Yup, which is what I understand he ultimately did. No idea why he waited so long to do it, though. But I don’t think it was because he was secretly a Nazi.
Yeah, it’s much less than clear to me that he was stopped by the Nazi tattoo and not by the sleeve.
I agree - it’s not be rude he was secretly a Nazi.
Yeah, that’s the thing I keep coming back to. If Platner got that tattoo because he was just so super into Nazi ideology, you’d think there’d be more cites of him actually promoting Nazi ideology. Especially in all the years between when he got it, and when he entered politics. That’s a pretty long stretch for a guy who thought the SS was so great he got their emblem permanently marked on his body for him to not have a single tweet about, “Hitler did some good things for Germany,” or writing “(((Soros)))” or anything like that.
Yeah, I don’t buy the idea that Platner has spent 20+ years sstablishing his left-wing bona fides so that he can get elected, turn heel, and declare he’s not voting for judicial nominees unless Congress passes his bill saying that Jews can’t have driver’s licenses.
The tattoo shows poor judgment, and he should probably vet the influencers he associates himself with better, but I doubt there’s some sinister master plan to fool everyone.
Look at what Democratic establishment did to make it look like Obama was a US citizen. These guys play a long game. /s
Cute. I also don’t think he is (or was) overtly a Nazi.
Again, a Totenkopf tattoo doesn’t make someone a Nazi any more than a Jolly Roger-type skull and crossbones tattoo makes someone a pirate. And while a Jolly Roger-type skull and crossbones might have been intimidating hundreds of years ago, it no longer is. Instead it appears on kid’s Halloween costumes.
So what is scary and intimidating? Answer: a Totenkopf. And I can see a 20-year old Marine choosing it without having any idea of the ideology behind it. For that matter, I think most people to this day (here in the U.S., anyway) have no idea of the connection between the Totenkopf and the Nazi SS.
And skull imagery appears in lots of U.S. units as well, including the Marine Raiders, a special operations unit:
You know, when I read the news reports that this guy had a “Nazi tattoo,” I initially assumed they were talking about a swastika. This isn’t that.
Take a look at the photo’s helpfully pasted above by Babale. There is one of Graham’s tattoo, and one of the Totenkopf from a military hat. squinting really hard, it’s difficult for me to think the tat represents the Totenkopf.
Of course, a “Nazi” tattoo gets more headlines than a “Pirate” tattoo.
Also, if Platner is a Nazi mole, why wouldn’t he have covered up the tattoo to avoid raising suspicions?
And that might be the thing. Platner doesn’t didn’t look at that tattoo in the mirror and see, only, a Nazi symbol, he saw the tattoo he got to commemorate a particular time in his life and that nostalgia could easily explain why he took so long to get it covered up.
Lots of tattooed people have a story about why they got that tattoo that has nothing to do with the content of the tattoo, e.g. ‘My friend got married and all of the groomsmen decided to get tattooed as part of his bachelor party and Snoopy was the only flash I didn’t hate, so, that’s why I have the Red Barron on my arm.’
I think it looks a lot like blurry tattoo of a totemkopf.
Yeah, i said in the other thread that i can totally see a drunk young marine looking for a kick-ass nasty tattoo, and picking that, without having any idea it was related to the Nazis. And it wasn’t in a very visible location, so the number of people who saw it who might have said, “dude, why do you have a Nazi tattoo?” might be zero, until it came up when he ran. @Babale 's cites make a strong case it was the sleeve that made it hard to reenlist in the Marines, he may not have even shown the chest tattoo to them.
Or maybe he did, and maybe he liked having a Nazi tattoo. I don’t think we can know.
That’s what he’s said in interviews. Nobody ever told him of the Nazi connotations. And he had gone to the beach, or worn tank tops, and even took off his shirt to perform a silly song at his brother’s wedding. It wasn’t until he ran for office that it was pointed out that it was a Nazi symbol.
Well, i certainly wouldn’t approach a stranger at the beach to ask about their Nazi tattoo!
Yeah, but he presumably went with people he knew. The point was that he never hid the tattoo, and nobody told him it was a Nazi symbol.
There are huge swaths of this country with very few Jewish people. They aren’t hyper vigilant about signs of antisemitism. So it’s not at all surprising that he went years without ever realizing the significance.
ETA: You can count me among those who didn’t know this was a Nazi symbol until this campaign issue arose. When I think of Nazi imagery, I think swastikas, and I believe there’s a stylized S S logo.
@zoo How about voting for the pirate tattoo guy? Personally, drunk 20’ish year old squaddies on leave in Croatia probably thought a pirate tattoo was a good idea at the time. Whilst a totemkopf may be skull and crossbones, not all skull and crossbones are totemkopf’s.
I see a big Madison avenue “swift boating” operation in play with the “Nazi tattoo” moniker. Right wing media playbook is to define and interpret terms to mean something they don’t: “86” is not a term for assassination, “from the river to the sea” is certainly contentious, “billionaire” & “oligarchs” are not anti-semitic, calling the leveling of Gaza and same playbook in Lebanon atrocities or worse, is not anti semitic, ad nauseum. Nothing close to Graham’s tattoo being conclusive, nor have cherry picked social media posts self-censored by someone with no plans to run for public office made a case beyond innuendo that he’s a Nazi. Look upthread at the photo of Platner’s tat, and I struggle to see more than a Rorschach test blob, and not an obvious connection. And the dozens (hundreds?) of town halls, and various interviews have even hinted at him being a Nazi unless one looks at it via a good southern republican state gerrymandered glasses.
As an independent, my advice to the Dems is to ignore purity testing in the current environment. The opponents are using the Supremes, Executive Orders and other dirty tricks to permanently lock in partisan voting advantages and the Supremes for the next generation. “We lost but played by honorable Queensbury rules, which will comfort my grand daughter whilst she is barefoot, pregnant and uneducated.”
I don’t know what I think of Platner, but my opinion is the tattoo artist that did that work was either as drunk as Platner, a scammer, or just incredibly bad at his job.
I’m not from Main.
Don’t forget there’s the original totenkopf as applied 30 years ago, how it looked a couple years ago just before being obliterated / modified into something less … incriminating, and how it looks after the scribbling on top to hide the past, arevthree very different pictures.
Only the first of those three speak to the original “art” and “artist”.
I’m Jewish, and you can count me in that group, too.
That’s why i think his story is plausible.
One of the things that bugs me about his tattoo is that he covered it up with something potentially just as white supremacist – a Norse Mythology tattoo.
Well, he says it’s a celtic knot with a dog. And maybe, I guess. But as someone into European folklore and pagan religions, I can promise you that there is a Nazi infestation problem that goes back to the orginal Nazis, and this choice is at best deeply unfortunate. It’s not as big of a Nazi dogwhistle as a Totenkopf, but considering he started with a Totenkopf, it’s hard to give him the benefit of the doubt.
I just don’t care about symbols nearly as much as I care about policies and actions. Does the Celtic Knot with a Dog represent his commitment to ICE? his plan to deny international aid to countries in Africa or South America? his intention of including only Norse people in his political staff? What exactly is he planning on doing that’s problematic?
Look, I don’t know for sure. It looks like the guy is going to win the primary, and he is polling ahead of Collins, so we will have a chance to see. But I will not be able to trust him until he has had a chance to let his actions speak for themselves.
And I have a lot of frustrations about how that went during the primary, and how we seem only to extend that level of benefit of the doubt to white, blue-collar presenting dudes. But there is little I can do about it.