OPINION:
It’s been a little while since the radical left shouted about Nazis, so maybe they feel a bit out of practice.
Perhaps that’s why they have been all over the new ad campaign featuring actress Sydney Sweeney. In spots, she hawks American Eagle jeans and is shown outfitted in denim, buttoning her pants and making a clothing pun.
“Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color,” she says in one spot. “My jeans are blue.”
In one ad, Ms. Sweeney wears jeans and a muscle T-shirt showing off her famous physique. While she tinkers, she starts the engine and peels out in a Ford Mustang GT350. You know the liberals had to hate that, with its powerful internal combustion engine and all.
Of course, this is where the left barged in and immediately identified the problem with the ads: They’re Nazi propaganda.
Seriously.
USA Today reported that, for many, having a blond, blue-eyed woman talk about genes “felt like” a reference to eugenics, or the belief that humans can be improved through selective breeding.
“When those traits are consistently uplifted as genetic excellence, we know where this leads,” said one TikTok user.
MSNBC ran a story about the outrage on the left under the ridiculous headline “Sydney Sweeney’s ad shows an unbridled cultural shift toward whiteness.”
Calling the ads “ugly and startling,” the outlet highlighted other furious social media users who labeled the jeans commercials as promoting “White supremacy.”
Yes, it was clear that MSNBC had been thoroughly offended.
“The advertisement, the choice of Sweeney as the sole face in it and the internet’s reaction reflect an unbridled cultural shift toward whiteness, conservatism and capitalist exploitation,” producer Hannah Holland wrote. “Sweeney is both a symptom and a participant.”
Vanity Fair stressed that the ads have been “criticized by onlookers who see a sinister message lurking beneath the pun.”
Entertainment Weekly fretted that the commercial for denim clothing promoted an ideology supporting “forced sterilization of marginalized groups” and gave voice to a TikTok user who said that it’s all evidence of a “rise of fascism in America.”
The media found “experts” to weigh in, such as advertising professor Robin Landa of Michael Graves College at Kean University, who told Newsweek, “The campaign’s pun isn’t just tone-deaf — it’s historically loaded.”
Washington Post style section writer Shane O’Neill said in an online chat that the simple fact that the political right is mocking the left’s reaction to the commercials proves that the ads are bad.
“I will say that the far right’s embrace of Sweeney — and the gleeful reaction from right-wing creators to ‘woke’ backlash to the campaign — lends credence to my initial alarm when I saw the ads,” he said.
It’s truly head-shaking how some leftists have convinced themselves that their radical beliefs are confirmed when someone points out how radical they are.
These are just ads for jeans, and the irony is that these reactions are from the ideology that has a rampant antisemitism problem.
Nonetheless, the campaign appears to have done well for American Eagle. The spots are receiving tremendous attention, mostly because of the left’s hyperventilation, and the company’s stock jumped by almost 20% in the days immediately after the campaign’s debut.
Of course, despite all the self-assuredness and righteous indignation, leftists have it completely backward again.
It’s the opposite side of the coin from the Bud Light fiasco, when the beer brand signed on transgender social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney and alienated almost all of its customer base.
Or like when luxury car manufacturer Jaguar launched an ad campaign that featured androgynous models in vivid colors lounging around the landscape of what looked like an alien planet. Those ads, which did not show a car anywhere, were miserable failures because Jaguar sales reportedly plummeted by 97.5% in Europe after the rebrand.
Look, Ms. Sweeney isn’t one of the great artistic talents of our time, and she recently sold a line of soaps infused with her own bathwater, so she obviously isn’t above doing things that push the envelope, shall we say. However, these are just cheeky clothing ads featuring a pretty girl wearing jeans who sometimes goofs around with a sports car.
Truly, only a demented leftist could see that and think, “Nazi!”
One thing we have learned during the Trump years is that Americans are tired of being told that they’re not allowed to say or think certain things, including what kind of ads and products they like.
Yet, after all this time, no one should be surprised that the left still doesn’t get it.
• Tim Murtaugh is a Washington Times columnist and founder of Line Drive Public Affairs. He served as a senior adviser on the 2024 Trump campaign and as communications director on the 2020 Trump campaign.
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