The 18ft high posters of the Nazi leader advertise a line of clothing for young people and adorn street corners and bus stops in Palermo, Sicily’s biggest city. The ads show the Fuhrer in a lurid pink uniform, with his swastika armband replaced with one bearing a bright red heart, above the slogan “Change Style – Don’t Follow Your Leader”. Many local people say the advertising campaign is offensive and have called for the posters to be taken down.
A city councillor with the centre-Left Democratic Party, Rosario Filoramo, has protested to the mayor of Palermo.
“The use of an image of a person responsible for the worst chapters of the last century is offensive to our country’s constitutional principles and to the sensitivities of citizens,” he said.
A council official, Fabrizio Ferrandelli, said: “Having Hitler’s face on a poster… cannot be passed off as an innocent advertising message. Seeing these posters in front of schools is an embarrassment.” But the advertising agency which came up with the idea said critics of the campaign were over-reacting.
The Hitler poster was a tongue-in-cheek way of encouraging young people not to follow the crowd in their fashion choices.
Well, Hitler was gay, wasn’t he?
Fascist pinko fag! HAR!
I am NOT AMUSED!!!!!!!!
Nights alone without Eva, but for the pleasant company of numerous willing leather clad blond blue eyes young men. Hitler youth body guards, arian apollos, competitive skiers and olympic highboard divers. The warm fireside, a cast down great coat, a cold Rhein Reisling on ice. The sweet scent of Old Spice and angrily mixed sweat. A gramophone in an adjacent room playing quietly, echoes hauntingly through the empty corridors of the abandoned palace. War is hell.
This is the same country where politicians successfully campaign on the basis of being descendants of Mussolini.
Hitler will be pissed.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=cqqxRPZdfvs
He’s even wearing just one glove!
Let’s not forget that Hitler was a Bad Guy to Italy during much of WW II because he wouldn’t let Italy make a separate peace with the Allies. So there’s not much chance of digging up latent pro-Nazi feelings.
Still, it strikes me as in bad taste. I thought Euro countries had laws against this sort (i.e., Nazi regalia) of thing. Even 65 years later is too soon. Equating Hitler with transvestitism is also worse than iffy. How about Caligula in the same getup?
It did make me laugh, though.
You know, if the advertising agency really wanted to stir up trouble, they could put the Prophet Mohammad in pink. Or Jesus. Or both.
@jbellies – yep Italy didn’t want a war but was forced into it by the nasty Germans, same as Austria.
ps. I notice a lot of the cool kids walking around with CCCP t-shirts. I forget, was Stalin a good guy/
This reminds me of the argument that if you have no money and you produce public art it is called graffiti, if you have lots of money it is called advertising.
“The use of an image of a person responsible for the worst chapters of the last century is offensive to our country’s constitutional principles and to the sensitivities of citizens,”
I take it that this means that the country’s constitutional principles are centred around censorship, history revisionism and willing historical blindness (don’t think about it and it will aaaaall go away)?
I also take it that ridiculing dictators is something the citizens object to since it hurts their sensitivities…
I’m totally sure there WAS something like this in a forgotten closet in the Fuhrerbunker. Eva Braun became his one-and-only because she saw it hanging there and just accepted it.
What is it with all the Jew haters being gay?
Hitler, Yasser Arafat, etc.