing, ultranationalist, racist, neo-Nazi, Islamophobic and Anti-semitic movement on social media, mainly TikTok. The members of the movement are often associated with using racist acronyms and terms, having profile pictures depicting Totenkopfs, swastikas, promoting the idea that white people are superiour to other people, and other similar ideologies, or posting derogatory and racist videos or quotes on social media, often going as far as doing it in real life.

Background

edit

Neo-Nazism and racism has always been popular on social media and the internet, going as far back as to 2007[1] or even 2002.[2] The first appereances of this exact movement though go back to February 2023 and earlier. According Know Your Meme, the first video posted on TikTok using Nazi Germany imagery was by user @ineedmentalhelpfr59 on February 19th, garnering over 10,000 views and 700 likes. The first video using the hashtag #aryanclassic was posted by @havardbeistv2 on February 23rd, this time garnering over 50,000 views and 4,000 likes.[3]

What a typcial Save Europe video looks like

Imagery and general posts

edit

Members of the movement are known for posting derogatory content. The videos mainly consist of nature or city videos as background with a racist meme or quote in front of it and pop-music such as Häschenparty, Bailando or L'Amour Toujours, which has been turned into a completely racist song used by right-wing extremists especially after an incident in Sylt in May of 2024, when people celebrating on the island shouted racist terms such as Foreigners Out with the music playing in the background,[4][5][6][7] playing.[8][9] Common imagery used are sculptures by German artworker Arno Breker[10], whose name is also used in various edited songs including the sentence Zu Besuch bei Professor Arno Breker (Visiting Professor Arno Breker),[11] supposedly showing the "perfectly built blonde European Aryan" like in Nazi propaganda. Videos also show pictures of "failing pro-immigration and succeeding anti-immigration countries", for example certain pictures of violence in pro-immigration Britain and pictures of safe and clean surroundings in anti-immigration Poland. Far-right posts also very often include making fun of the 2019 Christchurch mosque shooting and other Islamophobic events, outright denying but still making fun of the Holocaust and depicting Jews as "controlling everything and everyone and being the cause for all bad on the world".[12]

Spread into politics and effect on young people

edit

Right-wing extremism on social media very often has a massive effect on younger people and politics, with there being a "right-wing wave on TikTok".[13][14] In 2022, around 13% of youth protection violationns in Germany were linked to political extremism.[15] These types of TikTok videos and posts also very often promote right-wing parties and ideas by often linking crimes to Muslim or African groups and taking statistics out of context or outright falsifying them to show that Black people "commit most of the crimes".[16] Right-wing parties, such as the Alternative for Germany, are promoted and shown as the "only option". Many accounts tend to post videos of overwhelming AfD-demonstrations to give the feeling that they are the strongest party and people support them.[17][18] In May 2024, German politician Maximilian Krah stated that "he was the most popular politician among young people and people could hear what he stands for on TikTok"[19] and that "real men were right-wing".[20] The Save Europe movement has also made its way into other parts of the world such as Southeast Asia, with #aryanclassic often turning into #austronesianclassic.[21]

Opposition

edit

The movement has a lot of backlash from both TikTok itself and its users. TikTok has started, alongside UNESCO, fighting against right-wing content.[22] People on the internet themselves also very often make fun of the way so-called "Save Europe Mfers" behave by posting videos directed against them and their ideology and calling them "newborn little edgelords", asserting the idea that they're very often radicalised small children and teenagers without proper knowledge.[23][3]

Codenames and Terms

edit

There are many different codenames and terms used by Neo-Nazis on TikTok:[24][25]

  • Totally Joyful Day/TJD: Total Jewish Death, supporting the death of all Jewish people like it was in the Third Reich
  • Totally Magnificent Day/TMD: Total Muslim Death, supporting death of all Muslim people
  • Totally Nice day/TND: Total N**ger Death, supporting the death of all Black and African people
  • Joo: Alternative deragatory term for Jew
  • Well 3x: Used when posting content based against another ethnic or religious group, asserting the idea that that exact group is responsible for a bad act
  • ☪️ancer: Using the symbol of Islam as a C when spelling Cancer, asserting the idea that "Islam is cancer"
  • What could this mean?: Used when posting content based against another ethnic or religious group, similar to Well 3x
  • Another Aryan Classic: Used when posting content based on the idea that "Aryan people" (not Indo-Iranian people) are superiour to others
  • Ausländer raus: Based on the Sylt incident from May 2023, when visitors where chanting it (translated from German to Foreigners Out)
  • The Sun will rise: Used when posting content based on the idea that "Europe will wake up and rise again", asserting that it'll become fascist
  • Fact Check Status: True: Asserting the idea that specific content (mostly racist) is the truth
  • 271k: Asserting the idea that only 271,000 people died in the Holocaust instead of 6 Million, based on a debunked Red Cross report[26]
  • 51: Used when making fun of the Christchurch mosque shooting, that resulted in 51 people dying[27]
  1. ^ "Neo-Nazi Groups Share Hate Via YouTube". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved 2024-11-10.
  2. ^ "Fighting Neo-Nazis on the Net – DW – 01/18/2002". dw.com. Retrieved 2024-11-10.
  3. ^ a b "Aryan Classic TikTok / Save Europa Mfers". Know Your Meme. 2023-05-08. Retrieved 2024-11-10.
  4. ^ Dazed (2024-06-18). "Save Europe: the alt-right movement spreading hate with dance music". Dazed. Retrieved 2024-11-10.
  5. ^ Boeselager, Matern von (2024-05-25). "(S+) Sylt-Video: Wie »L'amour toujours« von Gigi-d'Agostino zum Vehikel rechter Propaganda wurde". Der Spiegel (in German). ISSN 2195-1349. Retrieved 2024-11-10.
  6. ^ "Lange vor Sylt-Video: Neo-Nazis kapern Pop-Hit von Gigi D'Agostino". www.op-online.de (in German). 2024-05-27. Retrieved 2024-11-10.
  7. ^ based, ericksz (August 1, 2024). "TOP 4 BEST SAVE EVROPE SONGS". TikTok. Retrieved November 10, 2024.
  8. ^ "NazTok: An organized neo-Nazi TikTok network is getting millions of views". ISD. Retrieved 2024-11-10.
  9. ^ "How the Far Right Is Weaponising Rave Nostalgia". Retrieved 2024-11-10.
  10. ^ "Gigapedia: Hate Symbols and Online Codes Exhibition Glossary – Article | Foam: all about photography". www.foam.org. Retrieved 2024-11-10.
  11. ^ Aryan Classic (2023-11-02). arno breker x suffocation crystal castles (edit). Retrieved 2024-11-10 – via YouTube.
  12. ^ Nations, United. "Social media feeds Holocaust denial and distortion, finds UN report". United Nations. Retrieved 2024-11-10.
  13. ^ Widholm, Andreas; Ekman, Mattias; Larsson, Anders Olof (July 2024). "A Right-Wing Wave on TikTok? Ideological Orientations, Platform Features, and User Engagement During the Early 2022 Election Campaign in Sweden". Social Media + Society. 10 (3). doi:10.1177/20563051241269266. ISSN 2056-3051.
  14. ^ "Avdekket stort nynazistisk nettverk på TikTok: – Hvis vi ikke reagerer, så er det veldig farlig". www.aftenposten.no (in Norwegian Bokmål). 2024-08-17. Retrieved 2024-11-10.
  15. ^ Bildung, Bundeszentrale für politische (2023-10-11). "TikTok und Rechtsextremismus". bpb.de (in German). Retrieved 2024-11-10.
  16. ^ W, Semmi. "Fact Check: Do Black people really commit the most murders in America?". REVOLT. Retrieved 2024-11-10.
  17. ^ "Far-right AfD appears as strongest German party on TikTok – DW – 06/04/2024". dw.com. Retrieved 2024-11-10.
  18. ^ VSquare (2024-07-03). "How the far-right used TikTok to spread lies and conspiracies". VSquare.org. Retrieved 2024-11-10.
  19. ^ https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGdNCktQq/
  20. ^ "Wie die AfD auf TikTok junge Männer umgarnt". BR24 (in German). 2024-06-04. Retrieved 2024-11-10.
  21. ^ Sarwono, Jonathan Suseno (2023-11-08). "'Yup, Another Far-right Classic': The Propagation of Far-right Content on TikTok in Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines". GNET. Retrieved 2024-11-10.
  22. ^ https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/tiktok-joins-forces-unesco-and-wjc-combat-denial-and-distortion-holocaust-online
  23. ^ Poley, DaFunni (September 24, 2024). "Save europe". Urban Dictionary. Retrieved November 10, 2024.
  24. ^ "Rechte Symbole im Internet erkennen". TINCON. Retrieved 2024-11-10.
  25. ^ Campact-Team (2024-03-12). "Was haben Vampire, Affen und Kugelschreiber mit Rechtsextremisten zu tun?". Campact Blog (in German). Retrieved 2024-11-10.
  26. ^ "Fact check: This document does not relativize the Holocaust!". Arolsen Archives. 2024-06-28. Retrieved 2024-11-10.
  27. ^ "'Hero, role model, beautiful souls': NZ attack victims". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 2024-11-10.