The Grunt's Unreleased Super Bowl Advertisement

Submission 10,385

Part of a series on September 11th, 2001 Attacks. [View Related Entries]

About

The Grunt's Unreleased Super Bowl Advertisement refers advertisement by the clothing brand The Grunt. Intended for Super Bowl LII, the advertisement went unreleased for financial reasons. It depicts a police officer reminiscing upon his life of service in the military, admiring the American flag at a football game and watching the September 11th, 2001 attacks as a child, while preparing to physically assault a gang of protesters.

Origin

On February 16th, 2018, the clothing brand The Grunt shared an unreleased Super Bowl advertisement entitled "This Commercial Would Have Changed the Game." In the description, the publisher explains why the commercial never aired. They wrote, "This commercial was intended to be our commercial in the Big Game (you know the one). We weren't denied or rejected by anyone, it was our own decision to not run it. In the end we just couldn't take the big money risk." The post received more than 3.6 million views in less than two years (shown below).

Spread

The video was widely criticized on various subreddits. ^[7]^[8] Redditors in /r/COMPLETEANARCHY and /r/ABoringDystopia referred to the video as "literal fascist propaganda" and a "fantasy being sold to right-wing america." However, in the /r/ProtectAndServe subreddit,^[9] the video received more than 159 points (85% upvoted).

Rudy Giuliani's 9/11 Post

On September 11th, 2019, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani shared the video with the caption "GOD BLESS AMERICA!" Within 24 hours, the tweet received more than 12,000 likes and 4,300 retweets (shown below).

Giuliani's post became the subject of controversy on Twitter, where many found his tweet to be an endorsement of fascism. Twitter^[1] user @nycsouthpaw tweeted, "This video from Rudy honors the Republican tradition of using the memory of 9/11 to attack people who had absolutely nothing to do with it, and it’s incredibly fascist to boot." The tweet received more than 3,900 likes and 1,000 retweets in 24 hours (shown below, left).

Throughout the day, others shared this sentiment, criticizing Giuliani and the commercial (examples below, center and right).

Several media outlets covered the reaction to the video, including The Independent,^[2] The Daily Beast,^[3] Business Insider,^[4] New Civil Rights Movement,^[5] Spinter News^[6] and more.