I did Nazi that coming

The Graham Platner story keeps getting messier.

Last October, it was revealed that Platner had a Totenkopf, a skull image, tattooed on his chest.

The Totenkopf was used by some German military units in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but it was best known as a symbol of Nazi Germany. The SS (Schutzstaffel), the Luftwaffe (air force), and Panzer (tank) units used different versions of the Totenkopf.

Platner claimed he didn’t know that it was a Nazi-connected tattoo when he got it. He was serving in Croatia with the Marines, and one drunken night, he and some buddies walked into a tattoo parlor and picked out the skull because they thought it looked badass. (To be fair, it may be hard to find a non-Nazi tattoo in a Croatian tattoo parlor.)

Is his story true? Maybe?

A recent New York Times piece asked old girlfriends what they thought of Platner, and three were not happy. One cast doubts on his official version of how he got the tattoo.

“It was not until I started hearing from reporters and D.C. insiders that I realized this tattoo resembled a Nazi symbol,” Mr. Platner told Politico in a statement in October. “I absolutely would not have gone through life having this on my chest if I knew that — and to insinuate that I did is disgusting.”

Ms. Fifield called that a lie.

Mr. Platner, she said, knew when they were dating years ago that the tattoo was a Nazi symbol, and that he called it “my Totenkopf.”

“I would never have known what that was,” she said. “He would joke about it being a Nazi tattoo.”

Ms. Fifield said he told her that he and other members of his unit selected the tattoo because “they were like a death unit, they were killers,” and saw a parallel between their unit and the Nazi Schutzstaffel, or S.S., unit, that used the skull-and-crossbones image.

“They literally, deliberately, selected it because it was relevant to their military unit,” she said.

(Platner denies that her story is true. He and his campaign have pointed out that Lindsey Fifield is a long-time Republican political operative.)

Throughout this brouhaha, I have been bugged by how confident people are in their takes. (“He’s a Nazi.” “It’s a smear job!”)

The tattoo is not nothing. It shows bad judgment, both at the time he got it and in how he’s tried to cover it up since, but bad judgment and lying are not the same as being a Nazi. We should not collapse those accusations into one.

I don’t know who Platner is deep down. How can I, from just a few stories?

From what I’ve read, I can imagine a range of Platners, from a sleazy nightmare to a flawed man trying to do better. I can’t know which picture is the truth.

When I was in college, I wore a gimmick Mao watch. The chairman, mass murderer of millions, sat on my wrist, waving his hand once every second. I thought it was hilarious! I even bought a second one when the first one broke. This did not make me a Maoist.

I also have a barbed wire tattoo on my left bicep. I got it in my mid-20s for reasons that made sense at the time, but it looks pretty stupid now.

True, I’ve never had a Nazi tattoo, but I’ve played hundreds of board games where I was sometimes leading and trying to win as the Nazis. None of this made me, or any of the guys I played with, a Nazi. My Jewish grandfather bought me the board game Blitzkrieg when I was 13. Does that mean he was a Nazi too?

In Secret Hitler, one player takes the role of Hitler, trying to rise to power. The others are either fascists supporting him or liberals trying to stop him.

Do people truly think Graham Platner is a Nazi? I mean, literally, a supporter of National Socialism and a hater of Jewish people?

The dude got a tattoo when he was a drunk, stupid Marine. I believe it’s very possible that he didn’t know it was a Nazi symbol when he got it. I teach history, and I wouldn’t have recognized it. I study Nazi words and deeds, not the details of their uniforms and paraphernalia. There are no pictures of Totenkopf in Richard Evans' three-volume history of the Third Reich, in Karl Dietrich Bracher’s The German Dictatorship, or in William Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

Of course, at some point, he knew what it was. It seems almost certain he found out later, long before he claims, but while that makes him a liar, it doesn’t make him a Nazi.

Should he have had it removed or covered up when he found out? Sure, but remember his social media presence back then. He was a shitposting edgelord. I imagine he thought it was funny that he’d done such a stupid thing. After all, *he* knew he wasn’t a Nazi, just as I knew I wasn’t a Maoist. If it shocked anyone, that was their fault. Wimps. This doesn’t excuse his behavior, but if you can’t imagine this mindset, maybe you were never a stupid boundary-pushing young male.

I’ve seen no other evidence of Nazism beyond the stupid tattoo. In his shitposting career, he called himself “Antifa” and supported leftists getting guns to fight Nazis.

If they expect to fight fascism without a good semi-automatic rifle, they ought to do some reading of history.

Do Nazis normally push for fighting fascism?

He said many stupid things, but none of them were attacks on Jews or defenses of Aryan supremacy. For a Nazi or a Nazi sympathizer to never mention his white pride, Aryan dreams, or Jewish hatred boggles my mind. I get called “Jew” at least a few times a week on Twitter. That Platner never posted anything Nazi-like on his feeds makes me think he wasn’t a Nazi.

“But the tattoo…”

Again, people do stupid things!

All this reminds me of the cases where young people got in trouble for saying the n-word. Context didn’t matter; once the bad thing was done, they became, in the eyes of many, bad people.

And if you defended them, you’d be questioned: “Why are you defending the n-word? Do you want to say it too? Are you a racist?”

The worst versions of social justice politics taught that there was no forgiveness, no redemption. Once you were condemned, you were bad forever. Didn’t we decide that was a bad thing when it was happening to people we liked? Why is it ok now?

I can hear people saying, “C’mon, Carl, that’s different. This is a Nazi tattoo. A NAZI tattoo!”

Yeah, and he got it when he was a young, stupid Marine. Also, according to the story, the other guys with him also got Totenkopf tattoos. Does that mean there are a bunch of Nazi ex-Marines wandering around America now?

I realize you remain unconvinced (“He got a Nazi tattoo!”), so be it. I hate Nazis and Nazism, and I think flinging the label around too easily is bad. There are real Nazis and Nazi sympathizers out there, and we need to save the label for them.

Of course, none of this means Platner is a good guy or a good candidate. The tattoo definitely shows bad judgment when he was a younger man. He seems to have lied a lot, and not just about the tattoo, which isn’t ideal in a political leader. He has other questionable issues in his bio (his treatment of women—although this is contested¹—and his joining the messaging app Kik, which has some unsavory connections²). I also don’t like his political views, which are too far to the left. Blaming everything on billionaires makes Bernie Sanders happy, but not me.

But whatever he may be, he’s not a Nazi.

1. Other women in the New York Times article praised Platner’s behavior as a boyfriend.

Caroline Lemp, who dated Mr. Platner for several months in 2013, described him as a “gentle giant.” She said he never made her feel unsafe or showed any signs that he was struggling with the physical or mental effects of his military service.

“He was a great boyfriend,” said Ms. Lemp, 36, who now lives in St. Louis. “He was super kind, very nice, fun.”

The others, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Platner was never physically threatening. One, a nurse from Belfast, Maine, who dated him for a couple months after he returned home to Maine, described him as responsible, intelligent and supportive. Another, who dated him in Washington between roughly 2011 and 2013, said she witnessed some “potentially problematic behavior,” referring to his heavy drinking. But she “felt really safe with him,” she said.”

2. Kik, whose main feature is protecting users’ anonymity, has sometimes been used by sexual predators.