Deleted social media feedback and an interview with an acquaintance undercut Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner’s claims this week that he solely just lately discovered that a tattoo on his chest had Nazi origins.
A KFile investigation has uncovered mounting evidence that Platner — a Marine veteran— was conscious of and defended the usage of Nazi symbolism that had come to be embraced by some members of the army.
In one thread from 2019, Platner weighed in on a dialog concerning the “Totenkopf” — the skull-and-crossbones emblem worn by Nazi SS models that his personal tattoo would later draw scrutiny for resembling — to notice that many US service members had adopted comparable imagery, such because the Punisher cranium used by some Navy SEALs.
Using his longtime Reddit deal with P-Hustle, the previous Marine infantryman and future Democratic Senate hopeful additionally argued in a 2020 on-line dialogue that “SS” lightning-bolt tattoos had been a “culture” marker inside Marine Scout Sniper models, not an expression of White supremacist ideology.
When commenters within the 2020 thread described the lightning bolts as a Nazi or racist image, Platner dismissed the criticism, writing that outsiders “have no idea what they’re talking about” and added, “I will be sure to inform the Black guys I know with bolts that they’re Nazis now.”
Copies of the threads had been archived via the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine and on a separate Reddit archiving web site.
NCS additionally spoke with an acquaintance of Platner from greater than a decade in the past who mentioned Platner spoke about his tattoo resembling a Nazi image. A second particular person informed NCS that they discovered of the tattoo years in the past from the acquaintance, who informed them that Platner had described it as a Nazi-style design.
NCS additionally reviewed a textual content chain between the acquaintance and one other particular person discussing Platner’s Nazi-like tattoo a number of months in the past, earlier than the story grew to become public.
Platner’s marketing campaign declined to remark for this story.
Platner mentioned in an interview this week he received the cranium and crossbones tattoo in 2007 when he was in his 20s and within the Marine Corps throughout an evening of ingesting whereas on depart in Croatia, including he was unaware till just lately that the picture has been related to Nazis.
“I am not a secret Nazi,” Platner mentioned on the “Pod Save America” podcast hosted by former Obama administration officers.
Following a wave of stories protection this week, Platner has had the tattoo covered up.
His marketing campaign has since fielded questions on whether or not Platner was conscious of the tattoo’s resemblance sooner than he has mentioned. Jewish Insider first reported concerning the former acquaintance, who recalled Platner referring to the picture as “my Totenkopf” in a joking far more than a decade in the past. NCS spoke with that identical acquaintance, who reiterated the recollection.
Genevieve McDonald, Platner’s former political director, informed the Bangor Daily News that she had been conscious of the tattoo since at the least August and that Platner himself acknowledged it “could be problematic.”
Platner’s marketing campaign has dismissed each the Jewish Insider report and its former political director’s claims as false.
Scrutiny on Platner, a political novice, elevated earlier this month after KFile revealed that he’d used the deleted Reddit account to name himself a “communist,” dismiss “all” police as bastards, and to say rural White Americans “actually are” racist and silly, amongst different inflammatory remarks. Platner disavowed the posts and mentioned they got here at a time in his life when he was indignant.
Discussed and dismissed Nazi-style tattoos and symbols
The 2020 Reddit discussion that Platner joined centered on a viral picture of a person at a Las Vegas Black Lives Matter protest who seemed to be a police officer and had an “SS”-style tattoo seen on his arm.
“Vegas cop with $10k+ of gear and an SS tattoo. This is where our tax dollars go,” was the title of the thread on the subreddit r/liberalgunowner. Authorities later discovered the person was not regulation enforcement and he was charged with impersonating a police officer.
Platner argued within the thread that such tattoos had been frequent within the army and never a show of hate or Nazism, pushing again on claims from different customers. Platner referred to Marine Scout Snipers who used the acronyms HOG — quick for Hunter of Gunmen — and STA, which means Surveillance and Target Acquisition.
“I was on Lejeune, and know lots with bolts,” he wrote. “The amount of people in this thread who have no idea what they’re talking about it pretty epic. Dude was a ‘51, took the STA indoc, became a HOG and got his bolts. Then got out and became a cop. This is not some complicated timeline. Although I do understand that our world is very foreign and insulated, most normal people really have no idea how it works.”
The Marine Corps has lengthy confronted scrutiny over Scout Snipers’ use of SS-style insignia — a apply denounced by army officers and Jewish civil rights teams after photos emerged in 2012 displaying Marines in Afghanistan posing with an SS flag. The Schutzstaffel or “SS” was a paramilitary group underneath Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party accountable for lots of the regime’s struggle crimes and atrocities throughout World War II.
In 2012, the then Marine Corps Commandant, Gen. James Amos, apologized to “all offended by this regrettable incident,” including, “I want to be clear that the Marine Corps unequivocally does not condone the use of any such symbols to represent our units or Marines.”
Platner within the Reddit threads repeatedly argued that some US army members used the symbols another way and to not reference the Nazi models.
“I know a bunch of black and latino HOGs with bolts, they’d be quite surprised to hear they are part of a conspiracy to infiltrate white supremacists into the Marine Corps,” he mentioned in one other remark, later including that “Bolts were a STA icon since the ‘80’s at least, if not longer. It was never official, but it sure as shit was tattooed on almost every HOG I knew between 2004-2012.”
Platner additionally wrote within the posts that he was liberal and was merely explaining army tradition.
“You could read through my post history and see that I’m pretty radically left,” he wrote. “But this is a specific culture that I am close with, and know intimately. I’m not being willfully obtuse, I’m explaining something that is far more nuanced than you’re willing to understand.”
In the 2019 Reddit thread titled “Battle-weary SS,” that includes a wartime picture of Nazi troopers, customers mentioned the “Totenkopf” — or cranium emblem — seen on one soldier’s cap.
Platner joined the dialogue, famous that cranium imagery remained frequent amongst US army models, citing the Punisher brand.
“When I was in Ramadi in ‘06 as a Marine grunt, the SEAL platoon we worked closely with for the deployment all had the Punisher skull spray painted on their armor carriers. There’s no question it’s far more prevalent on all the dumbass Grunt Style and Nine Line shirts these days, but the teams definitely adopted it for a while,” he mentioned.
NCS’s Em Steck contributed to this report.