By Mike Nelson
Friday, May 29, 2026
For decades, Nazism and the anti-Semitism underlying it
have marked zero on the Kelvin scale of villainy—the metric against which all
other forms of evil are compared. This is so well understood that we now have
cultural phenomena such as Godwin’s Law, the theory that online debates
inevitably lead to Nazi comparisons, and the “everything I don’t like is
Hitler” meme. But their existence proves the point: If one wishes to say that
something is irredeemably bad, Nazis are the benchmark, the absolute.
Yet recently this understanding seems to have grown less
universal. Nazi symbolism and more modern versions of the ancient conspiracy
theories behind this intolerable ideology have found a degree of toleration
within American political movements desperate for shortsighted victories. The
underlying hatred that, among other things, motivated the killing of more than
a third of all the Jews on the planet eight decades ago is viewed no longer as
unacceptable, but rather somewhere on a scale of “problematic” issues that can
be either explained away or ignored.
The most recent case is that of Graham Platner, the
41-year-old Democrat who is hoping to unseat Senator Susan Collins in Maine.
Platner has a unique personal story, having reinvented himself from high-born
prep-school student to blue-collar oyster farmer, and from willing Marine who talked
about wanting to go to war to kill people (and who
later worked for a military contractor) to a victim
of Collins’s vote to authorize the Iraq War. Although
Platner is by no means the first politician to reshape his personal narrative
during a campaign, he is likely the first to attempt an innocent explanation
for having had, for 18 years, a tattoo of a Totenkopf, the insignia of
the Schutzstaffel, or SS—the most dedicated and fanatical component of
the Third Reich, whose members were the architects and executioners of the
Final Solution.
Platner has said that
he got the tattoo while “carousing” with other young Marines in Croatia, that
he thought of it as simply a skull and crossbones that “looked cool,” and that
he was horrified when he learned of its significance. He got the image covered
up once it became public. But the idea that he remained blissfully ignorant of
the Totenkopf’s meaning strains credulity. CNN found
evidence suggesting that he was aware of its
significance for years and had spoken with an acquaintance about it. Platner’s
former political director made
comments to the same effect.
What’s most incredible is not that Platner would attempt
to spin something that is obviously disqualifying. It’s that the leaders of his
party are accepting that spin. One by one, Democratic politicians have lined up
to campaign with Platner or post messages of support. The Pod Save America
hosts, former officials in the Obama administration, have gone on a campaign to
deride anyone who expresses concern over the tattoo.
This is clear hypocrisy. Democrats once pointed to every
example of the “okay” hand signal as ironclad evidence of white supremacism;
they cannot suddenly be just fine with Nazi logos. I feel confident in stating
that Elizabeth Warren, Seth Moulton, or the Pod Save America crew—or any
other Democrat currently defending Platner—would be entirely unsympathetic to a
Republican candidate with a Nazi tattoo. To these Democrats, apparently,
nothing—not even condemning the greatest evil to have existed on Earth—is more
important than a victory against the opposing party. This is what excessive
partisanship—and callousness—does to the human brain.
Platner’s best explanations for the tattoo require us to
believe that he’s too ignorant about the world around him, too incurious about
what he had permanently inked on his body, too impulsive, or too dismissive of
what the Nazis represent to know or care that he was wearing their symbol. Even
if one accepts the explanation that a drunken 20-something made a bad decision,
the greater issue is the discernment of the 40-something who kept the tattoo
until it became a political liability. And if he is merely an impetuous,
uninquiring dolt, those are not the traits anyone should want in a senator.
Only recently did Massachusetts Representative Jake
Auchincloss do what many in his party lacked the wherewithal to do: speak out
against Platner and his candidacy, arguing that the SS tattoo and Platner’s
comments about it are “disqualifying.” Auchincloss can claim a unique position
from which to criticize Platner. Much of Platner’s defense has been that the
tattoo was just an example of typical Marine hijinks; he has also spoken
more generally about the stress that war caused him.
But Auchincloss himself is a former Marine and a veteran of the global War on
Terror. He is also Jewish. Rather than follow Auchincloss’s example, however,
some Democrats criticized him for stepping forward, labeling him a traitor or
calling for him to face a primary challenger. In their eyes, the problem within
the party is not the man who bore a Nazi logo; it’s the Jew who said that Nazi
logos are bad.
The Democrats are not alone in this malignant thinking,
of course. The problem of excusing abhorrent ideologies for the sake of
electoral gains is growing more pervasive and universal. In the run-up to last
week’s Kentucky primary elections, numerous Never Trumpers rallied behind
Representative Thomas Massie against his Trump-aligned challenger, Ed Gallrein.
The movement of Never Trump conservatives, in which I count myself, began out
of an adherence to the intellectual roots of conservatism, rejecting the fluctuating
definitions of it that came with Trump’s brand of populism. But for many,
“Never Trump” has become not a statement of the ideas that they stand for, but
rather an endorsement of anything, or anyone, that Trump is against.
Massie’s late-arriving Never Trump fans were so
singularly focused on his willingness to be a burr in the president’s saddle
that they overlooked his many disqualifying traits. In his recent campaign, Massie and a PAC
supporting him targeted Jewish American donors who
backed his opponent, invoking shadowy anti-Semitic conspiracies and accusing
one such donor of being an agent of a foreign power. One of his supporters,
William Paul, the son of Senator Rand Paul, publicly and drunkenly shouted at
Representative Mike Lawler that if Massie lost, it would be the
fault of the Jews. William Paul released a public statement apologizing for
having a drinking problem but leaving unaddressed the underlying hatred that
his drunken statements revealed; Massie didn’t comment on the report about the
incident.
Massie used his concession speech as one last opportunity
to stir up blame and animosity for the Jews. “I would have come out sooner,” he
said, “but I had to call my opponent and concede. And it took a while to find
Ed Gallrein in Tel Aviv.” Such comments echoed old tropes about Jews as
“rootless cosmopolitans” or disloyal citizens.
Like Massie, former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene
has been met with waiting open arms from opponents of the president since she
broke with him, and newfound condemnation from Trump and his supporters. This
is an indictment of both camps. Trump never said a harsh word when Greene
spread rumors about Jewish space lasers. Likewise, the MAGA influencers never
had a problem with Massie until he challenged the president over the Jeffrey
Epstein case—something Massie made less about justice for the victims than
about claims of Mossad
manipulation. Only criticism of Trump made Greene and Massie worthy of
excommunication. Likewise, in the eyes of some Democrats and Never Trumpers,
the act of opposing Trump was enough to wash away Greene’s and Massie’s
contemptible statements toward Jews.
Even having cast out these specific conspiracy mongers,
the Trump movement still has plenty of other examples of the same rot. Heritage
Foundation President Kevin Roberts refused to sever the organization’s ties to
Tucker Carlson after Carlson conducted a friendly interview with the
anti-Semitic influencer Nick Fuentes. Since then, only more examples have
emerged of Jew hatred among GOP staffers and party
members. Nate Hochman, a speechwriter for Ron DeSantis’s presidential
campaign, shared
a video with a Nazi Sonnenrad and was fired,
but then got hired by Senator Eric Schmitt. Paul Ingrassia, who called the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel a “psyop” and wrote
in a private group chat that he had “a Nazi streak in
me from time to time,” has been the subject of one controversial report after
another but keeps getting moved into new
roles in the administration. (A lawyer for Ingrassia
refused to “concede the authenticity” of the group-chat messages.)
Rather than purging those who have used slurs, distancing
party leadership from such behavior, or even making a clear statement of
condemnation, Vice President Vance has suggested that no one on the right
should be considered an enemy of MAGA. “When I say that I’m going to fight
alongside of you, I mean all of you—each and every one,” Vance said at a
Turning Point USA gathering last year, after the Heritage controversy.
“President Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running
his supporters through endless, self-defeating purity tests.”
Right, left, and center, political parties and movements
seem to have lost their ability to affirm a simple statement that shouldn’t be
hard to say: Anti-Semitism is bad, and those who traffic in it have no place
in our party and will not get our support. Instead, candidates or
influencers who flirt with or fully embrace the well-worn tropes and imagery of
Jew-hatred have their behavior excused, explained away, or ignored. Nazism,
whether diluted in the form of imagery or conspiracies, or concentrated, cannot
be tolerated. It’s shameful that it is left to Jewish figures such as
Auchincloss to have to speak out against this by themselves, and that they are
attacked and criticized when they do.
And it’s shameful that our leaders are willing to accept
this over such small stakes. Graham Platner is not the only Democrat in Maine
who’s at least 30 years old, nor will the Trump administration fall apart
without Paul Ingrassia. These people do not represent the best possible
candidates to fill the roles of senator or government staffer. Instead, they
represent a human manifestation of their parties’ refusal to let the other side
win. In a political environment in which everything is couched in absolute
terms, no concession can be offered, no defeat can be accepted, and no standard
can be enforced if it could offer the slightest benefit to your opponent.
But if one’s movement or political party is best
represented by someone who traffics in hatred, then that party is not worthy of
support. It should go without saying, but yes, the organization that manned the
gas chambers is worse than Susan Collins, and stoking mistrust of American Jews
is worse than Trump getting a reliable vote representing 1/435th of the power
of the House of Representatives.
Some might think that I’m being hyperbolic or alarmist in
my outrage, that a tattoo need not represent a person’s authentic ideology, or
that red-pilled edgelords are just making harmless jokes, as the vice president
has suggested. But as my father taught me when I was young, walking past a
problem is an endorsement of it, and the new boundaries of what is tolerated by
a movement become the new definitions of what is welcomed within it. As with so
many things, the rise of extremism happens “gradually, then suddenly.” Like
cracks in a dam, each individual flaw might not be large, but the tolerated
imperfections grow, and the damage compounds, and without maintenance the
entire structure gives way, releasing the destructive force that had once been
held back.
Toleration of pure evil, as anti-Semitism is, in small
quantities is toleration of the whole. Some things are more important than
winning elections.
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