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.
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.