No, Sydney Sweeney is not a Nazi propagandist

“That’s Nazi propaganda.”

“This is a whole Eugenics campaign!

This is how left-wing TikTok influencers described a jeans commercial in videos that have since received millions of views. Yes, a jeans commercial. 

The source of all this controversy? Well, American Eagle dared to partner with actress Sydney Sweeney for a commercial where the blue-eyed, blonde bombshell says:

“Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color. My jeans are blue.”

Then, the voiceover comes in: “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.” (She is, of course, wearing branded American Eagle jeans). 

Get it? It’s a pun. Apparently, according to left-wing internet discourse, it’s actually Nazi propaganda and…literal eugenics. 

This is wrong-headed on every level. 

First, there’s no reasonable interpretation of this commercial that comes anywhere close to “Nazi” or “fascist” propaganda. It’s just a pun, a play on words, intended to make people associate their jeans with a hot actress, with physical perfection. Nothing about the commercial promotes racial supremacy. Simply highlighting an attractive blonde white woman does not imply that other races cannot be similarly beautiful. Nothing about the commercial promotes any political ideology whatsoever. 

And simply mentioning genetics, “good genes,” is not, therefore, eugenics, the discredited and dark theory defined by the National Institutes of Health as “the use of selective breeding to improve the human race.” It’s just a simple fact that some genetic traits are desirable. People commonly refer to “having good genes” when discussing someone whose family members live longer than average, are above-average height, and so on. Noticing the existence of genetics is not eugenics. It becomes eugenics when you take steps to selectively breed traits into or out of a population or race, and start violating human rights through things like forced sterilizations.  

It’s also worth noting that by no stretch of the imagination is American Eagle some white nationalist, far-right company. Just last month, June 2025, they did an extensive LGBT Pride collection and marketing campaign. And the brand routinely works with models and celebrities of a wide array of racial backgrounds. 

So, all the TikTok panic is much ado about nothing. But it’s more than just wasted energy. There are serious ramifications of this kind of misinformed meltdown.

First, the constant, frivolous invocations of the Holocaust and Hitler are an insult to the Jewish people and the other victims of the Nazis, whose abuses should not be diminished by comparisons to the likes of jean commercials. The overuse of these analogies also contributes to the “boy who cried wolf” phenomenon that has allowed actual anti-Semites and Hitler supporters to escape the proper degree of social scrutiny that their abhorrent views deserve. 

Second, this kind of alarmist rhetoric riles up impressionable young people by the millions, convincing them that our country is in a much worse, much darker place than it actually is. It’s this false impression of America that fuels the radical, violent ideology that’s gaining traction among young people to the point where many openly support assassinations and political violence — after all, they think they’re up against literal Nazis, akin to Adolf Hitler.

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None of this ends well.

Young people don’t read. They get their “news” and political perspectives from platforms like TikTok instead. And, time after time, the loudest voices on these websites weaponize their platforms to sow division, spread hyperbole, and cash out at the expense of American political discourse.

Brad Polumbo is an independent journalist and host of the Brad vs Everyone podcast.