U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner, who is running in the Democratic primary in Maine, was outed for his “Totenkopf” tattoo in an exclusive Oct. 21 story by The Maine Monitor.
“Totenkopf” is the name of the skull-and-bones or “death’s head” symbol adopted by the Schutzstaffel, or SS, and used on their uniforms. It was later adopted by other military units, too, most infamously by the SS branch called Totenkopfverbände that operated the concentration camps and death camps.
A former acquaintance of Platner, who knew him years ago, told Jewish Insider he has referred to the tattoo as “my Totenkopf” as a joke.
The political controversy comes at the same time Platner’s campaign was surging with donations, crowded political events, and thousands of campaign volunteers signing up. The tattoo controversy also came at the same time Maine’s Democrat governor, Janet Mills, entered the primary to challenge Platner for the nomination.
The eventual nominee will face the incumbent U.S. senator, Republican Susan Collins, next fall.
Platner is also under fire over past controversial comments posted on Reddit that have earned him stories at liberal news outlets Politico and CNN. The story by Politico described violent comments, such as defending violence to create change. The story by CNN pointed out Platner referred to himself as a communist, called rural Americans “racist and stupid,” and mocked law enforcement.
Despite his Nazi tattoo, which Platner has now covered up with a new one, prominent Democrats are defending the candidate who wore the tattoo for 18 years until it became a political liability.
"I'm not overly impressed by a squad of media running around saying, 'What do you think about the tattoo on Graham Platner's chest,’" Sen. Bernie Sanders told Axios.
Sanders, however, routinely uses Nazi imagery to describe his right-wing political opponents, especially Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. He has called Trump a racist, a “white supremacist,” and a Hitler-like authoritarian, and called MAGA a “fascist” movement.
Another political shrug came from Krystal Ball, the former MSNBC show host. In a post on X, Ball wrote she prefers the candidate with the “regrettable tattoo over one who has steadfastly supported a genocide,” referring to Sen. Collins’ support for Israel and its war against Hamas.
“Unsurprisingly, the ‘Free Palestine’ crowd is fine with SS tats,” David Harsanyi, a Washington Examiner columnist, commented on X.
Other X users reposted Ball’s previous post, from January, when she compared Elon Musk to a Nazi for his Nazi-like gesture at Trump’s inauguration.
Tim Graham, the longtime media analyst at Media Research Center, was asked by AFN to comment after MRC has documented Republicans-are-Nazis accusations going back decades.
“It's amazing,” he says, “that the same national media that slime conservatives as Nazis and fascists can so shamelessly skip a Democrat candidate with a Nazi image tattooed on his chest.”
According to the Monitor story, Platner caught wind his political opponents had learned about his tattoo, so he ran to the liberal podcast “Pod Save America” to get ahead of the controversy. A former U.S. Marine, he told the podcast he got the tattoo in 2007 in Croatia, when he and fellow Marines were out for a night of heavy drinking.
What might be most troubling for Platner is his campaign’s now-former political director, Genevieve McDonald. A former state representative, McDonald had already stepped down over Platner’s past comments on Reddit when the tattoo story broke.
“He’s not an idiot, he’s a military history buff,” McDonald wrote in a Facebook post. “Maybe he didn’t know it when he got it, but he got it years ago, and he should have had it covered up because he knows well what it means.”
