Chinese Smartphone Ad Compares Apple to Hitler

We’ve heard of people comparing Apple to an evil empire. But comparing the company to Hitler? That’s going just a bit overboard.

But that’s exactly what the founder and CEO of Chinese Internet video site Leshi TV, Jia Yueting, is doing to promote his company’s new Android-powered smartphone. We’re guessing Google, which makes Android, isn’t going to like this.

Spotted by The Verge, the ad, which was posted to Yueting’s Weibo page includes a South Park-ish caricature of Hitler standing with his arm raised in a salute, while his other arm wears a red Nazi armband. But instead of a swastika, the band has an Apple logo. Opposite the dictator is a group of mostly smiling children.

The image is meant to show that Apple’s iOS is a closed ecosystem that stifles innovation.Or something like that. 

For most readers in the West, the use of any kind of Nazi iconography in an advertisement is viewed as abhorrent and unacceptable. In many southeast Asian countries, however, Hitler and Nazi images have been coopted into the mainstream. Last December, a popular Korean pop group dressed in outfits that resembled Nazi uniforms. Chinese couples have posted wedding photos to the web in which they are wearing Nazi military uniforms. And in Thailand, students have worn Nazi-style clothing to school, while the government released a propaganda film that appeared pro-Nazi. (”Hitler is huge in Thailand,” the Daily Beast proclaimed.)

So while it’s difficult to imagine the CEO of a major company outright comparing Apple to Hitler, it’s worth pointing out that there is a large cultural difference between Asia and Western countries when it comes to sensitivity toward Nazism.

That still doesn’t excuse the use of such imagery — not by a long shot — but it helps give the Leshi TV ad a bit more context.