PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — His U.S. Senate campaign under fire, Maine Democrat Graham Platner said Wednesday that a tattoo on his chest has been covered to no longer reflect an image widely recognized as a Nazi symbol.
The first-time political candidate said he got the skull and crossbones tattoo in 2007, when he was in his 20s and in the Marine Corps. It happened during a night of drinking while he was on leave in Croatia, he said, adding he was unaware until recently that the image has been associated with Nazi police.
There is no way a tattoo that size is not intentional. He knew exactly what he was putting on his body.
covering your nazi tattoo only when you get called out for it but not apologizing for it or the homophobic and racist remarks is pretty much the biggest red flag imaginable.
Considering all the BS with our current government I’m going to assume any and all baseless smear campaigns means it’s in my best interest to vote for that person. This guy is probably a radical progressive who believes we should tax the rich.
Believe people when they tell you who they are the first time.
⊞
Edit: fucking nazi
Do you think it’s possible that he didn’t know it was a Nazi symbol?
Whatever. Still a fucking dickhead.
Back of the line, Nazi boy.
Oh, well, crisis averted then. It’s all good, now. Carry on, everyone.
I think for a normal person leaving that kind of tattoo there is sort of understandable.
For somebody running for political office as a yoked bro he had to realize this would come up at some point
and pretending to not know for 17years, only to cover up with another norse symbols, makes it harder to believe.
That’s what I thought. Of all the fucking tattoos to choose we went with, what, a Celtic knot/dog tattoo? Might as well be a Thor hammer.
Hell if you want to go for something ancient there some pretty awesome bronze age symbols, how about something Etruscan, or perhaps something kinda forgotten like the Neo-Hittites. I’m saying this as a fucking Neo-Pagan who fused ancestor worship with Odin worship, those symbols are just too fucking volatile most of the time unless you use them as a base to work off of and be transformed into something not immediately recognizable.
I hate this. I’m of Scandinavian heritage and so basically I just don’t get to celebrate, explore or display any history or culture. Because some terminally online person will accuse me of being a secret nazi.
Well, unless you’re doing it to cover up a Nazi tattoo I think you’ll be okay. I’m just saying if I were Platner I would have gone with Mickey Mouse or something.
Like, covered by a shirt or actually covered by another tattoo?
Either way, this is pretty shitty judgement and I think another Dem candidate would probably be a better bet.
See how easy it is to criticize someone on your own “team”? We should bring that back in America.
Wants to be senator
Doesn’t know basic Nazi symbols
Doesn’t know he has a basic Nazi symbol on his chest
Do you want this dip shit to be a senator?
His tattoo was definitely not a “basic” nazi symbol, at least for American standards
I don’t know homie. Like I’m not one of those ww2 buffs and even I know that very specific skull logo. Like I get dudes in the military are your basic edgy Xbox live chatroom teenagers, but this dude’s reddit account became public not long ago and he is most definitely not a secret Nazi.
It’s even worse than that. He has been noted talking about the Nazi symbol several times throughout the years. So the man has been saying “I didn’t know it was a Nazi symbol” for a long time now. He only claims to have covered it up now because it finally blew up in his face.
adding he was unaware until recently that the image has been associated with Nazi police
Apparently he has a pretty generous definition of the word “recently”. Or, the more likely answer, is that he has known for a long time (likely even when he got it) and has only recently seen it stop his grab for power.
He has been noted talking about the Nazi symbol several times throughout the years.
… according to various people including a single anonymous source quoted in Jewish Insider who claimed to have heard him talk about it years ago. They do have some other things they are saying about how upset they are about him, too.
Please look into his politics. This latest push feels so weird to discredit the guy.
He said 'I was in the military, fresh dumb child, got a tattoo with some friends, it’s a common style, didn’t think anything of it.
Then I was told it was nazi related
AND I GOT IT COVERED WITHIN WEEKS OF BEING TOLD’
I don’t know man, that sounds like a pretty genuine attempt. Are you running for office somewhere to make things better? If not, are you advocating for candidates based on 3 click bait articles or are you actually looking into their actions and policy ideas?
If you’re claiming a strong ideological stance, ie being a communist, to be simultaneously claiming ignorance of having a tattoo from one of the largest killers of communists, and having served in the military of the runner-up, makes it hard to trust him or his political understanding.
it’s like a year before the election, surely someone else is able to run.
Yeah this is my thought as well. I hope I’m wrong about it though… Even if he got educated after the tattoo, at some point you’d think he’d look it up. Especially if he’s apparently becoming a communist.
What? Mao was the largest by far. It’s not even close. It goes Mao (60 million), then Hitler as the runner-up (27 million), then Stalin (probably about 20 million).
The Western world sure as hell is not friendly to innocent people of whatever ideological stripe but yes in particular 20th-century Communists, but we’re not even scratching the surface of what they do to each other. We’re like little leaguers at an MLB game.
As soon as you find out a guy has a nazi tattoo you decide it’s time to support the guy 🤔 I mean I knew you were a social democrat but this is really on the nose
As soon as a ton of people from all over our corrupted media landscape seized upon some ways they could talk about this person, who is not a Nazi, in a way that really makes it sound like he is a Nazi and that’s the most important thing to talk about about him, then yes, I concluded that he’s definitely an enemy of the establishment which makes him at least okay in my book. The fact that Chuck Schumer doesn’t like him is a bonus too.
Hey, what do you think of Leon Trotsky? I am just curious.
Hey, what do you think of Leon Trotsky? I am just curious.
He was kind of a counter-revolutionary asshole who also happened to be in charge of killing a lot of anarchists, not a fan.
In the countries of the Mediterranean Sea, in the Balkans, in Italy, in Spain, in addition to the so-called Southern type, which is characterized by a combination of lazy shiftlessness and explosive irascibility, one meets cold natures, in whom phlegm is combined with stubbornness and slyness. The first type prevails ; the second augments it as an exception. It would seem as if each national group is doled out its due share of basic character elements, yet these are less happily distributed under the southern than under the northern sun. But we must not venture too far afield into the unprofitable region of national metaphysics." – Leon Trotsky in his biography of Stalin
who also happened to be in charge of killing a lot of anarchists
Tell me more
He was the war commissar during the civil war, effectively commander-in-chief of the red army, so he’s kind of responsible for what happened to the anarchist factions in it.
On some level he was going with a party line, but based on how the guy operated and what he was saying I don’t think that was much of a deviation from his actual beliefs.
I think it’s also telling how many former Trotskyists in the US pivoted to being neocon warmongers.
He was the war commissar during the civil war, effectively commander-in-chief of the red army, so he’s kind of responsible for what happened to the anarchist factions in it.
Oh God… this looks interesting but I have not the time to dive into it currently and my knowledge of this part of Russian history is basically 0. At a cursory reading, it kind of looks like the Russian Revolution happened, then elections, then the Bolsheviks lost the elections and announced that they were going to shoot anyone who contested their right to hold power no matter what because I say so, and so then there was more war, and I guess Trotsky was… running the Red Army during that time? Shooting anarchists, because they… wanted elections? Or something? That doesn’t sound right. I will read more when I have time.
I mean, if Trotsky was the guy who was killing the people who wanted elections, and only decades later turned around and tried to say that raw exercise of power with no attempt at a mandate was not what Communism is supposed to be about (which was what originally made me like him, and also what Stalin eventually killed him for more or less I think, because it made him “counterrevolutionary”)… you may have found a reason to criticize him that I get can behind. Of course the idea that he was shooting anarchists because they supported the Constituent Assembly sounds kind of out of character like I may have misunderstood something.
It’s too many layers.
I think it’s also telling how many former Trotskyists in the US pivoted to being neocon warmongers.
Ah yes, those famous neocon Trotsky fans. Clearly, your grasp of geopolitics is unparalleled, and not at all based on a fuzzy team sports based value system totally unmoored from reality. Which Trotskyist neocon was your favorite?
It’s so simple.
He either is lying about knowing the meaning of the symbol and is therefore not qualified to be a Senator, no matter his apparent stances.
Or he is insanely ignorant of basic history and is therefore not qualified to be a Senator, no matter his apparent stances.
I do not think that symbol is basic history, and he was a gunner in the military. Not exactly the smartest of people as teenagers.
Then he is not qualified to be a Senator, lacking political and historical accumen is a major fail. There are plenty of young adults who do have the judgement to look into what they are inking on themselves permanently.
I know I am being judgy, but Senate is one of the most influential political positions a person can run for. The bar is and needs to be very high. Just saying the right words is not enough to get me excited about a candidate.
I hope youre not a Maine voter then.
Ridiculous purity tests. I’ve never heard of this icon/meaning before the past week but yes, apparently this is truly intentional and despite him covering it he can never regain the public trust despite ACTUAL Nazis running the show in Washington.
What a complete waste of time hammering this. But the feeling of smugness is invaluable after all.
Real folk in Maine aren’t afraid to acknowledge growth, don’t worry buddy. He’s got my vote 100%
I like to think I know history, and I’ve been around longer than Platner, and I would never have identified this as a Nazi symbol if someone hadn’t told me.
Take a look at this list of symbols and see how many you would have recognized. For me it is four: swastika, party eagle, odal rune, and SS lightning bolts. Maybe the wolfsangel and the SA emblem I would have had some kind of inkling that something about it was suspect. The death’s head and the cross type patterns (even the KKK one) I would have had absolutely no idea unless someone told me.
Plus, of course, it is relevant that he had all the time in the world to express some kind of Nazi ideology including on his Reddit account which was suddenly de-anonymized without him planning to have any of it exposed, and there was 0 Nazi stuff in any of it. People are just happy they found this reason to be able to shit on him and have one less progressive candidate they may have to deal with as a competitor for horrible people like Mills.
Ok, then you probably shouldn’t be running for such a public office either. How is the ‘average’ American being unaware an acceptable excuse? Don’t you think that we should expect more from politicians in high office than from the average Joe? This thinking is what gave the US leaders like Trump and W. “I’d like to have a beer with that guy, so I’ll vote for him” hasn’t exactly delivered sensible leadership…
Also, the man first enlisted in the Marines in 2003, and his last military deployment was 15 years later in 2018 to Afghanistan with the mercenary outfit Blackwater. He was a Marine in Fallujah and Ramadi during the height of the atrocities committed by US military personnel.That’s 15 years of killing brown people before he concluded that perhaps that wasn’t a good choice. Why would you trust a person with judgment this bad deep into his thirties with this kind of power? Even removing the tattoo from the equation, there are plenty of red flags with this man. But hey, I guess we need more Fettermans in power, just ignore the red flags because he said a couple of sentences you agree with.
I might not have immediately recognized it as such, but it fits their design ethos so well, that at some point I would have looked it up. Even if it was years after getting it.
Nah I don’t believe that for a second sorry, you’re grasping at straws
He still had it made. A leopard does not loose its spots.
Good thing people aren’t leopards…
This tattoo was the Totenkopf? Jesus Christ what is with this article? They described as skull and crossbones. As if making you think it’s a pirate symbol. Fuck no. The Totenkopf has always been associated with the Nazis. That’s a straight-up Nazi symbol that they wore while genociding people. I don’t believe for a fucking second this thing was an accident.
I can’t say I’m shocked that a PBS article is whitewashing this kind of shit. Cuz they’ve been whitewashing fascist shit for a while now. But God damn.
He was a 20-some year old marine; I absolutely believe he didn’t know what the tattoo actually was, and just thought it was cool.
I sure as hell didn’t know what it was when I was 20. I think I only learned about all this shit when I was teaching a student who had a confederate flag phone wallpaper (not in the US, btw), and I did a “crash course” in other to look for that are subtle symbols, like 1488 and lesser-known Nazi/white supremacy logos.
Some of them are super generic, too, like the one that looks like two parallel square-ish lighting bolts, or the square-looking ankh thing. (Someone linked a list above, of symbols banned in Germany).
Seems more likely that the establishment is trying to smear a progressive candidate than that a progressive candidate is secretly a neo Nazi.
The Totenkopf has always been associated with the Nazis.
To be pedantic, it actually predates Nazis by quite a bit, it was in use during the Empire - but by modern-day standards it’s absolutely associated with nazis.
So did the swastika… Doesn’t really matter does it
Honestly, if I saw that, I wouldn’t think “nazi”, can’t blame him if he saw it on a drunken night and didn’t think much of it.
When the media stated we live in a “post-truth” society, they meant it. Trump admin imported the Russian propaganda tactics of Surkov. This is our reality now, nothing is true or false, it’s all just information.
His former political director said he “knows damn well” what the tattoo signifies.
