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Why is Holocaust denial rampant on Gen Z’s favourite news source?

Educational content creators on TikTok are fighting disinformation one myth-busting video at a time

February 28, 2024 12:23
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ByEliana Jordan, Eliana Jordan

7 min read

When Holocaust educator and TikToker Sofia Thornblad received a “Holocaust denial manifesto” in her DMs, she did what any responsible social media user would do: she reported it.

Thornblad, who runs a TikTok account where she posts informational videos about the Holocaust and her work as a Jewish Museum curator in Oklahoma, received the manifesto shortly after October 7. It was a hodgepodge of antisemitic disinformation, the very content her videos work to counter. But when Thornblad reported the message, TikTok said it did not violate community guidelines, and did nothing about it.

Thornblad is among a number of TikTokers taking to the platform to educate users about the Holocaust amid a darkening backdrop of rising antisemitism and Holocaust denial. Especially as more and more young people take to TikTok for the lion’s share of their daily news, the accuracy of its content becomes particularly crucial; on an app which has become a veritable breeding ground for harmful disinformation, content creators like Thornblad may just be heroes in a digital battle between good and evil, truth and deception. 

A 2020 survey of Holocaust knowledge among American millennials and Gen Z by the Claims Conference revealed that 63 per cent of those surveyed did not know that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, and over half of them believed the death toll to be less than two million. Nearly half of the respondents could not name a single concentration camp, and three per cent percent flatly denied that the Holocaust had happened at all.