Outlets that have engaged in a decades-long moral panic over alleged Nazi symbols from the right suddenly decide to show grace in the case of Graham Platner’s tattoo.
Outlets that have engaged in a decades-long moral panic over alleged Nazi symbols from the right suddenly decide to show grace in the case of Graham Platner’s tattoo.
Y ou can tell a lot about a guy’s personal biases based on when he chooses to extend grace.
And when it comes to grace, there appeared to be an overabundance of it in the media last week for Graham Platner, the loony toon Democratic Maine Senate candidate, who, until last Tuesday, sported a sizeable Nazi tattoo on his chest.
“Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner tells AP he got a new tattoo to cover one seen as a Nazi symbol,” reads a news blurb from the Associated Press (emphasis my own).
Reported the Washington Post, “Maine Senate hopeful changed tattoo ex-aide calls antisemitic.”
CBS News, meanwhile, reported that “Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner says he covered up tattoo that resembles Nazi symbol.”
Politico and CNN likewise claimed the tattoo “resembles” a Nazi symbol.
The tattoo in question, which has been inked over, was the Totenkopf (“death’s head”), a very specific skull-and-crossbones image infamously sported by the Schutzstaffel (the Nazi SS). (The SS initially served as Adolf Hitler’s personal protection agency before expanding into the paramilitary organization responsible for the Holocaust.) There is even an internet-famous comedy sketch from 2006 by the duo Mitchell and Webb, in which the two comedians, dressed as Nazi SS officers, slowly realize that they are, in fact, the “baddies.” Here’s a snippet from that sketch (surely, you’ve seen this by now):
Erich: I’ve just noticed something. Have you looked at our caps recently?
Hans: Our caps?
Erich: The badges on our caps. Have you looked at them?
Hans: What? . . . No . . . A bit.
Erich: They’ve got skulls on them.
Hans: Hmm?
Erich: Have you noticed our caps have actually got little pictures of skulls on them?
Hans: Er . . . I don’t.
Erich: Hans . . . are we the baddies?
All of this is to say, we’re not talking about an obscure Nazi reference when we talk about the Totenkopf. The specific skull-and-crossbones image touted by SS officers was the central element of the comedy sketch. It’s a key feature in Nazi iconography. If you’ve watched Mitchell and Webb, or Indiana Jones, or the Dirty Dozen, or Schindler’s List, or the Boy in the Striped Pajamas, or Life is Beautiful, or Band of Brothers, or Inglourious Basterds, or dozens of other films set during World War II, you’ve almost certainly seen the Totenkopf. It’s nearly as prominent as the Iron Cross or the swastika itself.
So, you can imagine my amusement last week when the press — the same press that has engaged in a decades-long moral panic over alleged Nazi dog whistles from the right and adjacent political spaces — seemed to suggest that a tattoo that is very clearly the SS Totenkopf only “resembles” or “seems” like a Nazi image.
“A Jewish civil rights group said the tattoo resembled a Nazi symbol,” read a Washington Post subhead last week (emphasis my own).
Remember, it wasn’t so long ago that outlets such as the Washington Post worked to legitimize even the most insane Nazi-related conspiracy theories, including the one that suggested that the organizers of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference had arranged their stage design into the shape of an obscure Germanic rune associated now with the Third Reich. It wasn’t so long ago that newsrooms such as Politico gave credence to the idea that multibillionaire weirdo Elon Musk had given the Nazi Sieg Heil salute at a 2024 inauguration rally. It wasn’t so long ago that newsrooms such as the Associated Press and CNN warned that the “seemingly innocent” OK hand gesture was no longer an ironic inside joke for online trolls, but an official symbol of “hate.”
And it wasn’t so long ago that we faced a mountain of news stories sincerely questioning whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Jerusalem cross tattoo is actually Christian or Nazi symbolism.
Now, however, we’re asked to consider that Platner’s Totenkopf merely “resembles” or “seems” like an image indelibly tied to the worst of the worst of Nazi Germany.
You know what? The story that a drunk Platner got the tattoo in 2007 while on shore leave with his fellow U.S. Marines in Croatia seems 100 percent believable. Maybe he thought it just looked neat. Great! This doesn’t address allegations that he bragged a few years back that the tattoo was definitely the Totenkopf, but that’s not the point. The point is that there’s nothing wrong with extending some amount of grace for the deeply stupid things we’ve done in the past. Grace is good! We’ve been begging for this for years, especially during the worst “woke” excesses of the first Trump term and the Biden era. We should encourage more grace and not fault members of the press for indulging their better angels.
That said, one can’t help but wonder where this grace was for the West Point cadets who were falsely accused of flashing “hate” symbols when they were very clearly playing the “circle game.” Where was this grace for the firefighters charged with the same?
One would think that a U.S. Senate candidate touting a popular SS tattoo would run afoul of the self-appointed Nazi hunters of the press, but one would be wrong.
Bias in media is neither new nor shocking. Everyone has some degree of bias. The problem lies in how reporters apply their biases. It’s when it’s applied selectively that we end up with sloppy and unreliable journalism, the kind that craters public trust.
Industry-killing bias like this is rarely more apparent than in the stories reporters choose not to cover — and in the subjects to whom they choose to extend grace.