Casting Agency Looked to Fill Role of Alt-Right Neo-Nazi for Cadillac Commercial
Cadillac caused a stir this week when a casting service put out a request on behalf of the American luxury brand looking to fill the role of an “alt-right (neo-nazi)” in a new commercial. Cadillac denied it had ever authorized the notice and condemned it, while the casting company took responsibility, saying that it had been issued by mistake. Regardless of who did what, the idea had to have been hatched somewhere and by someone, which reveals something far more troubling than a mere streak of poor taste and even poorer judgement in corporate America: the marketability and mainstreaming of an alt-right population, or those “identified variously with anti-globalist and anti-immigrant stances, cartoon frogs, white nationalists, pick-up artists, anti-Semites, and a rising tide of right-wing populism,” as Tablet contributor Jacob Siegel wrote in a profile of Paul Gottfried, the alt-right’s “Godfather.”
The idea that any major american corporation would see an appeal in casting a neo-Nazi isn’t just horribly offensive; it is also a premonition of how we will be forced to engage with the alt-right: like the cyclist, or the taxi driver, or the veteran—all roles the casting call was also looking to fill—we will find ourselves dealing with the alt-right every day, apparently. Now it seems they’ve reached enough of a critical mass and their ideas have become important enough that they are now a target demographic.