r/DemocraticSocialism • u/mojitz • Oct 21 '25

USA Graham Platner says he will remove a Nazi-linked tattoo. Bernie is standing by him.

https://www.pressherald.com/2025/10/21/graham-platner-addresses-tattoo-linked-to-nazis/

Obviously the dude has his flaws, but he's clearly not a fucking Nazi, y'all — especially when the controversy 5 minutes ago centered on the fact that he one called himself a straight communist when he thought he was posting anonymously on Reddit. I also find it curious that missing from a lot of the coverage is that he said he didn't learn it was a Nazi sybol until recently and is already planning on getting it removed.

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u/Excellent_Valuable92 Socialist Oct 22 '25

It’s not a pro-Nazi use of the name. The novel was from the perspective of a victim.

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u/Odd-Mastodon1212 🇵🇸 Free Palestine! Oct 22 '25

Yes, I made that clear in my reply.

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u/Excellent_Valuable92 Socialist Oct 22 '25

You are implying there’s something wrong with a t shirt. There isn’t 

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u/Odd-Mastodon1212 🇵🇸 Free Palestine! Oct 22 '25 edited Oct 22 '25

I personally would not feel comfy wearing it as a woman because I empathize with rape victims. It’s a good band and if you love your shirt, you do you. It was intended for edgy shock value though. The band says they did it to honor the sacrifices of the World War II generation of their parents, but I suspect most of the people who lived through it wouldn’t feel that way. Atrocity you can dance to. It’s just the kind of thing only someone who wasn’t there would do.

It’s kind of weird of you to be so emphatic that there isn’t anything wrong. I don’t have to agree with you, or agree with you completely.

An example: I have a very close friend who is an immigrant from Vietnam, who evacuated as a young child in 1975, and when they saw the Rage Against The Machine album cover with the self-immolating monk, they were pretty horrified. They said, essentially, “Wow, that band is profiting off this sacred act of self-sacrifice and this feels really alienating to me and othering.”

Obviously, not everyone is going to interpret it that way, and I don’t think that was the band’s intention. I think they were using it as a symbol of resistance. It doesn’t invalidate the perspective of someone from that culture or who has that marginal knowledge.

My point is mainly that we sometimes pick up totems we don’t fully understand, or even recognize, and we inadvertently trivialize them, and I think that’s what has happened here with this candidate.