Nicki Minaj's 'Only' video slammed for Nazi-inspired imagery

The Anti-Defamation League on Monday added to the mounting criticism of Nazi-inspired imagery in the music video for rapper Nicki Minaj's "Only."

The video "disturbingly evokes Third Reich propaganda and constitutes a new low for pop culture's exploitation of Nazi symbolism," league national director Abraham H. Foxman said in a statement.

The more than five-minute-long video features a cartoon Minaj as a militaristic dictator, as banners fly with Swastika-like symbols in a panorama evoking Germany's 1930s Nuremberg Rallies. The symbol, appearing on the banners and on solders' red armbands, is the combined letters "YM," standing for her record label, Young Money.

Released just before the 76th anniversary of the Nov. 9-10, 1938, Kristallnacht attacks on German and Austrian Jews, the video has become a flashpoint on social media, generating much criticism on Reddit and Twitter for the past few days.

"This video is insensitive to Holocaust survivors and a trivialization of the history of that era," Foxman said.

Jeff Osborne, the video's director, has retweeted several critical comments but has not responded.

The singers/rappers Drake, Chris Brown and Lil Wayne perform as guest artists on the song, a female-empowerment boast with highly explicit sexual lyrics and no direct references to Nazism. Drake, who is Jewish, (he was raised by his divorced Jewish mother and was bar mitzvahed), came under separate criticism in a Jewish cultural magazine for his contribution to the song.

Representatives for Minaj and for her and Drake's record label did not respond to Newsday requests for comment.