Conservatives Roast Media for Indulging Sydney Sweeney ‘Nazi Propaganda’ Meltdown
Screenshot via American Eagle
Conservatives are piling on the media outlets indulging the backlash to an American Eagle ad campaign starring Sydney Sweeney, which far-left critics have deemed racist and “Nazi propaganda.”
The ad campaign starring Sweeney includes her wearing American Eagle jean products modeling with a dog and a White Mustang. The ads declare that Sweeney has “great jeans.” One video includes the actress seeing a poster of herself that says she has “great genes.” The word “genes” is replaced with “jeans” at the end of the video.
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Some on social media tied the ad to Nazism and racism.
Conservative pundits took particular issue with MSNBC over an opinion piece arguing the ad shows a “cultural shift to whiteness” as well as with ABC’s Good Morning America for platforming the criticism at all with a report on critics comparing the ad to “Nazi propaganda with racial undertones.”
“Whiteness is ugly… this is the ideology of the left,” political consultant and writer Ryan James Girdusky wrote on X in response to the MSNBC opinion piece.
In the post, headlined “Sydney Sweeney’s ad shows an unbridled cultural shift toward whiteness,” MSNBC producer Hannah Holland argued that some of the backlash to the ad campaign is “fair.”
Holland wrote:
The backlash has been swift and fierce, and some of it, at least, if you ask me, is fair. The internet has been quick to condemn the advertisement as noninclusive at best and as overtly promoting “white supremacy” and “Nazi propaganda” at worst. These critics point to the copy and the implication of calling a white person superior because of their genes. In the videos, Sweeney exudes a sort of vintage sexiness that caters to the male gaze. She embodies the near mythological girl-next-door beautiful but low-maintenance sexy femininity that dominated media in the 1990s and the early 2000s. Together, the campaign feels regressive and not retro, offensive and not cheeky.
Holland called Sweeney a “symptom and a participant” in an ad campaign Holland claimed shows a major cultural shift to the right.
“An advertisement that so many are condemning as a ‘eugenics dog whistle’ fits into this movement. Sweeney and American Eagle deserve much scrutiny over this, but so does our own crumbling and fractured American culture that made this all possible in the first place,” the producer wrote.
Conservative critics chafed at Holland’s argument.
Other critics targeted the backlash itself, while ABC also got honed in on by some conservatives over a report on the ad campaign’s critics.
“Sydney Sweeney is doing fascist propaganda, and if you like her, you’re a fascist too… is quite possibly the stupidest, most-likely-to-backfire liberal overreach social media pile-on in the history of the internet,” Reason’s Robby Soave wrote on X.
Puck News’ Peter Hamby chalked up reporting on the “backlash” to journalists lazily depending on social media trends.
“The Sydney Sweeney ad ‘backlash’ is a product of what cultural analysis has become in newsrooms: Writers lazily chewing on whatever is getting attention on TikTok. Grim,” he wrote.
“Yes, this video from today’s ‘Good Morning America First Look’ on ABC (formerly ‘America This Morning’) — which airs at 330 or 4am — is real. ABC melted down about Sydney Sweeney,” NewsBusters’ Curtis Houck wrote when sharing the ABC clip.
The report referred to critics compared the genes/jeans “play on words” to “Nazi propaganda with racial undertones.” The report then cuts to Robin Landa, a professor with Kean University, who said, “The pun, good genes, activates a troubling historical associations for this country.”
“Legacy media is dead,” Outkick founder Clay Travis added in reaction to the clip.
The report also noted that “despite the backlash,” American Eagle’s stock price is “soaring.”
