New York, NY, November 10, 2014 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was deeply disturbed by the unadulterated Nazi imagery in the new Nicki Minaj music video, “Only.”
Directed by Jeff Osborne, the video evokes the style of Nazi propaganda films and portrays Minaj as a military dictator surrounded by red banners resembling those used by the Nazi Party during World War II. Ranks of solders are shown with red armbands mirroring those worn by Nazi soldiers.
Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director and a Holocaust survivor, issued the following statement:
Nicki Minaj’s new video disturbingly evokes Third Reich propaganda and constitutes a new low for pop culture’s exploitation of Nazi symbolism. The irony should be lost on no one that this video debuted on the 76th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the “night of broken glass” pogrom that signaled the beginning of the Final Solution and the Holocaust.
It is troubling that no one among Minaj’s group of producers, publicists and managers raised a red flag about the use of such imagery before ushering the video into public release.
This video is insensitive to Holocaust survivors and a trivialization of the history of that era. The abuse of Nazi imagery is deeply disturbing and offensive to Jews and all those who can recall the sacrifices Americans and many others had to make as a result of Hitler’s Nazi juggernaut.
Updated: January 01, 1970
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