It’s not the first controversy faced by Platner’s campaign. CNN first reported on Friday a series of Reddit posts made by Platner between 2013 and 2021 — and deleted before his campaign — in which he called himself a “communist,” referred to law enforcement officers as “bastards” and downplayed the severity sexual assault reports.
one thing is not like the others
He should do a photo op where he gets the skull removed and has a hammer and sickle tattooed there instead.
don’t hold your breath; he’s already pleaded insincerity about his old reddit comments where he’d called himself a communist.
it might be more like this
I really hate how I can’t immediately and unequivocably dismiss this as a joke. Sign of the times, I guess.
I heard the interview. The story about the tattoo seemed genuine and he chose to release the video himself. There’s loads of skull and crossbones imagery in various US military insignia. I’m willing to believe him.
Yeah lets give the guy that did 4 tours in Iraq as a marine and one in Afghanistan as a blackwater merc the benefit of the doubt lol
If there’s ever a comment defending Nazis on lemmy, you can bet it’ll be .world user 90% of the time.
Hey now give shits.fullon.fash and sonazi.xyz some credit too!
There are lots of types of skulls and crossbones used in many contexts, but his is specifically the SS-Totenkopf insignia used from 1934 to 1945.
It seems very implausible that, as he claims, nobody ever told him this before now.
And he obviously chose to release the video himself as damage control only after he knew it was coming out anyway.
That link has like 7 different variations of the skull and crossbones that the Nazis used and that covers basically every usage by anyone ever. I just don’t buy that he’s a closed Nazi and it never came up in all his Reddit shitposting.
I heard the interview.
Did you see the video or just listen to it? In case not, here is a link to the part of the podcast where they play the video showing the tattoo.
That link has like 7 different variations
But one is by far the most well known; you may remember it from Mitchell and Webb’s Are we the baddies?
I watched the video. I’m not arguing that it is the same skull used by the Nazi SS. I’m arguing that specific skull wasn’t created by the Nazis (here it is on an 18th century pirate flag)
and it wasn’t used last by the Nazis (here it is on a US special forces patch used in Vietnam) 
.The US military has used all sorts of eagles, swords, crosses, skulls, double lightning bolts, etc over the years that were also used by Nazis at some point. I just don’t think it is reasonable to say he’s a Nazi based on this tattoo alone in the absolute absence of any other evidence of any sort.
here it is on an 18th century pirate flag
that one is an entirely dissimilar skull and cross bones
here it is on a US special forces patch
that one is 100% intentionally the SS-Totenkopf
I just don’t think it is reasonable to say he’s a Nazi based on this tattoo alone
I’m not saying he necessarily secretly considers himself a Nazi, but he does have an unambiguously Nazi tattoo and his explicit claim that he was totally clueless about its meaning for 18 years is simply not believable (especially in light of other evidence, like his reddit posts defending other solders’ double lightning bolt tattoos).
There’s just no way the US military allowed Nazi symbology to proliferate amongst its ranks. That’s certainly never happened before. We’re the good guys /s
does he even have a snowballs chance?
Yes, that’s why Schumer and his media allies and flinging so much shit against him.
