Still think giving him the benefit of the doubt is cool?
Welcome to the Social Fascist Club, Senator Platner
He probably would also hold staff meetings in the bathroom
oh yea he was defending people getting the SS tattoo.
also hello ReadFanon 
i hope you have been having a good time
I hope you're doing well too.
Mainstream fascist apologia in online discourse is enough for me to drag me out of my hiatus.
Here's a Reddit comment in r/TheBulwark.
Ok im going to keep saying it.
It isn’t a Nazi tattoo. It's a skull tattoo.
Its missing the key feature of the SS skull, which are the cracks in the skull. It's a skull tattoo that is entirely too close to a Totenkopf.
I'd also like to say, that if everyone starts pretending that Totenkopf was just a thing we all knew about like Swastikas, I'm going to lose it. This is a C tier Nazi emblem. You absolutely wouldn't look twice at it in 99% of real-world situations.
https://www.reddit.com/r/thebulwark/comments/1oeknpb/graham_platner_6_years_ago_was_in_a/nl2o1p0/
The Bulwark was created during Trump's first term and Bill Kristol was a co-founder. It's a site for "moderate" GOP and dipshit "orange man bad!" liberals. The body text of the post has stuff.
For the people claiming they've never seen the totenkopf before or that they'd never recognize it if they saw it, just remember that they don't have that symbol tattooed on their chest which they see on a daily basis, they probably aren't "military history buffs" the way Platner is described, and they probably don't identify as a lifelong antifascist.
Here are a couple of very famous depictions of Nazis with totenkopfs throughout decades of media, a few of literally hundreds of examples:
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Schindler's List, which won like half a dozen Oscars
The hugely viral Mitchell & Webb comedy skit that is still a meme after all these years
The Oscar-winning Inglorious Basterds
If you're everything Platner claims to be and you want to hide behind the claim that you've never seen the totenkopf associated with Nazis then that's an insult to everyone's intelligence. And if the lesser of two evils is an imperialist henchman who has a Nazi tattoo etched into his skin then what is there to say?
If it was a century ago, the people who are defending Platner would be trying to convince us that Ernst Rohm is the good guy, actually.
Imagine trying to pretend that you've never noticed that these things were the same as the tattoo you have on your chest and see in the mirror every day.
It isn’t a Nazi tattoo. It's a skull tattoo.
"I wasn't being a nazi when I spray-painted a swastika on the grave, I'm a Buddhist actually"
Its missing the key feature of the SS skull, which are the cracks in the skull. It's a skull tattoo that is entirely too close to a Totenkopf.
"It's not a nazi swastika, it's wider than it is tall. The nazi swastika is square! It's a Buddhist symbol!"
You absolutely wouldn't look twice at it in 99% of real-world situations.
"I'm comfortable around nazi imagery, that must mean everyone else is too"
what an obvious bad faith bullshit comment lol, reminds me of the company behind this poster claiming how it was totes a complete coincidence that it looks exactly like a nazi poster, you can tell because the guy on the right is wearing a hat, a key feature not present in the nazi version!!!:
I know it's very, very old news - but it remains amazing to me how so many people use the net as a tool to double down, triple down, and quadruple down on whatever they feel must be true. Reality and facts don't matter. Their unhinge net bubble is their happy place. I assume the majority of r/TheBulwark denizens decided that because Platner is a former Marine so he's a badass - he's just the kind of candidate they love and they'll support to matter what.
When it's clear he has a Tokenkof tattoo that's no biggie. They just create a reality in their mind where the tattoo is not really that.
It's missing the key feature of the SS skull! The cracks! Nobody really knew Totenkopf was a thing! It's a C tier Nazi emblem! You absolutely wouldn't look twice at it in 99% of real-world situations!
When it turns out he's been lying and he knew it was a Totenkopf - that's still no biggie. They simply ignore that until/unless they can figure out a way to show it's not really true.
[To be completed later.]
---
That redditor should try saying those things in public. People would look at him as though he was insane.
Nazi:
Not Nazi:
Know the difference! (/s)
If there were no cracks in the skull on Platner's tattoo then let's see a nice clear close-up of it.
Here's an image of the tattoo that I've enhanced. Notice how you can't see the fine line details of the teeth or where the crossbones are distinguished from the skull itself? But we're supposed to believe that there's enough clarity and resolution in the image that we can tell for certain that there's no crack in the skull? These people are deeply unserious.
Somebody should interview the Croatian tattoo artist - if he actually exists that is. I wonder what he'd say.
Journo: "Is it a Nazi tattoo? A Totenkopf?"
Croatian tattoo artist: "Of course it is! And I want to apologize from the bottom of my heart for my sloppiness. There are no cranial sutures on the top of the skull because they were too tricky for me. I was new to tattooing then."
Now I'm wondering if Platner got the tattoo from somebody else somewhere else.
Unless it was his last tattoo then there's a good chance that whoever tattooed him since he got that one done saw his chest and the totenkopf on it.
There are two types of tattoo artists:
The ones who know all of the fascist and gang symbols that refuse to tattoo them and the ones who are comfortable with tattooing those symbols. If a typical tattooist saw that tattoo they'd likely refuse to tattoo him or they'd offer to cover it up.
This is speculative, sure, but it's less speculative than the arguments that amongst a handful of blurry, poorly lit pixels you can clearly tell that there are no cracks in Platner's totenkopf tattoo, that Platner has never seen a Nazi with a totenkopf in his entire life, and that nobody had ever pointed out that he had a Nazi tattoo on him.
The selective suspension of disbelief that is on display is really breaking my brain.
He's also a self-proclaimed history buff. I think the democratic party and most libs will continue to back him until new information comes forth like a handful of witness confirm that he bragged about slaughtering Iraqi civilians for fun.
did they use the reversed swastika as well? Not very informed on nazi symbology beyond the basics.
We could literally dig out a signed and thumb-printed written confession accompanied by a video explicitly admitting he’s a nazi and a big fan of Adolf Hitler and they would argue he meant he’s a grammar nazi and just liked Hitler’s art, which is totally different. After all, he’s an American patriot, and therefore can’t possibly have knowingly gotten a nazi tattoo. They’d probably follow it up with an implicit endorsement of the most devastating genocide in world history by waxing poetic about the “great American experiment” or whatever the fuck
Step 1: Lie
Step 2: Double down
Step 3: Gaslight
Mainstream American politics is just a group of nazis fighting each other over who’s more of a loyal fascist to their favorite genocidal empire.
These people are the textbook definition of BlueMAGA. They would happily kill another million brown children if it meant they got some of the spoils.
nazi swastika is rotated by 45 degrees 🙄
I know you mean well but this is a myth and there are countless examples of the Nazis using 90 degree swastikas:
Even medals:
And Hitler's own personal standard:
Not to mention in one of the most iconic videos depicting the Nazi swastika:
I'm not trying to drag you here. Fascists use this argument tactically for plausible deniability and it's widely accepted as common knowledge in the west but it's straight up untrue.
this is 0 degrees swastika 🙄
(i'm joking, i don't think that argument flies very well even with reversed swastika on white boy, which people attach to buddhism, but still reads very sus. )
A year or two ago i had someone join my discord with a swastika in their name and tell me they were just a big fan of the finnish air force.
v finnish airforce flag
Yeah, the Finnish government who was vehemently anticommunist and quite cosy with Nazi Germany has continued using the swastikas to this very day.
"I'm not a Nazi sympathiser, I just love the quiet collaborators of Nazi Germany and their particular use of the swastika" isn't the defense that some people think it is.
i remember reading that the white army in finland allied with the liberals were known as "the butchers" for their extensive field executions of red army soldiers during the overthrow of the tsar
Which way, western r*dditor?
I'd also like to say, that if everyone starts pretending that Totenkopf was just a thing we all knew about like Swastikas, I'm going to lose it. This is a C tier Nazi emblem. You absolutely wouldn't look twice at it in 99% of real-world situations.
If it's really C-tier then that's only possible if the swastika occupies the A-tier and the SS runes are the only entry for B-tier; we really aren't plumbing the depths of obscure, esoteric, possibly-fascist symbols here.
Imagine caring so little that you're oblivious to the third most widely recognizable Nazi symbol for your entire life and yet mysteriously you are brimming with opinions about Nazi symbols and all of a sudden it's of overwhelming importance that you start discussing this.
I'll take the lead from people who actually know what they're talking about and not the people who have been sleepwalking through a century-long discussion on one of the most studied and well-documented aspects of human history.
This smacks of terminally-online curated concern. People will swear up and down that they're concerned with x or y issue but they are completely incapable of showing any depth of understanding whatsoever of the subject itself. It's the same old playbook - the Nayirah testimony, the CPC reannexing Tibet, the "Holodomor"... these people don't actually care about what they have convinced themselves they care about. It's some real Deleuzian shit.
Frankly I think that poster is a crypto-fascist trying to do crypto-fash-washing. It reads like the first three passages of the Narcissist Prayer.
It isn’t a Nazi tattoo. It's a skull tattoo.
That didn't happen
Its missing the key feature of the SS skull, which are the cracks in the skull. It's a skull tattoo that is entirely too close to a Totenkopf.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad
I'd also like to say, that if everyone starts pretending that Totenkopf was just a thing we all knew about like Swastikas, I'm going to lose it. You absolutely wouldn't look twice at it in 99% of real-world situations.
And if it was, that's not a big deal
Exactly, they are actively and maliciously spreading obvious nazi apologia and propaganda. Cf. Red Sails articles on Brainwashing and Propaganda
Supposing this “Croatian tattoo artist” is a real person, they 100% know about the Totenkopf. There is less than a zero percent chance that a US merc doesn’t know about the Totenkopf. You don’t accidentally get a tattoo that is geometrically identical to a nazi symbol save for two cracks. But it doesn’t matter. Liberals do not care about facts.
The fact that they’re claiming ignorance while simultaneously splitting hairs about the literal hairline cracks of nazi iconography reveals that it’s bullshit and they know it. They just won’t come out and admit they don’t care about the nazi tattoo because they don’t give a flying fuck about the lives of nonwhites.
These liberal nazis were calling the “the thing is not what it obviously is” tactic “Trumpian” less than half a decade ago. But the only reason they hated it is because he did it better than them. They have embraced it now, because they are Blue Trump, BlueMAGA.
I don't want to be taken out of context here and it's deep enough in the comment thread that this will get buried but the whole "Croatian tattoo artist" claim from a guy with a sketchy past who claims to have reformed yet has provided no evidence of reform except for words said online gives me really strong Beau of the Fifth Column vibes from back when he went on that podcast to claim that his human trafficking conviction, where he smuggled eastern European women into America to exploit their labour for the hotel industry for a few years before they went back home, was actually a humanitarian mission to rescue Jews from the oppressive government of Turkmenistan (or Tajikistan? I forget exactly but it was a central Asian -stan country that Americans have zero clue about.) It's just super convenient and it has that whole "I have a girlfriend but you wouldn't know her because she goes to a different high school in another state" vibe to it.
The people coming out in defence of Platner are doing all the same things that people did when faced with criticisms of Beau as well.
[CW: Human trafficking and sex slavery discussion from here on]
(Sidebar: you can't convince me that young Eastern European women smuggled into the US to work in the hotel industry while being paid a pittance so small it was illegal even under the dismal minimum wage laws in the US while being charged like hell for accommodation don't end up in the sex trade. You absolutely cannot. Whether Beau was aware of it, whether he facilitated it directly, that's a matter for speculation but the hotel industry itself is sketchy and that's without the elements of human trafficking, exploitative pay and living conditions, and Beau holding passports for ransom. That's no smoking gun for Beau trafficking women into the sex trade and I've never seen any evidence to support this but saying it didn't happen is about as plausible as the people saying they were on Epstein island but only for a scientific conference.)
God, I wish I could pop heads ala Scanners
Battlestar Galactica chorus: "So say we all."
If the crossbones were the cartoony ones with the ends looking like ballsacks, I can see the argument that it’s not a Nazi tattoo. But the fact the crossbones are literally fucking stacked on top of each other with the ends connected. Identical to the totenkopf.
I’m unable to find any other army or organization that has the crossbones touching each other like that other than Nazis and Nazi sympathizers.
Also notice how he got a new tattoo to cover it up, while still pleading ignorance, without showing an HD close up of what it looks like first.
It’s one thing to make “edgy mistakes” but dog you’ve had 20 years to get that shit fixed and chose not to until now lol. Insulting my god damn intelligence
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Good find and happy to see you again even if just for one post.
My burning hatred of fascism and my abject dismay at the Nazi apologia in the discourse from broad sections of the progressive and "radical" left are enough to fuel me posting.
primary these establishment democrats. vote progressives.
Regrettably, this guy is supposed to be the "progressive". I really need bigger quotes around progressive.
I used my go-to jokey font which is called Dead Kansas. I just realized I should have used a regular font. Dead Kansas only has uppercase and the font doesn't quite work right here. It's jokey but not in the right way. Oh, well.
But he wasn't saying the SS were good guys. He just used their symbology while doing SS type things. Wow. Another case of leftist infighting
On a serious note. Just wow. What an absolutely pathetic moment for what I can only describe as the "electoral left"
This also highlights that this group really doesn't understand genocidal the role of the US imperial machine and role in it
"Purity testing is destroying our movement."
"Stop gatekeeping the left!!"
"Do you want the republicans to win? This is how Trump won."
"Yes, he might have had a Nazi tattoo for over a decade and he might have killed an untold number of brown people while serving imperialism as a machine gunner and he might have been stationed as a guard for Abu Ghraib prison during the rampant war crimes and human rights abuses that took place there but he has a chance to unseat Susan Collins, who voted for some bad things."
People learned absolutely nothing from the con job Obomber. If anything things have regressed. because this guy is an out and about imperialist that wants better conditions for imperial subjects.
a guard for Abu Ghraib prison
Literal Totenkopfverbände. If this was a character in a book, it would be criticized for too heavy-handed metaphors!
Could someone post that here: https://lemmy.world/comment/20093614 I got banned from that comm for calling the azovstal defenders nazis
Have a good day
I never thought giving him the benefit of the doubt was cool
Banned? DM Wmill to appeal.
No anti-nautilism posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer
Slop posts go in c/slop. Don't post low-hanging fruit here.