YouTube bans AIDS awareness ad showing 'Hitler' having sex
The German ad has been criticized as insinuating people infected with the HIV virus are mass murderers.
By Haaretz Service Tags: Hitler Israel newsA German AIDS awareness advertisement featuring an Adolf Hitler look-alike having sex was pulled from Internet content-sharing site YouTube on Wednesday, the French news agency AFP reported.
The ad, which was to be screened on German television and in movie theaters, has been criticized for stigmatizing people infected with the HIV virus. It shows blurred images of a couple engaged in sex, revealing only at the end that the star of the clip is Hitler. The ad can also be viewed at www.aids-is-a-mass-murderer.com.
A message on YouTube said that the clip had been removed "due to terms of use violation." The site did not elaborate.
The campaign, which also features posters of Joseph Stalin and Saddam Hussein look-alikes in flagrante, was organized with an AIDS awareness group ahead of World AIDS Day on December 1.
"The campaign is designed to shake people up, to bring the topic of AIDS back to center stage, and to reverse the trend of unprotected sexual intercourse," the Das Commitee advertising agency told the AFP earlier this week.
"We asked ourselves what face we could give to the virus, and it couldn't be a pretty face," the company's creative director Dirk Silz told AFP.
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