"As Rolling Stone reports, the theory of Nazi identification was tied to such flimsy evidence as a lightning-bolt necklace that maybe-kinda-sorta looks like an SS symbol, or fixating on an out-of-context use of the word "savage" in the song "Eldest Daughter." The campaign began in places like 4chan but quickly went mainstream, relying on a stan army as well as argumentative normies to give the theory an algorithmic boost."
"Notably, GUDEA found "a significant user overlap between accounts pushing the Swift 'Nazi' narrative and those active in a separate astroturf campaign attacking Blake Lively." After Lively had sued her It Ends with Us co-star Justin Baldoni for sexual harassment, she ended up on the receiving end of another campaign to damage her reputation. GUDEA identified 2,395 accounts involved in both, writing, "These users do not behave uniformly; they shift personas depending on topic, platform, and narrative tension.""
Small groups of bots seeded a false theory that Taylor Swift was a Nazi by baiting human users into arguments. Attempts to correct the bots increased engagement and created a feedback loop that social-media algorithms amplified, making the claim more viral. The supposed evidence included a lightning-bolt necklace and an out-of-context use of the word "savage" in a song. The campaign originated on fringe forums such as 4chan and then leveraged stan armies and argumentative mainstream users to spread. GUDEA found overlap between accounts pushing the Swift narrative and those involved in astroturf attacks on Blake Lively, identifying 2,395 shared accounts that shift personas across topics and platforms.
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