The thing about the Nazi tattoo is that a lot of people brushed it off with "oh, he didn't know what it meant, he's not REALLY a Nazi" or "who hasn't gotten an offensive tat as a young edgelord?" (. . . a lot of people?) and basically leaned hard on him not being a Nazi, just having an unfortunate tattoo. And I think that line of argument is meaningless.
Do I think Graham Platner is an ideologically committed Nazi? Probably not. I don't he has any real political commitments, truthfully. I think his highest allegiance is to power: he is attracted to symbols that affirm his masculinity, his spot at the top of the hierarchy. He wants to feel like a big man who can throw his weight around and have the people in his orbit understand that he is more important than they are, and symbols of Nazism give him that feeling. He is probably an anti-Semite, just because someone with his pathology needs a strictly defined out-group to prop up their own self-worth. He wants to act without consequence, whether those actions are tattooing hate symbols on himself, throwing a girlfriend into a room and locking her inside to avoid an argument, or forcing his way into a woman's house and raping her.
Graham Platner is the Mr. L of Dorothy Thompson's "Who Goes Nazi?" the feted labour leader with "the brains of Neanderthal man, but [. . .] an infallible instinct for power." Does he believe in National Socialism? It doesn't matter. If it offered him the power he clearly craves, he would be the most committed Nazi you ever saw.
pixelskylines
areudirty
gummygunk
titsay
