The Democratic Senate campaign in Maine has become a case study in media hypocrisy. Graham Platner, the party's nominee, sported an SS Totenkopf tattoo on his chest until recently covering it up. Yet the same news organizations that spent years labeling everything from milk consumption to hand gestures as white supremacist now treat his ink with kid gloves.
For over a decade, activists and journalists have linked mundane activities—going to the gym, having children, even showing up at Madison Square Garden—to fascist ideology. The New York Times and others pushed the narrative that the “okay” hand sign was a hate symbol. Now, facing a Democratic candidate with an actual Nazi emblem, they suddenly rediscovered nuance.
NBC News reported that Platner had a tattoo that “resembles a Nazi symbol.” The Washington Post used the same wording. The New York Times said it “resembled a Nazi symbol called a Totenkopf.” PBS and USA Today followed suit. Each outlet carefully avoided calling it what it is: an SS death's-head tattoo.
This caution persists despite evidence that Platner knew exactly what the symbol meant. A former acquaintance said Platner referred to it as “my Totenkopf” as far back as 2012. Text messages from before the tattoo became public show he understood its significance. Yet the media continues to hedge.
As actor Rainn Wilson recently noted, both parties are playing politics with the issue. But the media's role is especially telling. After years of demanding journalists call out lies directly—using the word “lie” for Trump's falsehoods—they now can't bring themselves to call a Nazi tattoo a Nazi tattoo.
The timing is suspicious. Democrats need Platner to win to have any chance of retaking the Senate. That political reality may explain why outlets that once saw white supremacy everywhere are now so circumspect. The hypocrisy crisis extends beyond the media to the party itself, which has remained largely silent.
The double standard also applies to allegations of abuse. New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor, who championed #MeToo coverage of Brett Kavanaugh, downplayed claims that Platner was physically and emotionally abusive to a former girlfriend. She said the accusations don't “clear the bar” for a classic #MeToo allegation—a striking contrast to her previous reporting.
To be clear, there's no evidence Platner is a true believer in Nazi ideology. He's more a “lying weasel,” as one observer put it—a privileged boarding school graduate who cheated on his wife and postures as working class. But that's not the point. The point is that the media's moral panics were never sincere; they were political weapons aimed at conservatives.
When the target is a Democrat, the outrage evaporates. That's the real story of the Maine Senate campaign.
