TikTok removes Polish far-right leader’s videos after antisemitism complaints in rare move
One of the videos removed from the platform showed Polish politician Grzegorz Braun denying the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz, one of the largest German concentration camps during World War II.
Social media platform TikTok has reportedly removed six videos from the far-right Polish leader Grzegorz Braun, including one related to an attack on a Jewish celebration.
Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita reported that one of the six removed videos shows a lit seven-branched candlestick that was doused with a stream of water from a fire extinguisher by someone who resembled Braun’s figure. The video also had the slogan, “if you’re afraid, you’re already a slave.”
Another video removed from the platform showed Braun denying the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz, one of the largest German concentration camps during World War II, located in Nazi-occupied Poland. Over one million people were killed at the concentration camp, and most are believed to be Jewish.
Braun finished fourth in Poland’s national election last year with 6.3 percent of the vote. In a December poll, his party saw support rise to 11 percent, according to local media.
Rzeczpospolita wrote that Braun's TikTok videos were removed after a complaint launched by the Never Again Association, an organisation that fights anti-semitism in Poland. The group did not immediately respond to Euronews Next’s request for comment.
In a video posted to TikTok called “Another ban,” Braun said he was being punished for sharing "pro-Polish" content.
The screenshot shared in the video appears to be from Braun’s TikTok account, which displays a message saying that his account is banned from the For You Page (FYP) recommendations and from his followers’ feeds until April 6 for “repeated policy violations.”.
“Additional violations may result in this period being extended,” the screenshot reads.
Euronews Next reached out to TikTok to confirm Braun’s suspension from the platform and the removal of his videos, but did not receive an immediate reply.
TikTok is among a list of social media platforms, including X, Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, and Google’s YouTube, which signed an EU pledge to fight hate speech.
The latest numbers from TikTok show the company removed 27.8 million pieces of content that violated its community guidelines, which includes hate speech.
What other political content has been removed from social media?
There are few cases where social media platforms take action to remove videos or posts written by political leaders or groups in Europe.
In 2022, Janusz Ciezyński, Poland’s former minister of digital affairs, said that Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, was planning to remove a page for the far-right party Confederation (Konfederacja), which was co-founded by Braun.
At the time, the political party had over 670,000 followers, which local media said was more than any other Polish political party.
Ciezyński said in the comments that the page was accused of “breaking the rules regarding COVID[-19] information.” At the time of writing, the page is back on Facebook and has over one million followers.
In 2018, Facebook said it would permanently ban Generation Identity, a youth branch of France’s nationalist movement Identitarians, from its platform. The group, which is centred on the preservation of white European identity, has since been dissolved.
In May 2025, two identitarian politicians, the Dutch Dries Van Langenhoveand Austria’s Martin Sellner, claimed that Meta removed “nearly all Identitarian Instagram pages,” and others that supported Germany’s Alternative For Germany (AfD) pages “in a single blow.”
“[US vice-president] JD Vance was rightfully worried about European ‘leaders’ taking away our freedom of speech, but why is an American company helping them?,” Langenhove wrote at the time.
Since US President Donald Trump took office last year, Meta has rolled back its content moderation programmes. After the decision, CEO Mark Zuckerberg called out the European Union's "increasing number of laws institutionalising censorship and making it difficult to build anything innovative there."
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