To promote its new TV series, Amazon decided to dress up New York City subway cars with Nazi symbols, leading to outrage from subway riders and complaints from public officials.
The show being promoted is "The Man in the High Castle", which features an alternate history of a world where the Axis powers won World War II and now occupy the United States.
Amazon dressed up the subway cars of the 42nd Street Shuttle both inside and outside with designs inspired by the Third Reich and Imperial Japan. The designs features the stripes of the flag of the United States, but replaced the stars with the Iron Cross and the Rising Sun, which are symbols of the Third Reich and Imperial Japan. Thankfully, no swastikas were present in the promotions.
"The ads on the train are coming down," said a source from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, but the damage has been done. Some riders were outraged by the designs, with the New York chapter of the Anti-Defamation League issuing a statement of criticism against the advertising campaign.
"This ad campaign has a feel of exploiting things that are so sensitive to so many people," said Anti-Defamation League regional director for New York Evan Bernstein in the statement, adding that Amazon will hopefully think again about using such symbols for designs of public transportation.
According to Bernstein, a part of the issue that subway riders had with the advertisements was that they would just come at the riders without proper context. While seeing the symbols while watching "The Man in the High Castle" would have been understood, seeing the flag of the United States with the Nazi symbol could be seen as offensive if seen on the seats of a subway train without an explanation of its meaning.
Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York, deemed the advertisements as "irresponsible and offensive," which is something that Amazon should have realized when they rolled out the campaign.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, however, defended that the advertisements were within the boundaries of the guidelines for commercial advertising in the subway trains, adding that the campaign does not violate the content-neutral advertising standards of the agency. As such, it did not have the grounds to reject the advertisements when Amazon approached the MTA.
