Graham Platner Is No Nazi

I have a confession: I would not have recognized the skull that the Democratic Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner had tattooed on his chest as a Nazi symbol. I knew that a skull and crossbones formed part of the insignia for the Nazi SS, but had never really clocked the image’s particularities — its three-quarter profile, the bones at the side of the skull instead of underneath — that gave it meaning even when stripped of all other Nazi context. So when Platner insists that he and his military buddies, drunk on shore leave, picked it off a tattoo parlor wall without recognizing it, it’s easy for me to believe him.

I also can’t quite blame those who detest Platner’s left-wing politics for refusing to give him the benefit of the doubt. They have an easy line of attack, and naturally they’re........

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