SYDNEY, Australia (JTA) — A law firm with “deep roots” in the Australian Jewish community has ceased advising a company selling T-shirts that satirize Hitler and the Holocaust.
Mark Leibler, senior partner at Arnold Bloch Leibler, said in a statement issued Monday that his firm has severed ties with Red Bubble upon realizing that the giant internet portal was selling “Hipster Hitler” merchandise.
“The firm has deep roots in the Jewish community and is extremely sensitive to the consequences of the Holocaust,” said the statement from Leibler, who also is the national chairman of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council. “Any implication that the firm is supportive of attempts to ‘reinvigorate Nazi ideas’ is false and unacceptable to the firm.”
According to its website, “Hipster Hitler” is a New York-based comic that satirizes “hipster culture and the exploits of the Third Reich using a combination of puns, parody, dark humor, anachronisms, and visual gags.”
“Hipster Hitler” T-shirts sold on Red Bubble, which hosts the works of thousands of artists, feature slogans such as “Three Reichs And You’re Out,” “Back To The Fuhrer” and “Eastside Westside Genocide.” Other T-shirts feature drawings that try to make Hitler look hip.
Melbourne-based Red Bubble CEO Martin Hosking, a former secretary of the Australian Arabic Council, said that “This is a genuine parody and not anti-Semitic. I don’t know where you end up when you start taking down art because someone doesn’t like it.”
