Planter, a US veteran and mercenary, has continued to receive support from “progressive” Democrats even after it was revealed he had a Totenkopf, the favored symbol of Hitler’s SS, on his chest for nearly two decades.

That such iconography could circulate for years within the US military and diplomatic-security apparatus underscores what the World Socialist Web Site reported six years ago in “Neo-Nazi networks exposed across US military”: fascist and white-supremacist currents have been cultivated inside the armed forces.

  • LeninWeave [none/use name, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    10·
    1 day ago

    Edit: Also what the fuck is with the constant framing that the tattoo is worse that the genocide footsoldier thing I’ve been seeing? I didn’t realize our problem with fascists was their iconographic.

    100% agreed, but you’re even more likely to end up in a struggle session by saying “unrepentant war criminal bad” than “unrepentant nazi tattoo guy bad”.

    I do think there is one valid difference (playing devil’s advocate), which is that a lot of amerikkkans are unrepentant genocidal footsoldiers, but only relatively few of those open their eyes and embrace fascism openly enough to tattoo an actual totenkopf on their chests. Materially, participating in war is worse, but psychologically the tattoo is an indicator of much worse ideology than that of the average soldier.

    I hated Platner already for being a proud amerikkkan soldier, the tattoo just confirms that I was right to. US soldiers can be comrades, but step 0 is regretting it, which is why so few of them are. They’re (most of them) too used to being thanked to ever consider that the obvious wrong thing they did might have been bad.