Felix Cipher, a social media influencer who created his TikTok account in 2021, started out by posting videos of his pet snakes and sharing their day-to-day lives. However, as of early February, his content took a sharp turn. Here is everything you need to know about the Felix Cipher situation and how TikTok as a platform is affecting it. Also, there has been some debate in terms of Cipher’s pronouns, as he is transgender but never stated them explicitly on his profile; so for the sake of the article, I will be using he/him pronouns.

Cipher’s ‘Past Life’

Influencer Felix Cipher posted a video in the first week of February 2023 in which he showed off a nose ring he had made. The nose ring was not what the internet latched onto, however, as Cipher was wearing an outfit that was eerily similar to an M36 uniform which was worn by German soldiers in 1936. The jacket bore the embroidered insignia commonly known as the Parteiadler, a variation of the Reichsadler that originated in ancient Rome. As would be expected, the internet absolutely exploded with hate and rage. People were calling him “every name under the sun,” as was expressed by Cipher in a video that was deleted with the rest of his account (it can be found here, but this is not Cipher’s account).

In that video, the creator stated that he is very in tune with his past lives, and made the tremendously bold claim that he was, in fact, Adolf Hitler in a past life. After hearing this, the controversy behind the aforementioned nose ring makes even more sense, considering the resemblance it bears to the infamous mustache ported by Hitler himself. Even his haircut is just a little too close for comfort to Hitler’s. On an even more horrific note, there has been speculation spreading like wildfire across TikTok that Cipher may even be half Jewish. There is no definitive evidence to back up these claims, but if they turn out to be accurate, it makes the situation that much more terrifying.  

The Public’s Response

It is no surprise that the internet does not respond well to neo-Nazis, let alone people who claim to be a reincarnation of Hitler himself, and Felix Cipher was no exception. His account has been banned, his videos and comments deleted, and he seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. Before it was taken down, life partners Gidon Lev and Julie Gray used their platform to respond to Cipher’s video. Lev is a Holocaust survivor who educates his nearly 500,000 followers on TikTok about antisemitism, trauma and his experience in the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

Gidon’s video was simple. He went side-by-side with Cipher’s video and shook his head silently. The caption stated, “Your cosplay isn’t cute. Grow up.” Thousands of individuals supported Gidon in his comment section, but unfortunately, Cipher was there, too. He commented, “Haha, it’s me! Sorry my men had you in a camp, ol’ pal, but I’m back for a reason.” If that didn’t make you want to vomit, I don’t know what will.

Whether or not you believe that Cipher is Jewish by heritage, there is no denying that he is a member of the LGBTQ+ community. Cipher is a trans man (although there is no paper trail that confirms this) and was very open about it on his account. For a trans man to claim to be the reincarnation of a dictator who placed an estimated 10-15,000 men accused of homosexuality in concentration camps alongside the Jewish prisoners is something that has left many members of the LGBTQ+ community completely speechless.

A Platform to Lift It Up

TikTok as a whole does not have the best reputation for its responses to problematic situations, but in this case, they did not hesitate to ban Cipher’s account as soon as problems started to arise. This is as much responsibility as they have taken for the situation, and while they obviously cannot take on everything that Cipher did to harm people with his content, there has to be more than simply pretending like it never happened.

No, they cannot be expected to post about every problematic creator that shows up, and sometimes all that one can hope for is that said creator is banned. However, when someone ends up all over your app spreading hate to such a horrific degree, ignoring it doesn’t do anything. The hope is that if Cipher comes back to any social media platforms, he will be caught right away and banned once more, but there’s no guarantee that he will truly stay gone. 

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