Russia’s popular Vkontakte social media website has deleted a page promoting an online neo-Nazi Miss Hitler beauty pageant two weeks after it was launched.
Vkontakte came under criticism in 2014 for hosting the anti-Semitic contest where users were invited to vote for their favorite female admirers of the Nazi leader.
The platform was used again this month to stage the 2018 Miss Hitler beauty pageant, according to the outlet that first reported on the 2014 contest.
“The contest is a part of a network of thousands of Nazi sympathizers around the globe,” the Vocativ.com outlet wrote on Sept. 8.
Entries included U.S., Italian and Russian contestants who submitted photographs of themselves giving Nazi salutes, posing in front of swastikas and displaying other Nazi insignia.
Vkontakte took down the “Miss Hitler 2018” page after an Israeli television station contacted its administrators, SOVA Center, a Russian rights group that tracks hate crimes, said Monday.
It added that Russia’s media watchdog had blacklisted the page, which had advertised itself as promoting “the beauty of Hitlerian culture."
A German contestant called “Miss Skuld” had been the leading vote-getter before Vkontakte shut down the page last Thursday, according to a YouTube user who posted a video about the online competition.
Her profile page is set to hidden, but pages of other contestants remained accessible as of Tuesday, including that of “Miss Edelweiss” and “Miss Marta.”
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