The Maine Senate candidate and the Nazi tattoo

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An oyster farmer and progressive military veteran running an insurgent campaign for Maine’s Democratic Senate nomination admitted this week to having had a Nazi tattoo for nearly two decades.

Graham Platner shared video of himself shirtless, sporting the tattoo, on a popular progressive podcast. He denied that he himself ever held Nazi views, instead claiming he had gotten the tattoo while “inebriated” as a young adult without knowing what it meant.

Amid a backlash, Platner said he would get the tattoo removed. But one of his biggest supporters, Jewish Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, said the revelation did not change his support for Platner.

Since launching his campaign this summer, the 41-year-old political neophyte had picked up steam in left-wing circles for his populist positions, including calling Israel’s military campaign in Gaza a genocide. In addition to endorsements from progressive leaders including Sanders, Morris Katz, the Jewish campaign strategist behind Zohran Mamdani’s digital ads for New York City mayor, made a campaign launch video for Platner.

As of Sept. 30, according to campaign finance records, Platner led his Democratic rivals in campaign donations with $3.2 million in contributions. At his rallies, the biggest applause comes when he delivers lines like “Our tax dollars can build schools and hospitals in America, not bombs that destroy schools and hospitals in Gaza.”

But scandal has started to plague Platner’s campaign in recent days after his past posts on the web forum Reddit came to light. In those posts, Platner made comments about why Black people don’t tip, derided rural white Americans and declared himself a Communist.

This week, a recent video of a shirtless Platner also surfaced in which he can be seen sporting a chest tattoo of a Totenkopf, a Nazi-era skull-and-crossbones design favored by SS officers. “Totenkopf,” or “Death’s Head,” was also the name of the division of officers who guarded the concentration camps.

The source of the video was Platner himself, who shared it on an episode of “Pod Save America” on Monday.

The Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine, the state’s largest Jewish body, said in a statement that it was concerned about the tattoo as well as other aspects of Platner’s campaign.

“This tattoo appears to be a ‘death’s head’ symbol used by the SS, the organization most responsible for the genocidal murder of 6 million Jews and millions of other victims during WWII,” Zach Schwartz, director of the Portland-based group’s Jewish Community Relations Council, said in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “We hope that Mr. Platner would condemn, in no uncertain terms, the meaning behind this tattoo and everything it stands for.”

Schwartz added that Platner’s “broader messaging” also troubled them, in particular his pledge not to take money from the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC.

“Maine’s Jewish community is not a monolith, nor does every Jewish Mainer support AIPAC. However, Platner’s repeated, singular focus on not taking money from AIPAC plays into familiar, harmful tropes that Jews or organizations like AIPAC control the government,” the statement read. (An increasing number of Democratic candidates including Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, a centrist running for his state’s Senate primary, have also pledged not to accept money from AIPAC.)

On “Pod Save America,” Platner said he had gotten the tattoo in Croatia in 2007, while on shore leave from a tour of duty in Iraq, without knowing what it stood for.

“We went ashore in Split, Croatia, myself and a few of the other machine gun squad leaders. And we got very inebriated, and we did what Marines on liberty do, and we decided to go get a tattoo,” Platner told the show’s host Tommy Vietor.

He said he and his companions “chose a terrifying-looking skull and crossbones off the wall because we were Marines, and skull-and-crossbones are a pretty standard military thing. And we got those tattoos and then we actually all moved on with our lives.”

“I am not a secret Nazi,” Platner said elsewhere in the interview, adding that he had passed a full security clearance in 2018 to work as a State Department contractor. “If you read through my Reddit comments, I think you can pretty much figure out where I stand on Nazism and antisemitism and racism in general. I would say a lifelong opponent.”

Platner did not address why he still has the tattoo. He has said he intends to stay in the race. He also claimed not to have known the symbol had Nazi connotations until getting wind of opposition research against him during his current Senate campaign.

However, quoting an anonymous former acquaintance of his, Jewish Insider reported on Tuesday that Platner had referred to the ink as “my Totenkopf” more than a decade ago and would frequently take his shirt off at the Washington, D.C., bar where he worked at the time. “He said it in a cutesy little way,” the source said. Jewish Insider additionally reported that Platner had met with other men with Nazi links, including one neo-Nazi who is running for a seat on Bangor City Council.

Platner’s political director, former state Senator Genevieve McDonald, resigned from his campaign last week following the reveal of his Reddit posts. On Facebook days after her resignation, McDonald also took Platner to task for his tattoo.

“Graham has an anti-Semitic tattoo on his chest,” McDonald wrote, according to screenshots of the post on social media. “He’s not an idiot, he’s a military history buff. 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 damn well what it means. His campaign released it themselves to some podcast bros, along with a video of him shirtless and drunk at a wedding to try to get ahead of it.”

While some in the online left denounced Platner over the tattoo and rebuked previous support for him, he has kept some defenders. Lyle Jeremy Rubin, a Jewish military veteran, author and left-wing commentator, is one of them.

“Every other marine I knew had some version of the same tat. Please,” Rubin wrote on BlueSky, adding in a separate post, “This is a great example of what happens when the Democratic Party is defined by goody two-shoe losers who have lived their entire lives among fellow goody two-shoe losers.”

Sanders, too, said he was not dissuaded by learning of Platner’s tattoo.

“He went through a dark period. He’s not the only one in America who has gone through a dark period,” Sanders said on Tuesday. “People go through that, he has apologized for the stupid remarks, the hurtful remarks that he made, and I’m confident that he’s going to run a great campaign and that he’s going to win.”

The Senate race against Republican incumbent Susan Collins is currently considered a tossup and will be one of next year’s most closely watched elections.

Curious choice for a permanent tattoo! Members of the Aryan brotherhood have chapters/cells in both prisons and in the army so it's not hard to surmise a couple of decades ago he was a card carrying member of the local brotherhood in his local military chapter and then some point he left. Obviously he couldn't go through with the tattoo removal.

Must be a hard sell being a moderate democrat now his Nazi credentials are in the open.

Platner’s political director, former state Senator Genevieve McDonald, resigned from his campaign last week following the reveal of his Reddit posts. On Facebook days after her resignation, McDonald also took Platner to task for his tattoo.

“Graham has an anti-Semitic tattoo on his chest,” McDonald wrote, according to screenshots of the post on social media. “He’s not an idiot, he’s a military history buff. 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 damn well what it means. His campaign released it themselves to some podcast bros, along with a video of him shirtless and drunk at a wedding to try to get ahead of it.”

Was he already a military history buff at the time he got the tattoo? I could be wrong, but my impression from what I've read so far is that he wasn't YET very knowledgeable at that time, but became much more knowledgeable later.

If that's the case, then the only question is why it took him so long to get around to removing or changing the tattoo after he did become more knowledgeable.

Assuming it was a prank gone wrong - Most tattoo artists wouldn't offer to do a swastika or SS symbols, let alone on a person who was drunk (consent would be vital). the risk to their business would be too great as most normal people would be horrified when they wake up the next morning and take the artist to court.

The tattooing occurred in Croatia. I am not sure but that probably means the tattooist knew what he was doing and worrying about being sued for lack of consent was probably not an issue.

Ah, ok, then all that's left is why he never had it removed. Also you have to wonder why a Croatian tattoo artist has a stencil for Nazi tattoos given what happened to their country in world war II.

Marko Perkovic, known by his stage name Thompson, drew nearly half a million fans to the show Saturday despite having been banned from performing in several countries because of his sympathies for Croatia's World War II fascist Ustasha regime.

The Ustasha persecuted and killed hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascist Croatians during the war, and sent others to concentration camps.

The folk-rock icon became popular for his nationalist songs in the 1990s during the country's war of independence as Yugoslavia broke up.

During Saturday's concert at the Zagreb hippodrome Thompson sang one of his most famous songs that starts with the illegal Ustasha salute -- "Za Dom, Spremni" ("For the Homeland, Ready") -- and the crowd responded.

’Global disgrace'
The salute was also used by the far-right paramilitary unit HOS during the 1990s war, and the singer argued earlier the song referred to that war.

Many fans at the show were dressed in black T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan and dozens sang pro-Ustasha songs in central Zagreb on the eve of the event.

Conservative Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic attended the rehearsal and had a photo taken with the singer, while parliamentary speaker Gordan Jandrokovic was at the event.

Because the tattoo artist was a Nazi or knew tattooing Nazis is good for business.

Croatia govt lashed over 'disgraceful neo-fascist Woodstock'