Fried Chicken Takeaway Called ‘Hitler’ Opens in Bangkok

The bizarre restaurant opened last month in Thailand and images of it are doing the rounds on Twitter as shocked customers take photos of the offensive eatery.

 

BANGKOK – Thailand’s obsession with so-called ‘Nazis chic’ just won’t go away – and now a fried chicken takeaway called Hitler – complete with a logo showing the Nazi leader in a bow tie – has opened its doors.

The opening of a “Hitler” chicken restaurant in Bangkok is the latest of several examples of Thailand’s seeming obsession with the German Nazi leader.

A billboard proclaiming “Hitler is not dead” caused a stir when it was erected in October 2009 to promote a wax museum in Chon Buri. It was covered up after complaints from the Israeli and German ambassadors

The restaurant’s red sign looks similar to that of KFC, except that the fascist dictator’s head appears where that of Colonel Sanders should be.

Images of the restaurant taken by shocked customers are making the rounds on Twitter, according to a report on Friday in the Daily Mail in London.

Andrew Spooner, a Bangkok-based journalist who spotted the restaurant, tweeted: “Very bizarre Hitler Fried Chicken shop in Thailand. I kid you not. Complete with pic of Hitler in bow tie.”

“I went in for a bite last week and got some fried chicken, which was pretty good, and asked the guy behind the counter why it was called Hitler,” the Daily Mail quoted Bangkok resident Alan Robertson, 43, as saying.

“He just shrugged his shoulders and said the owners had thought it was good image.”

The use of Hitler’s image in all kinds of ways – including in an infamous advertisement for potato chips in the 1990s – is commonplace in Thailand.

Social critics have said the Thai education system has failed to impress on people that Hitler was not some kind of cartoon figure from the distant past but a monster responsible for millions of deaths.

However, it’s not unusual to see teenagers in T-shirts bearing comical images of the dictator. In another popular design seen locally, Hitler is transformed into Ronald McDonald.

Thailand was the focus of international outrage in September 2011 when a group of high school students paraded around on a sports day in home-made Nazi uniforms, complete with swastika armbands and toy guns.

The school claimed it had no idea what the students had been planning and it quickly apologised.

Two years earlier, a wax museum in Pattaya promoted itself with a giant billboard featuring the dictator and the Thai words, “Hitler is not dead!”