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The hysteria around this is entirely predictable. The 'upper classes', or the people pretending to be upper class, really do not like the lower classes. But they do often talk in favor of representation and class mobility in theory. Well, here you have that representation personified in Platner. But as we see in practice, that representation is low class coded, of course! So 'upper class' folks instinctively, balk and sneer. 'How could he? I would never!'
Lets just face the music. The German army was cool. The SS were cool. The uniforms, runes, equipment, it's all aesthetically cool. Especially to young men who have little or no reason to otherize Germans.
To that extent there's no reason for a marine grunt to not get a cool tattoo. Cool people don't care about the opinion of some hysteric jews that see another shoah in everything. Or maybe it's the opposite, and that's kind of what gives the aesthetic an edge. After all, Satanism wouldn't mean much if it wasn't for hysterical concerned Christian mothers.
That being said, the entire news cycle around this is just political propaganda. There is no reality to this, and no controversy. Just an emotional whirlpool kept going through mass media soundbites generated entirely to push a narrative through any means available. The safest bet would be that Platner is getting negative press from more than one angle due to his ongoing political campaign and pro-Palestinian rhetoric.
But lets hash this out. If the idea is that a secret nazi is running on a Dem ticket in Maine to launch another holocaust then we can say that. If that is not the case, what is the argument other than class sneering?
Even if Platner was a nazi, is the contention that he is one now? If not, is the contention that if anyone at any point was a nazi, they are invalid in the future?
If he wasn't a nazi but knowingly got a nazi tattoo, is that invalidating? If so, why?
It's silly theater. None of the questions are explored or answered. It's just a platform for interested parties to performatively huff and puff.
I'm all for accepting that people can change, but if it's a choice between a person who has shown they are capable of being a Nazi and a person who hasn't done that, well it's a pretty big disadvantage.
At the very least it's a sign of bad judgement and stupidity to keep a known nazi tattoo on you when running for a political office. But more generally it is something that raises an eyebrow and if you have another similar candidate who doesn't raise that eyebrow, why not go with them?
That's one reason why opposition research and ads are typically not launched until the later parts of a campaign, you don't want the other party to have time to switch candidates with less baggage.
Would Platner have won if there was a Platner like without a Nazi tattoo? Who knows, but it is way less likely at least. There wasn't really much time for starting another campaign like his and the Dem mainstream answer was yet another dinosaur (who barely even tried to begin with) so Platner won, hopefully despite the eyebrow raising potential.
The problem is the Dems don't have similar candidates. If he wins, he'll represent a significant portion of the total testosterone level on the Dem Senate bench.
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What's the functional difference between being a nazi and being a zionist? Or is this just a metric dependent on what is further outside the Overton Window?
Outside of that you're not offering anything concrete here that relates to the tattoo that rises above class sneering. To that extent you answer your own question. A peachy clean political candidate that looks like they were cooked up in a lab is the exact aesthetic someone like Platner counters.
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