![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/10-21-25-platner.avif\")
<\/a><\/p>\nMaine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner sports a Totenkopf tattoo on his chest, in an archival video released by Platner himself. The skull-and-crossbones symbol is commonly associated with the Nazi SS. (Screenshot via YouTube)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Graham Platner shared video of himself shirtless, sporting the tattoo, on a popular progressive podcast. He denied that he himself ever held Nazi views, instead claiming he had gotten the tattoo while \u201cinebriated\u201d as a young adult without knowing what it meant.<\/p>\n
Since launching his campaign this summer, the 41-year-old Platner had picked up steam in left-wing circles for his populist positions, including calling Israel\u2019s military campaign in Gaza a genocide. The political neophyte has won endorsements from progressive leaders including Vermont\u2019s Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish. Morris Katz, the Jewish campaign strategist behind Zohran Mamdani\u2019s digital ads for New York City mayor, made a campaign launch video for Platner.<\/p>\n
As of Sept. 30, according to campaign finance records, Platner led his Democratic rivals in campaign donations with $3.2 million in contributions. At his rallies, the biggest applause comes when he delivers lines like \u201cOur tax dollars can build schools and hospitals in America, not bombs that destroy schools and hospitals in Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n
But scandal has started to plague Platner\u2019s campaign in recent days after his past posts on the web forum Reddit came to light. In those posts, Platner made comments about why Black people don\u2019t tip, derided rural white Americans and declared himself a Communist.<\/p>\n
This week, a recent video of a shirtless Platner also surfaced in which he can be seen sporting a chest tattoo of a Totenkopf, a Nazi-era skull-and-crossbones design favored by SS officers. \u201cTotenkopf,\u201d or \u201cDeath\u2019s Head,\u201d was also the name of the division of officers who guarded the concentration camps.<\/p>\n
The source of the video was Platner himself, who shared it on an episode of \u201cPod Save America\u201d on Monday.<\/p>\n
The Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine, the state\u2019s largest Jewish body, said in a statement that it was concerned about the tattoo as well as other aspects of Platner\u2019s campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis tattoo appears to be a \u2018death\u2019s head\u2019 symbol used by the SS, the organization most responsible for the genocidal murder of 6 million Jews and millions of other victims during WWII,\u201d Zach Schwartz, director of the Portland-based group\u2019s Jewish Community Relations Council, said in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. \u201cWe hope that Mr. Platner would condemn, in no uncertain terms, the meaning behind this tattoo and everything it stands for.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schwartz added that Platner\u2019s \u201cbroader messaging\u201d also troubled them, in particular his pledge not to take money from the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaine\u2019s Jewish community is not a monolith, nor does every Jewish Mainer support AIPAC. However, Platner\u2019s repeated, singular focus on not taking money from AIPAC plays into familiar, harmful tropes that Jews or organizations like AIPAC control the government,\u201d the statement read. (An increasing number of Democratic candidates including Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, a centrist running for his state\u2019s Senate primary, have also pledged not to accept money from AIPAC.)<\/p>\n
On \u201cPod Save America,\u201d Platner said he had gotten the tattoo in Croatia in 2007, while on shore leave from a tour of duty in Iraq, without knowing what it stood for.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe went ashore in Split, Croatia, myself and a few of the other machine gun squad leaders. And we got very inebriated, and we did what Marines on liberty do, and we decided to go get a tattoo,\u201d Platner told the show\u2019s host Tommy Vietor.<\/p>\n
He said he and his companions \u201cchose a terrifying-looking skull and crossbones off the wall because we were Marines, and skull-and-crossbones are a pretty standard military thing. And we got those tattoos and then we actually all moved on with our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not a secret Nazi,\u201d Platner said elsewhere in the interview, adding that he had passed a full security clearance in 2018 to work as a State Department contractor. \u201cIf you read through my Reddit comments, I think you can pretty much figure out where I stand on Nazism and antisemitism and racism in general. I would say a lifelong opponent.\u201d<\/p>\n
Platner did not address why he still has the tattoo. He has said he intends to stay in the race. He also claimed not to have known the symbol had Nazi connotations until getting wind of opposition research against him during his current Senate campaign.<\/p>\n
However, quoting an anonymous former acquaintance of his, Jewish Insider reported on Tuesday that Platner had referred to the ink as \u201cmy Totenkopf\u201d more than a decade ago and would frequently take his shirt off at the Washington, D.C., bar where he worked at the time. \u201cHe said it in a cutesy little way,\u201d the source said. Jewish Insider additionally reported that Platner had met with other men with Nazi links, including one neo-Nazi who is running for a seat on Bangor City Council.<\/p>\n
Platner\u2019s political director, former state Senator Genevieve McDonald, resigned from his campaign last week following the reveal of his Reddit posts. On Facebook days after her resignation, McDonald also took Platner to task for his tattoo.<\/p>\n
\u201cGraham has an anti-Semitic tattoo on his chest,\u201d McDonald wrote, according to screenshots of the post on social media. \u201cHe\u2019s not an idiot, he\u2019s a military history buff. Maybe he didn\u2019t know it when he got it, but he got it years ago and he should have had it covered up because he knows damn well what it means. His campaign released it themselves to some podcast bros, along with a video of him shirtless and drunk at a wedding to try to get ahead of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
While some in the online left denounced Platner over the tattoo and rebuked previous support for him, he has kept some defenders. Lyle Jeremy Rubin, a Jewish military veteran, author and left-wing commentator, is one of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery other marine I knew had some version of the same tat. Please,\u201d Rubin wrote on BlueSky, adding in a separate post, \u201cThis is a great example of what happens when the Democratic Party is defined by goody two-shoe losers who have lived their entire lives among fellow goody two-shoe losers.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Senate race against Republican incumbent Susan Collins is currently considered a tossup and will be one of next year\u2019s most closely watched elections.<\/p>\n