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.
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.
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.
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.
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