TikTok deletes Polish far-right leader’s videos following complaint by anti-racism group

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

TikTok has removed six videos from the account of Polish far-right leader Grzegorz Braun, including one relating to his attack on a Jewish religious celebration in parliament. It made the decision after the content was reported by a Polish anti-racism group.

News of the platform’s action against Braun, who has 242,000 followers on TikTok, was first reported on Wednesday by Rzeczpospolita, a leading Polish daily, and later confirmed by the Reuters news agency.

One of the removed videos showed Braun, who is a member of the European Parliament, denying the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz and saying that “there is fundamental doubt as to whether the Germans actually murdered six million Jews during World War II”, reports Rzeczpospolita.

Another celebrated the events of December 2023, when Braun used a fire extinguisher to attack a ceremony in which Jewish leaders were lighting Hanukkah candles in parliament.

The third was a report from the anniversary of the Jedwabne pogrom in World War Two, during which hundreds of Jews were burned alive by their Polish neighbours under Nazi-German oversight.

Braun was shown blocking the path of Poland’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, and chanting, “This is Poland, not Polin!”, referring to the name of Poland in Hebrew and Yiddish. That phase is often used by Braun and his supporters to suggest that Jews are seeking to control Poland.

Another deleted video encouraged people to financially support Janusz Waluś, a Polish white nationalist who assassinated anti-apartheid leader Chris Hani in South Africa in 1993 with the aim of inciting a race war.

Waluś was recently released from prison in South Africa and returned to Poland, where he arrived at the airport accompanied by Braun.

Finally, a video documenting Braun and his supporters tearing down a Ukrainian flag displayed on a Polish town hall as a sign of solidarity was also deleted by TikTok.

The content was removed after being reported by the Never Again Association, a Polish NGO that campaigns against racism, antisemitism and xenophobia. The association works with a number of social media platforms to help root out hateful content.

“TikTok approached us to be its social partner regarding content that may violate its terms and conditions and criminal provisions, including hate speech,” the association’s Rafał Pankowski told Rzeczpospolita. “We merely report the content for review. The platform makes the decision to remove it.”

The six deleted videos are just the “tip of the iceberg”, Pankowski added in comments to Reuters. “There is simply a whole lot of such material…I think that the worst thing in all this is that there is this element of glorification, incitement to violence.”

Far-right groups have been very successful on TikTok. Sławomir Mentzen, a former ally of Braun, is the most popular Polish politician on the platform, with 1.6 million followers. That has helped him reach young voters, among whom far-right groups are especially popular.

In 2022, Facebook banned Confederation (Konfederacja), the far-right group that Mentzen leads (and to which Braun previously belonged), from its platform for “repeated violations” of its rules against hate speed and COVID-19 disinformation. However, it lifted the ban the following year.

In 2024, YouTube removed 11 of Braun’s videos following reports by the Never Again Association that he was promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial and calls for violence against LGBT+ people.

Braun rose to greater prominence last year on the back of a presidential campaign centred around antisemitic, anti-Ukrainian and anti-LGBT rhetoric. He finished a surprise fourth in the election, with 6.3% of the vote, and his party is now averaging around 8% support in the polls.

In December, he went on trial for a range of offences, including his 2023 attack on the Hanukkah celebration in parliament. He is also facing further charges for other alleged crimes, including denying Nazi crimes and vandalising an LGBT+ exhibition.

Last week, Poland’s government called on the European Union to take action against TikTok over a series of AI-generated videos showing young women calling for Poland to leave the EU (a position Braun has also promoted). It said that the videos were part of a Russian disinformation campaign.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: © European Union 2025 – Source: EP

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.