Verified Hate: How X Enabled Nazi Propaganda and Crypto Scams
A hacked government account, Tate-linked scammers, and a platform’s failure to act—how X became a breeding ground for deception and hate.
About a week ago, an X account named “Adulf_gov” surfaced, appearing to be an official government account. It spread Nazi and antisemitic content, leading to assumptions in the media that X had mistakenly verified it as a governmental account based on the name “Adolf Hitler.”
While X removed the account, a second account with the same username soon appeared. This new account promoted crypto scams and Andrew Tate’s investing “university.”
The first account was later revealed to be the hacked X account of an Indian local government department, originally verified with a grey checkmark. After being repurposed as the (fake) official account of German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, it was rebranded into an “official” Adolf Hitler account, where it posted fascist propaganda before being taken down.
Investigating the second account led to a Telegram group of men that are connected to Tate, and financially involved in his crypto pyramid scheme. In their Telegram group, they share antisemitic content alongside Tate’s redundant manosphere rhetoric. One member bragged about renaming his X account to Hitler, capitalizing on the first account’s media attention, while others encouraged adding offensive material—such as the image of Tate at a Nazi rally. Disturbingly, X initially flagged and suspended the account, only to later reinstate it and issue an apology.
At first, believing that X had taken down the account, members shared various antisemitic contant, accusing X of “working for the Jews”.
finally, the connection between Tate’s online ecosystem and these extremist elements is yet another example of how toxic communities leverage social media to spread harmful ideologies under the guise of financial success and self-improvement. Whether X takes concrete action to prevent similar abuses—or continues to enable them—remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: the lines between trolling, criminal fraud, and ideological radicalization are increasingly blurred, and social media companies can no longer afford to look the other way.