AI-Hitler Mobilizing Next Gen
Plus: An Immigration Letter to the Candidates
Adolf Hitler is dead but AI-Hitler is alive and very online.
The AI revolution promises to aid our prosperity in many ways, but also contains much peril, as demonstrated by AI-Hitler. Extremists groups are using AI to reanimate Hitler to deliver his speeches in English.
As of a week ago, AI-Hitler had reached millions of viewers across a range of popular social media platforms, according to The Washington Post.
“This type of content is disseminating redpills at lightning speed to massive audiences,” the American Futurist, a website identifying as fascist, posted on its public Telegram channel on Sept. 17, using a phrase that describes dramatically reshaping someone’s worldview. “In terms of propaganda it’s unmatched.”
The propaganda — documented in videos, chat forum messages and screen recordings of neo-Nazi activity shared exclusively with The Washington Post by the nonprofit Institute for Strategic Dialogue and the SITE Intelligence Group — is helping to fuel a resurgence in online interest in Hitler on the American right, experts say. In a report published Friday, ISD researchers found that content glorifying, excusing or translating Hitler’s speeches into English has racked up some 25 million views across X, TikTok and Instagram since Aug. 13.
As we've previously reported in this newsletter, white supremacist and neo-Nazi messaging is on the rise in the U.S. today and increasingly finds a receptive audience with other voices on the right. A false claim about Haitian immigrants started with white supremacists. "Great Replacement Theory," a xenophobic belief that began with white supremacists and inspired mass shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, Buffalo, NY, and El Paso, Texas is routinely promoted by right-wing celebrities like Elon Musk, Charlie Kirk and Tucker Carlson. Avowed white supremacist Nick Fuentes has met with Republican operatives in Texas and Republican presidential nominee and former president Donald Trump. And just yesterday, Musk shared a X post from a white supremacist.
The number of organized neo-Nazi groups have declined in recent years, WaPo added, but Nazism has moved to informal message boards, which is more difficult to quantify. Pro-Hitler content also seems to get a boost from right-wing celebrities. "ISD’s report found that posts glorifying or defending Hitler surged on X this month after Carlson posted an interview with Holocaust revisionist Darryl Cooper, which Musk reposted and called 'worth watching,'" WaPo reported, "(Musk later deleted his post.)"
You may have friends or family members who share information from these right-wing celebrities but who are completely unaware that the messaging is just one or two steps removed from a neo-Nazi. Depending on the person, making them aware of the original source might encourage them to back away from sharing extremist content.
Immigration Letter to Presidential Candidates
Evangelical views on immigration are too often associated with the xenophobes among us. This is one reason AVC is proud to support World Relief’s open letter to the major party presidential candidates, “Unite for Biblical Values in Immigration Policy.”
It states in part,
There’s no single evangelical perspective on U.S. immigration policy – but, as evangelical pastors and leaders, we’re concerned that some of the media caricatures you may have heard about how evangelicals think about immigrants and immigration policies are dramatically inaccurate. The vast majority of American evangelicals are neither anti-immigrant nor advocates for open borders.
Please take a moment to read the whole thing, and consider signing it if you’re an evangelical. For news coverage, check out RNS.
What We’re Listening To
NPR: “To combat misinformation, start with connection, not correction”
Misinformation and disinformation can be a threat to our democracy. It can divide communities. It can make it harder for people to make informed choices — at the ballot box, at the grocery store and at the doctor's office.
No one is immune. “We just don't have the time, the cognitive resources or even the motivation to literally fact-check every piece of information that comes our way,” says Briony Swire-Thompson, director of the Psychology of Misinformation Lab at Northeastern University.
People trust information more when it comes from sources or cultural contexts they are familiar with, so talking to your loved ones can make a difference. The big picture idea here? Start from a place of connection, not correction.
What We’re Reading
NYT: “An Ohio Businessman Faces Death Threats for Praising His Haitian Workers”
For Jamie McGregor, a businessman in Springfield, Ohio, speaking favorably about the Haitian immigrants he employs has come to this: death threats, a lockdown at his company and posters around town branding him a traitor for hiring immigrants.
To defend himself and his family, Mr. McGregor has had to violate his own vow to never own a gun.
“I have struggled with the fact that now we’re going to have firearms in our house — like, what the hell?” said Mr. McGregor, who runs McGregor Metal, which makes parts for cars, trucks and tractors.
“And now we’re taking classes, we’re going to shooting ranges, we’re being fitted for handguns,” he said on a recent day, pulling up a photo of his 14-year-old daughter clutching a Glock.
…
A lifelong Republican who voted twice for Mr. Trump, Mr. McGregor said that he had never imagined that speaking up on behalf of his workers would imperil his family.
Read the whole article with this gift link.
ProPublica: “A Pair of Billionaire Preachers Built the Most Powerful Political Machine in Texas. That’s Just the Start.”
Dunn has placed himself in a favorable position to guide a second Trump administration — and transform the nature of the federal government. He helps fund America First Legal, a conservative law firm headed by the former Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller that represents itself as the MAGA movement’s answer to the ACLU, as well as the Center for Renewing America, a far-right policy group led by the former Trump budget director Russell Vought. According to documents obtained by Politico, the Center for Renewing America has explicitly listed “Christian Nationalism” as one of its top priorities. Both groups have played a role in shaping Project 2025, an extreme policy agenda, published by the Heritage Foundation, that proposes consolidating executive power and remaking the federal bureaucracy, agency by agency.
Reuters: “Trump's already harsh rhetoric on migrants is turning darker as Election Day nears”
As recently as August, Trump was content to describe border-crossers as “killers” or “terrorists,” in a more generalized way. Now, he is adding lurid accounts of women allegedly being victimized by migrants, speaking of “savages” and “predators” who “sexually assault” young girls while referring to small towns in America as “blighted refugee camps.”
A range of studies show immigrants do not commit crime at a higher rate than native-born Americans.
 | A guest post by
|