Graham Platner, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Maine, said on Wednesday that he had covered up a tattoo that he got years ago that resembled a Nazi symbol.
Mr. Platner, who is running for the seat held by Senator Susan Collins since 1997, said in a video podcast interview broadcast this week that he got the tattoo, a skull-and-crossbones image that is widely recognized as a Nazi symbol, while drunk 18 years ago and was unaware of its extremist association.
Mr. Platner, a Marine veteran and oyster farmer, has also come under scrutiny for a series of posts he made years ago on Reddit that played down sexual assault in the military and criticized the police and white Americans living in rural areas.
Mr. Platner acknowledged the tattoo in an episode of the podcast Pod Save America released on Tuesday. The podcast played a video clip from a decade ago in which Mr. Platner dances shirtless, with the tattoo visible, at a bar while lip-syncing to a Miley Cyrus song at his brother’s wedding. A host of the podcast, Tommy Vietor, said that some of Mr. Platner’s “political opponents” had been telling reporters that he had a tattoo “with Nazi affiliation.”
Mr. Platner said on the podcast, which is hosted by former Obama aides, that he got the tattoo in 2007 in Split, Croatia, and that he and other Marines had chosen a “terrifying-looking skull and crossbones” from images off the wall and that “skulls and crossbones are a pretty standard military thing.”
“I am not a secret Nazi,” Mr. Platner said on the podcast.
In a video posted to Instagram on Wednesday, Mr. Platner said he had gotten a new tattoo to cover the old one. “I was appalled to learn it closely resembled a Nazi symbol,” he wrote in a statement. “I altered it yesterday into something that isn’t deeply offensive to my core beliefs.” His new tattoo is of a Celtic knot with imagery of dogs.
He said he had never tried to hide the tattoo, including during a physical examination he had when enlisting in the Army that he said included a check for tattoos with hate symbols.
Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, decried what he called “the flirtation with Nazism” across the political spectrum in the United States.
“If you’re running for office, seeking a potential appointment, or serving the public in any capacity, you should have no connection to or sympathy for Nazi ideology. Period,” Mr. Greenblatt wrote on Tuesday in a social media post, which included a headline about Mr. Platner’s tattoo.
Deborah Lipstadt, a professor of modern Jewish history and Holocaust Studies at Emory University, said that the skull and crossbones symbol depicted in Mr. Platner’s tattoo, known as the Totenkopf, was, after the swastika, one of the best known symbols from World War II. Guards at Nazi concentration camps wore the symbol on their caps, Professor Lipstadt said, adding that it is associated with parts of the Third Reich that committed some of the worst war crimes.
Dr. Lipstadt said that there has been a normalization of Nazi symbolism across the political spectrum. Other politicians and public officials have faced scrutiny recently for antisemitic remarks or ties to Nazi symbols. Dave Taylor, a Republican congressman from Ohio, said last week that his office and the U.S. Capitol Police were investigating after Politico reported that an American flag altered to depict a swastika had been found in his Capitol Hill office.
In another example, President Trump’s choice to lead the Office of Special Counsel, the lawyer and right-wing provocateur Paul Ingrassia, had his nomination withdrawn on Tuesday after Politico published texts in which he claimed to friends that he had a “Nazi streak.”
And an adviser to Jack Ciattarelli, the Republican nominee for governor of New Jersey, said he personally was not “taking any money from Jews.” The Jewish Democratic Council of America called the comment “blatant antisemitism.”
In the Pod Save America episode, Mr. Platner also addressed Reddit posts that he made between 2009 and 2021, which were reported by CNN and The Washington Post, saying that he was “utterly horrified by” some of his words from the past.
Mr. Platner’s former political director, Genevieve McDonald, resigned last week after his old Reddit posts emerged, The Bangor Daily News reported.
Among the posts that have drawn criticism was one from 2013 in which he appeared to play down challenges that service members face when trying to report sexual assault allegations. Mr. Platner said in the podcast that, when rereading his own comments, he saw “me not knowing what I’m talking about,” along with an expletive, and added that his views had changed.
He made other posts disparaging police officers and calling white Americans living in rural areas racist and stupid.
In another 2013 post, he responded to a thread asking users what questions they have for people of other races. Mr. Platner asked why Black people do not tip, something he said he observed while working as a bartender. On the podcast, Mr. Platner said he had been “legitimately asking the question,” because he thought there might be a cultural explanation.
“It was certainly not meant as a malicious thing,” he said.
He said on the podcast that he had been “trying to get a rise out of people on the internet” and that those comments did not reflect his true opinions at the time.
He said that he wrote the posts during a dark time in his life and that he had struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder and alienation after his military service. Mr. Platner, who returned from his last tour in Afghanistan in 2018, noted that his posts stopped around 2021, when he said he was in a better place.
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who has endorsed Mr. Platner, told reporters on Tuesday that Mr. Platner was an “excellent candidate” and that his endorsement stood.
Mr. Platner said: “The idea that a person cannot, like, evolve and grow from years ago is, I think, pretty laughable to the average human being. Especially in this day and age. Everybody has posted something stupid on the internet.”
Jenny Gross is a reporter for The Times covering breaking news and other topics.
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