Why is so much effort being spent defending a Nazi symbol?

[Jack Valentino]

165. I'd be willing to bet a fairly large amount of money that the tattoo shop catalog where he bought it

didn't have it labeled as the "Nazi Totenkopf"!!!! Just another in a collection of skull and bones which a young man thought 'looked cool'.

The Swastika is more universally recognized as a 'Nazi symbol'--- the others much less so--
unless you spent a lot of time studying Nazi uniforms.... which I never had a good reason to do.

Hell, I consider myself a pretty good layman historian on World War II,
I know all about the Holocaust and the SS and the death camps,
but I mostly read--- perhaps I didn't spend enough time viewing Nazi uniforms,
or read books that had enough pictures in them of their uniforms--
because when this whole controversy first arose, I didn't recognize it for any kind of
symbol used by the Nazis , EITHER--- and I'm sure a young drunk Marine didn't.

If he learned what it meant before he admits, well, so the fuck what!
Getting a tattoo removed is no small thing,
neither is getting it covered up---which he DID when the matter came publicly to light---

If he learned about it earlier, perhaps he intended to do something about it,
but didn't get around to it until recently--- since it didn't show to anyone
who didn't see him with his shirt off!

I suspect people who keep going on and on about it have impure motives---
especially on the Republican side, of course---

and among Democrats, possibly some of those are really more concerned
about the fact that he was endorsed by Bernie Sanders!


If Platner was really a Nazi or a Nazi sympathizer,
or a Nazi-Republican with little to choose between them--
he would have "doubled-down" and kept the tattoo---
but as a matter of fact it no longer exists!


But yes, the exact rendition WAS a Nazi symbol, one of many. I don't think anyone here is making some attempt to rehabilitate it.