The party that spent a decade shrieking that every MAGA voter in America was a secret brownshirt has found their Senate frontrunner in Maine — and he’s been walking around with an actual SS Death’s Head tattoo on his chest for nearly two decades.
You know, Democrat stuff.
Graham Cunningham Platner — oyster farmer, harbormaster, Marine veteran, Bernie Sanders-endorsed Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, and apparent Nazi tattoo enthusiast — hauled in $3.2 million in donations and is currently the frontrunner to unseat Susan Collins. Somewhere between his three tours in Iraq and his Reddit posts bragging about becoming a communist, he apparently forgot to mention the Totenkopf skull permanently etched on his chest.
The Totenkopf was the symbol of the SS division that ran Hitler’s concentration camps. Not exactly something you confuse with a smiley face.
Platner’s explanation? He and some fellow Marines got “very inebriated” on leave in Croatia in 2007 and picked a “terrifying-looking skull and crossbones off the wall.” You know how it is. One minute you’re having a few drinks in the Balkans, the next minute you’ve got Nazi iconography permanently etched onto your body. Classic.
Here’s where it gets extra spicy. Five full years after the “I didn’t know, I was drunk in Croatia!” incident, an acquaintance who socialized with Platner at a Capitol Hill dive bar says he pointed to the tattoo and said, with what was described as a “cutesy” tone: “Oh, this is my Totenkopf.”
So either he was doing deeply ironic military banter that played badly, or he knew exactly what he had and thought it was hilarious. Neither is a great look for the guy trying to represent Maine in the United States Senate.
Now, you’d think somebody might catch something like this. The Army ran a check for hate symbols when he enlisted — missed it. His security clearance background check — missed it. The entire Maine Democratic Party somehow missed it right up until a shirtless video went viral. Our federal vetting processes are clearly in spectacular shape.
Now let’s talk about the Reddit posts, because the tattoo is almost the least interesting part of this story.
Platner, who wants you to know he is absolutely not a Nazi, described himself online as “a vegetable growing, psychedelics taking socialist.” He posted on a subreddit called r/Antiwork — a community dedicated to literally abolishing the concept of work — that he “got older and became a communist.” He called all cops “bastards.” He wrote that white rural Americans “actually are” as racist and stupid as Trump thinks. He made jokes about service members worried about being assaulted needing “Kevlar underwear.” He used homophobic slurs. He defended a guy with an SS lightning bolt tattoo who later admitted to impersonating a federal officer at a BLM protest.
His explanation for all of it? He was “being an a**hole on the Internet.” Fair enough, pal. Happens to the best of us.
To his credit, Platner eventually covered the Totenkopf — with a Celtic knot and a dog, inspired by his Scottish heritage and his two dogs. Nothing says “I take this seriously” like covering Nazi imagery with a slightly confused-looking terrier. He had originally promised removal. He delivered a cover-up. That pretty much tracks.
His own campaign staff wasn’t buying any of it. His political director quit and refused a $15,000 NDA offer on her way out the door, calling the tattoo “antisemitic” and noting that Platner is “a military history buff” who “knows damn well what it means.” His campaign manager resigned. His national finance director resigned. His campaign finance director and treasurer were both gone by Halloween.
That is a lot of people deciding they’d rather not have their names on this particular project.
Platner’s response to the entire circus? Every second spent discussing the tattoo is a second not spent talking about Medicare for All and taxing the wealthy. “Please stop asking about the SS symbol on my body and focus on my socialism” is a sentence that was apparently said out loud — by a leading Democratic Senate candidate. (He also joked that going from “communist to Nazi” in four days was “a spectacular turn of events.”)
We spent four years being told that the real fascists were the guys who wanted to secure the border and cut your taxes. Their frontrunner Senate candidate in Maine has been walking around with a concentration camp guard tattoo since the Bush administration, moonlighting as a Capitol Hill bartender who liked to take his shirt off and show people his Totenkopf.
It’s time they updated the talking points. Unless they’d like to keep explaining this one.
