A lot of politicos are already looking ahead to the midterms next year. I get that people want to be prepared, but there’s an election this year! My state, Virginia, is voting in all of the state-government races, including governor (go Spanberger!). NYC is voting for mayor. New Jersey is voting for governor & legislature. There are tons of local and state ballot measures and races to vote on, and it’s important to vote in off-years. That’s my PSA before I get into a big controversy up north.
So, next year, Maine will have a Senate race. Profoundly unpopular Republican Senator Susan Collins is running for reelection, and Democrats have been trying to field a good candidate to run against her. Certain politicos think they found their guy: Graham Platner, a veteran and former Blackwater mercenary. I think the podbros spent all of two minutes grooming Platner for this run – while he certainly has a suspiciously astroturfed campaign apparatus, his primary run has already been marred by controversy after controversy. The biggest of which is that the man has a Nazi tattoo (which he covered up).
Graham Platner, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Maine, said on Wednesday that he had covered up a tattoo that he got years ago that resembled a Nazi symbol. Mr. Platner, who is running for the seat held by Senator Susan Collins since 1997, said in a video podcast interview that was broadcast on Tuesday that he got the tattoo, a skull-and-crossbones image that is widely recognized as a Nazi symbol, while drunk 18 years ago and was unaware of its extremist association.
Mr. Platner, a Marine veteran and oyster farmer, has also come under scrutiny for a series of posts he made years ago on Reddit that played down sexual assault in the military and criticized the police and white Americans living in rural areas.
Mr. Platner acknowledged the tattoo in an episode of the podcast Pod Save America. The podcast played a video clip from a decade ago in which Mr. Platner dances shirtless, with the tattoo visible, at a bar while lip-syncing to a Miley Cyrus song at his brother’s wedding. A host of the podcast, Tommy Vietor, said that some of Mr. Platner’s “political opponents” had been telling reporters that he had a tattoo “with Nazi affiliation.”
Mr. Platner said on the podcast, which is hosted by former Obama aides, that he got the tattoo in 2007 in Split, Croatia, and that he and other Marines had chosen a “terrifying-looking skull and crossbones off the wall” and that “skulls and crossbones are a pretty standard military thing.”
“I am not a secret Nazi,” Mr. Platner said on the podcast. In a statement, Mr. Platner reiterated that he was not aware of the tattoo’s Nazi connections when he got it. “It was not until I started hearing from reporters and D.C. insiders that I realized this tattoo resembled a Nazi symbol,” he said. “I absolutely would not have gone through life having this on my chest if I knew that — and to insinuate that I did is disgusting.”
He added in the statement that he had never tried to hide the tattoo, including during a physical examination he had when enlisting in the Army that he said included a check for tattoos with hate symbols. His campaign confirmed in an email on Wednesday that he had gotten the tattoo covered.
Deborah Lipstadt, a professor of modern Jewish history and Holocaust Studies at Emory University, said that the skull and crossbones symbol depicted in Mr. Platner’s tattoo, known as the Totenkopf, was, after the swastika, one of the most well-known symbols from World War II. Guards at Nazi concentration camps wore the symbol prominently on their caps, Professor Lipstadt said. Its seemed “disingenuous” that Mr. Platner would not know the symbol’s Nazi links given his military experience, she said.
Despite Platner’s excuses now, there are stories circulating that Platner actually did know what he had tattooed, to the point where he even described it as “my Totenkopf.” So, now there are Democratic activists (like the podbros) excusing the whole “Nazi tattoo” thing. Like, whomst among us has not gotten a Nazi tattoo, amirite? Which has led to revulsion across the Democratic Party, like “not having a Nazi tattoo” should be pretty standard.
Additionally, the Nazi tattoo is covering up a host of other issues with Platner, including a lengthy history of online homophobia, blaming women for being raped, and the kind of general racism you’d expect from someone with a Totenkopf tattoo.
Photos courtesy of Platner’s Instagram.
