An Israeli activism group is taking on a neo-Nazi channel on the Telegram instant messaging platform and has pledged to do everything in its power to muzzle it.
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The "White American National Socialism" channel was created on Telegram a few months ago and regularly features Nazi content. It has about 5,000 followers.
The channel hawks the same old anti-Semitism, calling for genocide and the murder of Jews. Most recently, it featured a Christmas video depicting Hitler and inciting to murder Jews.
Another outrageous video depicts Jews allegedly controlling German banks back in the 1930s.
Online activism group Act-IL, which operated under the auspeices of the The Abba Eban Institute for International Diplomacy at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, has recruited thousands of activists to contact Telegram and request that if officially removes the channel.
The effort was only partially successful, as the anti-Semitic channel was suspended for merely a day.
The admins of "White American National Socialism" had also found out that Act-IL was responsible for their channel's suspension, and began harassing Act-IL members, calling on their thousands of members to do the same.
"After our initial success, we see that the channel is targeting us," Act-IL Chief Operating Officer Tom Berman said.
"It is a new and complex challenge, but we will not rest until we have dealt with the problem. I suppose we will succeed in the next few weeks.
"There is a clear and immediate danger here – I am afraid that those who have seen the content [of the deleted neo-Nazi channel] will recover it the next day and take action. With the help of modern diplomacy, we will continue to demand that Telegram adopt a policy against anti-Semitism and fight against calls for the murder of Jews."
The Act-IL initiative includes 27,000 activists and volunteers from 90 countries who work online against anti-Semitism. The program fights anti-Semitic and anti-Israel narratives on social media and in anti-Israel curriculums.
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