After Graham Platner, the progressive Senate hopeful running in Maine’s Democratic primary, revealed this week that he had had a Nazi-inspired tattoo on his chest for nearly two decades, several of his allies on the left cut him loose.
One who hasn’t: Vermont’s Jewish senator, Bernie Sanders.
“I’m not overly impressed by a squad of media running around saying, ‘What do you think about the tattoo on Graham Platner’s chest?’” the elder statesman of the progressive movement told Axios this week. “Between you and me, there might be one or two more important issues.”
Sanders also said he “absolutely” stood by his endorsement of Platner. Axios plans to air its full interview with Sanders on Friday but released snippets of the conversation on social media.
Sanders has backed Platner, a Marine veteran and oyster farmer, since soon after the latter announced his Senate bid this August. Platner’s anti-establishment platform, which includes embracing many progressive policies Sanders helped popularize, had made him a rising star despite his lack of any political experience. Platner has also taken a hard line against Israel.
That popularity was shaken following the recent revelation of Platner’s old Reddit posts, in which he made comments disparaging various groups. In an effort to get ahead of the opposition, Platner then himself revealed that he sported a skull-and-crossbones chest tattoo resembling an S.S. Totenkopf. He said he paid for it in 2007 while “inebriated” with fellow Marines in Croatia, and claimed he hadn’t known it was affiliated with Nazis (though subsequent reporting has suggested he knew it was a Totenkopf).
“I’m not a secret Nazi,” Platner said on Monday. He initially did not apologize for or suggest he would remove the tattoo.
After the revelations, Sanders told Axios he was still “impressed by the guy.”
“He went through some very difficult experiences in the military as a machine gunner, seeing his friends killed, came out of the military, he will acknowledge, I’m not telling you what he doesn’t say, he had PTSD,” the senator said. “He went into a dark period in his life. I suspect that Graham Platner is not the only American to have gone through a dark period.”
Sanders then sought to draw a line between condemnation of Platner and the election of President Donald Trump. “I think as a nation, especially given the fact that we have a president who was convicted on 14 felonies, maybe we have to do a little bit of forgiveness,” he said.
He wasn’t the only prominent progressive Jew who has remained in Platner’s corner since the tattoo revelation. Jon Lovett, the co-founder of influential left-wing podcast “Pod Save America” and media company Crooked Media and a former Obama official, has accused Platner’s progressive critics of demanding “only perfect candidates off the Harvard Law conveyor belt.” (Platner revealed his Nazi tattoo on a “Pod Save America” episode.)
“Of course he SHOULD answer for that tattoo,” Lovett wrote in a follow-up post on X Wednesday. “He’s explained the story, how it wasn’t flagged as a hate symbol when he entered the army or when he received a security clearance. He’s apologized and covered it up. Maybe it’s not enough. Maybe you don’t believe him.”
Following pushback, Platner did cover up the tattoo with a different design he referred to as a “Celtic knot with some imagery around dogs.”
In a post and video he posted to social media Wednesday, the candidate lifted his shirt to reveal his new tattoo and expressed regret that the old one might have invited comparisons to Nazis.
“It’s come to my attention that it has a stark resemblance to a symbol that is used by neo-Nazis, and I want to say, that was not my intent at all. And the idea that I was going around with something like that utterly horrifies me,” Platner said. “I know that symbols like this can be incredibly damaging to people, and the idea that I had it all these years and it could have been read like that is incredibly troubling.”
He added, “I have lived a life dedicated to antifascism, antiracism and anti-Nazism. I think that racism and antisemitism are a long scourge on our society and a long scourge on our politics, and I think it has no place in our world.”
Platner quickly pivoted, accusing “the establishment” of trying to destroy his movement with distractions.
“Every second we spend talking about a tattoo I got in the Marine Corps is a second that we don’t talk about Medicare for All, it’s a second we don’t talk about raising taxes on the wealthy,” he said.
Another prominent Jewish senator, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, responded to the revelations about Platner’s tattoo by making an endorsement in the race, which he had until this week avoided. He is backing Janet Mills, Maine’s former governor, saying she “is the best candidate to retire Susan Collins.”
A recent poll, conducted just before the tattoo revelations, found that Platner holds a wide lead over Mills among Democratic voters.
Platner’s opponents have started to riff on the controversy, as well: Jordan Wood, a former congressional aide also running in the primary, posted on social media to “fess up” that he, too, has a tattoo — of the symbol of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. “I got this tattoo a few years ago as a reminder of what hope and a positive vision can do in our politics,” he said on Instagram. Adding a dig at Platner, he concluded, “And yes, I knew what it was when I got it.”
A defiant Platner has pledged to remain in the race. At a rally Wednesday evening in Ogunquit, he again said he hadn’t known the meaning behind his tattoo.
He added, “If they thought this was going to scare me off, if they thought that ripping my life to pieces, trying to destroy me, was going to make me think that I shouldn’t have undertaken this project, they clearly have not spent a lot of time around Marines.”
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