Nike’s ad seemingly dismissing the Holocaust is bad, no matter how you look at it

 

By Andrea Widburg

Last Friday, Israel observed Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, in honor of the 6 million slaughtered under Hitler. It is a very serious observance, including a minute of silence, when absolutely everything stops, including traffic. And last weekend, Nike observed the London marathon by putting up an utterly tone-deaf advertisement that seemed to dismiss the Holocaust’s horrors. Whether the ad arose from cultural and historical ignorance or from actual malevolence is unclear, although I lean to the first explanation. What we know is that the ad was awful.

Here's the ad, which is best appreciated if you understand (as I’m sure you do) that “Never Again” is the Israeli and world Jewish response to the Holocaust: We will never again allow something like that to happen:

Nike presumably was referring to the fact that, when a runner ends a marathon, he gasps to himself, “I’m never doing that again,” or some variant. Then, as the year goes by, he finds himself inexorably drawn to the contest. In fact, that’s the line Nike adopted in its apology:

We did not mean any harm and apologize for any we caused. The London billboards were part of a broader campaign titled “Winning Isn’t Comfortable”, built on runners’ insights and designed to motivate runners to push past what they think is possible. A series of billboards with taglines such as “Remember why you signed up for this”, “This is bloody tough” and “Never again until next year” were placed along the route to inspire runners and the copy was based on common phrases used by runners.”

There are two ways to take this. First, the apology may be (and probably is) legitimate. But if that’s the case, what we’re seeing here is insane cultural and historical ignorance. An ad like this doesn’t magically appear. Instead, it’s usually created by an independent ad agency, then it goes through layers of agency management, before getting the same scrutiny at the company.

It's genuinely shocking that, despite the vast number of people who saw this ad before it was raised high above London’s streets, not a single one said, “Hey, isn’t ‘never again’ a statement against a repeat of the Holocaust?” Within the living memory of Holocaust survivors (not many, admittedly, but still) and within less than two years of the October 7 massacre, which has been likened to the Holocaust, no one said “Stop.” No one in the ad agency; no one within Nike itself.

Leftists adore making Nazi analogies (and, indeed, the Palestinians, who are dedicated to Jewish eradication, are constantly recast as victims of “Jewish Hitlers”). However, they are actually surpassingly ignorant about the reality of the Holocaust. They just know it was bad, and that everyone they hate is Hitler. (And, if they’re extremists or Muslims, they claim it was a hoax so that Jews could steal “Palestine.”)

That’s the first way to take it: Appalling ignorance.

The second way to take it is much more sinister (and, admittedly, less likely, but still possible). This version says that Nike’s apology is dissimulation. What was really going on was that it was delicately reaching out in a city that is 15% Muslim. (Islam is the second-largest religion in the UK as a whole.)

Not only is London 15% Muslim, but it’s a majority Labour city. (Interestingly, in the graphics I linked, the Brits appropriately assign the communist color of red to the Labour party.) Leftists hate Jews. Indeed, Hitler was a leftist, and he literally hated Jews to death. Nike has also shown itself during the whole BLM movement to be a hard-left company.

As I said, it’s most likely that the first theory—that the people at the ad agency and Nike itself just didn’t know—is the real one. One doesn’t have to put on the tin foil hat when there’s an Occam’s razor reason staring us in the face. Having said that, it’s terribly depressing that this level of ignorance exists, and Nike should be ashamed.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/04/nike_s_ad_seemingly_dismissing_the_holocaust_is_bad_no_matter_how_you_look_at_it.html