TikTok Nazis: Why European youth are embracing far-right ideologies

In December 2024, police carried out 12 arrests and 13 searches in multiple Italian cities, seizing Nazi symbols and firearms from the suspects. The neo-Nazis had conducted propaganda through a network of Telegram channels and coordinated in private chats, where they had been plotting, among other things, an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

Meloni herself has stated that there is no place in her party for those nostalgic for the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. The prime minister has, of course, been presented with reminders of her party’s fascist roots and her past praise for Benito Mussolini, even as she now distances herself from neo-fascism not only in words, but in political actions. Under Meloni’s government, extremists have begun receiving lengthy sentences, and “Roman salutes” now lead to legal proceedings.

A right-wing future

Overall, European neo-Nazi groups are small and, at first glance, do not seem to pose a serious threat. Typically, they are prosecuted for specific criminal acts rather than for their beliefs. Instead of being disbanded outright, they are placed under heightened surveillance.

However, these organizations create a subcultural environment in which anti-immigrant and xenophobic discourse is normalized — primarily through Telegram chats and TikTok content, which caters to younger audiences. The key role in this process belongs to personalized feeds, which are governed by algorithms designed to capture our attention and keep us online for as long as possible. In practice, this promotes the most emotionally provocative or controversial content. From the perspective of social media algorithms, right-wing content is more effective than left-wing posts. Different platforms have different patterns, but it is hardly coincidental that an internal Twitter investigation, conducted before Elon Musk acquired the platform, found that tweets from right-wing politicians and media outlets were amplified in algorithmic home feeds more than those from left-wing sources in six out of seven countries studied, including the U.S., the UK, and Canada. Similarly, a February 2025 study by Global Witness showed that home feeds on TikTok and X in Germany disproportionately recommended far-right content ahead of the federal elections. All of this, of course, can sway public opinion.

From the subculture, young people move into the youth wings of far-right parties, and from there into the parties themselves. In France and Italy, this trend is already evident, while in other countries, such as Croatia, it is only beginning to emerge.

In any case, the boundaries are becoming blurred: youth organizations are more radical than the parties themselves (AfD and Junge Alternative, Fratelli d’Italia and Gioventù Nazionale), neo-Nazi groups turn into political platforms and run in elections (CasaPound Italia), and Nazi slogans are entering the mainstream (the Ustaše “Za dom spremni!”).

The EU’s legislative and procedural framework is clearly unprepared for this. It will need to adapt — and soon.