Maine Dem Senate candidate now denies Nazi tattoo link after earlier apology

Graham Platner faced criticism late last year over a chest tattoo that critics said resembled a Totenkopf, a skull emblem used by Hitler’s SS troops during WWII.

Platner initially apologized when the tattoo drew attention in October, saying he got it in 2007 while in Croatia with fellow members of the Marines. At the time, he said it was not his intention to get a tattoo resembling the Nazi symbol and later had it covered.

In a recent interview with the news blog Zeteo, however, Platner pushed back on the characterization of the tattoo as Nazi-related, describing it instead as a simple skull-and-crossbones and “eminently reasonable thing.”

“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,'” Platter said. “When I explain the actual story, pretty much everybody’s like, again, ‘That seems like an eminently reasonable thing.’”

“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 continued. “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.”

During the same interview, Platner also recommended the 1985 war film Come and See, which depicts Nazi forces and repeatedly shows a similar Totenkopf symbol on Nazi uniforms.

Questions about the tattoo remained when the controversy took place in October, as Platner told the Washington Post that he had only learned about the symbol’s Nazi association “a few days ago.” However, an anonymous former acquaintance later claimed that Platner referenced the tattoo as a Totenkopf years earlier. The source, speaking to Jewish Insider, alleged that Platner once said, "Oh, this is my Totenkopf", in a “cutesy little way” during a 2012 conversation at a DC bar.

Additional scrutiny came from posts reportedly made by Platner on Reddit in 2019, where he participated in discussions about the Totenkopf symbol, according to a report by the Daily Mail. This led critics to suggest that he was aware of its meaning.