A German-Jewish group has flagged a new WhatsApp sticker-creating feature being used to send neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic messages. It has called on the Facebook-owned messaging service to intervene.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/W. Kastl
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Neo-Nazis in Germany have found another way to share anti-Semitic messages using WhatsApp's new sticker feature, just days after it was rolled out.
They are using the service's feature that lets users create their own stickers to share Nazi symbols such as swastikas and SS sig runes.
Germany's Jewish Forum for Democracy and Against Anti-Semitism (JFDA) flagged the trend in a tweet and asked the Facebook-owned company what could be done to stop such images from being used. "Just after WhatsApp makes it possible to create and use stickers, right-wing extremists flood their group chats with hateful Nazi symbols," JFDA tweeted.
"These anti-Semitic stickers are unacceptable and we do not want them in WhatsApp.We strongly condemn this hatred," a WhatsApp spokesman told Germany's Bild mass-circulation newspaper.
"If users get stickers with illegal content, we ask them to report it. We will act accordingly against it, even to the extent of blocking the accounts from which they were sent."
Illegal symbols
Displaying Nazi emblems such as swastikas and SS sig runes publicly in Germany is illegal. The German law considers them the "symbols of anti-constitutional organizations."
But enforcing a ban on them on WhatsApp is complicated.
In a similar case in 2016, in which Nazi images were circulated on WhatsApp, the legal opinion was that the distribution of such symbols would only be punishable if they were shared in WhatsApp groups, Bild reported.
Stickers have been around in public places for over a century - sometimes carrying dubious political messages. An exhibition in the German Historical Museum is now scrutinizing racist stickers.
Image: Deutsches Historisches Museum
Sticky messages
"Guerilla marketing" is how marketing strategists have labeled stickers that can be distributed quickly, anonymously and just about everywhere. They are also used for branding, publicity slogans and concert announcements - and as a means for spreading rather dubious political messages.
Image: Deutsches Historisches Museum
Political manipulation
The exhibition documents to what extent stickers have been used as a means of political agitation - well before the Nazis exploited them for spreading their racist propaganda. It aims to illustrate just what the omnipresent stickers can do. The anti-Semitic slogans in the picture managed to get stuck in people's heads during the Nazi era.
Image: Deutsches Historisches Museum
Propaganda stickers
The Nazis purposefully used their anti-Semitic stickers in order to spread their hate messages among the people and on the streets. Immediately after Nazis' rise to power in 1933, SA and SS paratroopers pasted stickers meant to intimidate the Jewish population on Jewish-run shops all over Berlin.
Image: bpk Bildagentur
Anti-Nazi propaganda
Jewish organizations and associations resorted to the same means in order to defend themselves against the agitation of the Nazis. Throughout the early 1930s, they continued to fight back with their own anti-propaganda, printing stickers like this one of the "Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith." It reads: "The Nazis are our disaster."
Image: The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust & Genocide, London
Dubious love messages
During the era from 1933 to 1945, anti-Semitic stickers even came to be used for personal messages and love letters. Like political stamps, they often decorated the backs of envelopes so that the addressee would immediately grasp what political attitude the addressor intended to espouse.
Image: Deutsches Historisches Museum
Social glue
Political stickers were also used excessively in Germany during the 1970s and 1980s. Long before social media came to be invented, these little messages embodied the political statements of an entire generation. A large part of the exhibition originates from the private collection of Wolfgang Haney, who collected stickers dating from the late 19th century through the present.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/S.Kembowski
Highly topical
Although focusing on the historical context, the exhibition also takes a critical look at current affairs. The debate on refugee policy has triggered the production of stickers, some of which have frightening historical parallels. The exhibition runs through July 20, 2016, and has been put together in cooperation with the Research Center for Anti-Semitism at Berlin's Technical University.
