Hardly the way to soften Wal-Mart’s image

May 16, 2005

One of the more enduring (and annoying) political myths of late is the idea that MoveOn.org created a campaign ad last year comparing Bush and the Republicans to Nazis. RNC talking points not withstanding, it never happened. MoveOn hosted a contest where ordinary people could send in ads they created at home. Some nut submitted one with Nazi images, but MoveOn removed it from their site as soon as they learned of it. Indeed, MoveOn didn’t sponsor, endorse, create, or even know about the ad in advance.

This stands in stark contrast, of course, to Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said yesterday that it made a “terrible” mistake in approving a recent newspaper advertisement that equated a proposed Arizona zoning ordinance with Nazi book-burning.

The full-page advertisement included a 1933 photo of people throwing books on a pyre at Berlin’s Opernplatz. It was run as part of a campaign against a Flagstaff ballot proposal that would restrict Wal-Mart from expanding a local store to include a grocery.

The accompanying text read “Should we let government tell us what we can read? Of course not … So why should we allow local government to limit where we shop?” The bottom of the advertisement announced that the ad was “Paid for by Protect Flagstaff’s Future-Major Funding by Wal-Mart (Bentonville, AR).”

The ad, which ran May 8 in the Arizona Daily Sun, was “reviewed and approved by Wal-Mart, but we did not know what the photo was from. We obviously should have asked more questions,” said Daphne Moore, Wal-Mart’s director of community affairs. She said the company will also issue a letter of apology to the Arizona Anti-Defamation League.

I’m glad Wal-Mart distanced itself from such insanity so quickly, but will there be lasting consequences? To this day, Republican officials routinely denounce MoveOn as a group that sponsored ads comparing its opponents to Nazis. Will Wal-Mart, forevermore, be known for the same thing? I wouldn’t count on it.

Post Script: Even if we put the Nazi comparison aside for a moment, as Think Progress noted it’s terribly ironic that Wal-Mart would complain about book censorship after banning “Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War” and “America: The Book” from its shelves.

The greater irony is that until recently, Wal-Mart sold Protocols of the Elders of Zion–a work of blood libel that served as basis for the Nazi movement–on its website.

  • Not to be too picky, but I believe moveon removed the video after it created a stink, not as soon as they found about it.

  • Not to be too picky, but I believe moveon removed the video after it created a stink, not as soon as they found about it.

    That’s not an unfair point, but as I recall, MoveOn found about it once others created a stink. In other words, MoveOn wasn’t reviewing each of the 1,500 videos as they came in — one could make an argument that they should have been, but that’s a different point — and didn’t even see the “Hitler ad” until complaints started arising.

  • cb,

    That is not my recollection, though I frankly have no proof at this time other than my recollection.

    Their offical response merely states that it slipped through their screening process, whatever that means. My reading of this says that they knew it was there all the time.

    http://moveonvoterfund.org/smear/release.html

    Listen, I don’t think they should have removed it at all. As I recall it, it was pretty mild and I’m all for flushing Godwin’s law down the toilet anyway. The more Hitler/fascist/Nazi Germany allusions the better. As long as they’re in good taste, of course. 😉

    Frankly, I think a big problem is that whenever someone makes a Nazi comparison, the ADL or some other Jewish group can be counted on to condemn it out of hand, claiming that it trivializes the Holocaust. They conflate any mention of Nazism with the Holocaust, and, by so doing, deprive us of ever having any kind of national discussion on the disyurbing parallels between the US today and Germany 70 years ago.

    Seems to me, it’s exactly groups like the ADL who should be pointing out our relentless march to an American Fascism.

    sorry for going so off topic…

  • Should we let government tell us what we can read? Certainly not. That’s Walmart’s job!

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