On the heels of hosting the MTV European Music Awards in Scotland on Sunday, Nicki Minaj is receiving criticism about her newest music video, "Only," which was released over the weekend. The five-minute lyric video features imagery that some people have said is similar to Nazi images.
In the video (NSFW), red-and-black flags with a symbol similar to a swastika are flown as cartoon versions of Minaj, Drake, Lil Wayne and Chris Brown are depicted as dictators and military and religious leaders. There are also soldiers in the video wearing armbands similar to those worn by Nazi soldiers.
Plenty of people on social media have expressed their outrage over the video:
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The video has also caught the attention of the Anti-Defamation League, which in a statement said that it was "deeply disturbed by the unadulterated Nazi imagery."
"The irony should be lost on no one that this video debuted on the 76th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the 'night of broken glass' pogrom that signaled the beginning of the Final Solution and the Holocaust," ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman said.
"It is troubling that no one among Minaj's group of producers, publicists and managers raised a red flag about the use of such imagery before ushering the video into public release," said Foxman, a Holocaust survivor. "This video is insensitive to Holocaust survivors and a trivialization of the history of that era. The abuse of Nazi imagery is deeply disturbing and offensive to Jews and all those who can recall the sacrifices Americans and many others had to make as a result of Hitler's Nazi juggernaut."
As of Monday, Minaj has not responded to the accusations, but the video's director, Jeff Osborne, has retweeted both negative and positive responses to the video.
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With this newest video, Minaj joins the likes of Pink Floyd and David Bowie, who have used similar imagery as performers. The only difference with them is that social media wasn't around for people to make their displeasure known.