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.
When your past involves Nazi symbolism it isn’t a little mistake. When the skeletons in your closet are a totenkopf i think we can safely discard that person as a serious candidate.
Fake progressives aren’t any better than corporate progressives. In fact they’re worse because you don’t actually know what they believe. At least with corporate shills you know that they’ll work to fill theirs and their benefactors pockets.
Does anything other than the style of the skull and crossbones of his ex-tattoo suggest that he is in any way a Nazi or fascist?
You mean other than the fact he was a guy interested in military symbology and kept a known nazi symbol on his body for 17 years?
Personally i learned about the totenkopf when i was in basic training (in 2001, he enlisted in ‘03 so same time frame) when they showed us tattoos that you can’t have in the military. He doesn’t really have any excuse.
Fascinating. So presumably, he wasn’t permitted to have this tattoo that you can’t have in the military because it’s a Nazi symbol? He got it in 2007, and then wasn’t permitted to have it in the military when he reenlisted in 2010?
Tell me more about your personal experience with this particular topic, which enables you to speak with authority on it. What were some of the other symbols they showed you? It’s lucky that we have some military people and some people from Maine showing up here to speak from a place of authority about why Graham Platner is officially bad and we can’t vote for him.
When did I say I was an authority or that you couldn’t vote for him?
Yes people with nazi adjacent tattos exist in the army. The people who do the examinations can be nazi adjacent too and then those type of people fall through the cracks. Also you aren’t really inspected on tattoos after your initial examination (at least when I was in the service). I mean, Hegseth has an iron cross and he’s been in the military for a while too.
If you’re trying to imply I’m not from Maine or didn’t spend time in the military then you’re mistaken. Not everyone online is a bot or shill.
Do you think Janet Mills stands a chance in the general against LePage?
That’s not the issue and I’m not sure why you think it is. She was elected state wide twice (2022 by quite a large margin in fact) so she has just as much of a chance as LePage.
You know if you were trying to convince us of how benign the symbol is maybe you shouldn’t be trying to whitewash the name of it? Why don’t you just say Totenkopf? That’s what it’s called. That’s what he’s called it.
Maybe because most people have never even heard of a Totenkopf until now and wouldn’t know what one looks like. The dailykos story about it called it the 2nd or 3rd most recognizable symbol of Nazis, but I’ve never seen the symbol before and had never heard that term before today. Is it really that well known?
It is not. It does appear on the list of a lot of symbols illegal in Germany today because of their association with Naziism or extremism, but it’s obviously not the third most recognizable on that list (as well as having an obvious overlap with a general “yeah that’s badass I want skull and crossbones” meaning, which seems obviously more plausible as the reason why this person who very very obviously is not a Nazi wanted to get this particular tattoo).
The fact that people are pretending so hard that this is a big deal and trying to force the connection between the tattoo and this person being a Nazi when there is literally no other reason known in the world for thinking he is a Nazi and quite a few to think he is not, tells you much more about them than it does about Graham Platner.