Maine Senate hopeful Graham Platner said he no longer apologised for a Nazi-linked tattoo he was caught with last year and claimed Jewish leaders accepted his explanation, in comments to Zeteo published last week.
Platner, an oyster farmer and Marine veteran running for the Democratic nod for Senate, said headlines left voters with the impression that his tattoo had a more obvious link to Nazis, New York Post reported.
“I had a meeting in New York not that long ago with a number of Jewish leaders, we started talking about it, and when we started, somebody was like, ‘Wait a second. We thought you had a swastika,’” Platner told Zeteo.
“When I explain the actual story, pretty much everybody’s like, again, ‘That seems like an eminently reasonable thing.’”
Platner has long claimed he got the tattoo, which looked like a Totenkopf or “death’s head” symbol used by the notorious Nazi SS secret police force, in Croatia while inebriated in 2007. He insisted he was “not a secret Nazi.” Last fall, he inked over it inked a tattoo over it with what he described as a “Celtic knot with some imagery around dogs.”
During the interview, Platner struck a more defiant tone than earlier apologies.
“I’ll just be upfront: The more they talk about it, the more I get to talk about the fact that I got that because I was a combat Marine. That’s why I had that,” he said.
“It was the fighting I took part in, in Iraq, that resulted in me and other machine gunners getting a skull-and-crossbones tattoo. If we want to continue talking about my military service, I’m more than happy to.”
At one point, Platner praised the movie “Come and See,” a 1985 Soviet film about resistance to Nazi forces during World War II, which features the Totenkopf symbol prominently on some uniforms.
“There is no such thing as an anti-war movie, except maybe ‘Come and See.’ Everybody should watch ‘Come and See,’” he told the outlet.
Platner previously said he did not know what the symbol was.
“It was not until I started hearing from reporters and DC insiders that I realized this tattoo resembled a Nazi symbol,” Platner told Politico back 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.”
A former confidant of Platner previously told The Jewish Insider that Platner bragged about it at a DC bar in 2012, saying, “Oh, this is my Totenkopf.”
“He said it in a cutesy little way.”
Platner was also found to have discussed the Totenkopf in Reddit posts seven years ago, and his former political director later claimed that the oyster farmer is “a military history buff,” and “he knows d— well what it means,” per Politico.
Last year, unearthed Reddit and other social media posts showed Platner vented that “Cops are bas—s. All of them, in fact,” and responded to a post that said, “White people aren’t as racist or stupid as Trump thinks,” writing “Living in white rural America, I’m afraid to tell you they actually are.” Platner also pondered why black people “don’t tip.” He has since apologised for those past posts.
Platner is competing against Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) for the Democratic nod to compete against incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) in November.
