The ad features one side of the subway train covered in American flags that have been altered with the stars replaced by an eagle bearing a striking resemblance to the Reichsadler, a Nazi coat of arms.
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The show is an adaptation of a Philip K. Dick 1962 novel, “The Man in the High Castle” that describes a version of history in which the Axis powers win World War II and divide the United States into a Nazi-controlled East and a Japan-run West. All 10 episodes became available on the Amazon Prime streaming service on November 20.
“I shouldn’t have to sit staring at a Nazi insignia on my way to work”, Ann Toback, executive director of a Jewish cultural and social and economic justice organization, told the Gothamist website.
MTA spokesman Adam Lisberg defended the promotion, insisting that it was not a “political advertisement” (which are banned across the transportation network).
“The MTA could have allowed this show to be advertised without using such offensive insignias”.
As you can see in the image above, a subway auto is packed with symbols that some people will recognize, including insignia for Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. The agency previously confirmed that the ads fit its policy, saying that “under the First Amendment, we as a public entity are required to post the ads”.
Instead of blaming Amazon, one straphanger criticized the MTA for accepting the ad.
Following a copious amount of backlash, Amazon Studios has made a decision to kill their NYC subway ad campaign by removing the Nazi imagery they put in to promote The Man in the High Castle. They told him they “received no complaints about the ads” and that his company and MTA share close to the same standards and that the ads had passed their internal review.
As the show imagines an alternate present where the U.S. is under German and Japanese rule, plastering subway carriages with imperial imagery may have seemed like a good idea in a marketing meeting.
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The campaign is scheduled to end December 14, according to Ortiz.
