The Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok is propagandizing young Americans to back terrorists against Israel, according to Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI).
Gallagher, who chairs the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, said in a video posted Saturday that TikTok “is perhaps the largest-scale malign influence operation ever conducted.” The Wisconsin Republican said the platform is in large part responsible for anti-Israel attitudes among young Americans.
Gallagher cited a Harvard CAPS-Harris poll from last month that showed 51% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 believe that Hamas’ October 7 terror attack on Israel “can be justified by the grievance of Palestinians,” according to the poll.
“How do we reach a point where a majority of young Americans hold such a morally bankrupt view of the world? Where many young Americans were rooting for terrorists who kidnapped American citizens and against a key American ally, our closest ally in the Middle East?” Gallagher asked.
The answer is TikTok, he said. The social media app is run by its parent company, Bytedance, a Chinese tech company. Republicans and Democrats have accused TikTok of being a Chinese propaganda outfit. Multiple state governments have banned the app over security concerns.
“TikTok’s parent company, Bytedance, is Chinese, and in China there is no such thing as a private company. We know for a fact that the CCP uses TikTok to push its propaganda and censor views that diverge from the party line,” Gallagher said.
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Numerous reports have found TikTok censoring and suppressing content about Xinjiang, Tibet, Tiananmen Square, and other issues sensitive to the CCP. TikTok has also suppressed content about LGBT issues, and even temporarily blocked a teenage American Muslim activist who criticized the CCP’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims,” Gallagher said. “If you doubt that the CCP would introduce anti-Semitic or anti-Western bias into apps under its de facto control, consider that on October 31st, The Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese web platforms Baidu and Alibaba have wiped Israel off the map.”
The Wisconsin representative compared TikTok’s impact on America to “if, in 1962, right before the Cuban Missile Crisis, we had allowed Pravda and the KGB to purchase The New York Times, The Washington Post, ABC, and NBC.”
“It’s time to ban TikTok, or at least force the sale to an American company. The clock is ticking,” Gallagher said.
WATCH: @repgallagher: How are so many young people in America siding with Hamas terrorists?
Who have killed at least 30 Americans and kidnapped a dozen more, still at this moment holding 10 hostages.
Where are they getting their news?
The answer, increasingly, is TikTok – an… pic.twitter.com/RDaTamjrHC
— The Select Committee on the CCP (@committeeonccp) November 4, 2023