Opinion: Our Shared “Nazi Moment”

Today’s offering comes to us from Ryan Smith. Smith has been a practicing Pagan since his teens, with over 15 years of experience in inclusive and anti-racist Heathen spirituality. He is the author of The Way of Fire & Ice: The Living Tradition of Norse Paganism and Spinning Wyrd: A Journey Through the Nordic Mysteries, has contributed to Bringing Race to the Table: Exploring Racism in the Pagan Community and No Pasaran: Antifascist Dispatches from a World in Crisis anthologies, and been published at Huginn’s Heathen Hof, Patheos Pagan, and Truthout. Ryan is also the host and producer of the Heathen podcast, the Wayward Wanderer, which is available at wherever you get your podcasts. He has a PhD in modern economic & social history and can be found online on Bluesky, Patreon, and Mastodon.

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It seems like the United States is going through a real “Nazi moment” for the past couple of weeks.

What I am referring to here, in contrast to all of the other blatant fascism running amok, is an experience that is quite familiar to many Pagans and Heathens. A “Nazi moment” is what happens when you are confronted with the clear, unambiguous fact that someone is, in fact, a genuine, bona fide Nazi – or at least is way more sympathetic to the actual, genuine Nazis than anyone should be.

These moments can be very jarring when the cause of that “Nazi moment” is someone whom you respected, a leader in your community, or some other person of esteem and influence. My own history with “Nazi moments” is also why the reactions to the bigger one roiling America are not surprising.

Embed from Getty Images 

This brings me to the causes of our immediate, shared “Nazi moment.” On the electoral American Left, the revelations that Maine progressive Senate candidate Graham Platner had a Totenkopf, the “death’s head” emblem of the Nazi SS, tattooed on his chest in 2007, lied about knowing what it represented, and worked for Blackwater, a notorious mercenary group with a record of war crimes and ties to far-right extremism, have upended the race. Platner supporters are rallying to their candidate’s defense despite these concerns. (Editor’s note: Platner covered up the Totenkopf tattoo after its existence became public, changing it to, as he describes in an Instagram video, “a Celtic knot with some imagery around dogs.”)

The Right, unsurprisingly, has experienced many more of these moments lately. These include pundit Tucker Carlson’s softball interview of notorious neo-Nazi, antisemite, Holocaust denier, and groyper leader Nick Fuentes; Heritage Foundation President Kevin Robert’s full-throated defense of Fuentes following the interview; the barrage of outright Nazi sentiments exchanged in private texts between Young Republican leaders; and the rescinding of Paul Ingrassa’s nomination by Trump to lead the Office of Special Counsel after evidence of his self-described “Nazi streak” surfaced.

The masks, it seems, are coming off everywhere.

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Now, it is essential to note this is not a both-sides problem, as the situation on each side is very different. Tucker Carlson and the Heritage Foundation’s legitimation of overtly Hiter-lite politics has, arguably, been a long time coming. Carlson, as Matt Gertz at Media Matters reports, has long laundered white nationalist talking points like the so-called “great replacement theory” while engaging in increasingly overt antisemitism.

The Heritage Foundation, similarly, wrote the fascist Project 2025 and operates in the same circles as right-wing intellectuals, like Kevin Slack of Hillsdale College, who have been calling for a post-constitutional “Red Caesar” since 2023.

These larger realities have led to a revolt by Heritage staffers and the disbanding of the New York State Young Republicans a similar vibe to the famed Mitchell and Webb “are we the baddies?” sketch, though it must be said their actions are the right response, if a bit late in coming.

Graham Platner, by contrast, has inspired a response that has some very striking similarities to my own experiences in American Heathenry. Prominent progressives like Bernie Sanders, Sam Seder, and Mehdi Hasan have rallied to his defense, arguing that Platner needs to be extended empathy and given a chance to improve instead of being subjected to “purity tests.”

This behavior is very similar, to me, to other “Nazi moments,” where the Nazi in question is someone who is seen as a respectable member of their particular community. Defenders proclaim their desire to be accepting of all, demonstrate understanding for the Nazi’s position, and appeal to building bigger, more welcoming tents. They try to dismiss genuine concerns as unfair attacks, trumped up accusations, and worst of all an attack on the integrity and safety of the greater community.

There are also some shared factors which influenced such responses which Heathenry and the U.S. Left have in common. Each movement has a shared history of very limited influence in society, general dismissal by major institutions, and limited resources in human and material terms. These conditions, along with their shared position as outside of or antagonistic to commonly held mainstream beliefs, encourage a siege mentality where the ever-present threat of a threatening “them” was used to justify expedience in times where morality urged acting on these problematic people.

Such circumstances, while relevant, do not justify these decisions, and frequently the price of expediency was often higher than the cost of addressing problematic behaviors.  The inexorable drift of figures like Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and John Fetterman to the right despite their initially progressive positions shows such bargains simply never deliver lasting results.

American Heathenry, similarly, is marred by its refusal to confront the harms of the white nationalists and their preferred bigotries, and it carries lasting injuries, social fragmentation, and disillusionment which will take years to heal.

Now I want to be clear, I think Graham Platner should be given the chance to repair the harm he has done and show a genuine desire to do better. Space needs to be made for people who truly want to improve the world to make up for past mistakes, errors, and harms. That said, running for a national-level office is not the place to be doing any of that work especially when Platner’s feigned, now disproven, ignorance of what the Totenkopf represents, his decision to keep it on his body for nearly two decades, and his choice to work for Blackwater have already demonstrated poor judgment on his part.

If other progressives genuinely want Platner to contribute to the larger pro-democracy movement, then they should be offering ways to support him in that journey, which have lower stakes and are better suited to his talents and experiences, instead of rallying to his defense, dismissing critics’ concerns as establishment attacks, and doubling down. The only thing this anxious defense has accomplished is guarantee more questions and scrutiny over Graham’s statements, choice of ink, and record, rather than fewer, which does not bode well for his success in elected office.

With all of that said, this shared “Nazi moment” may, ultimately, lead us to a better place. The fuel for the 2016 denunciation of the white nationalist Asatru Folk Assembly known as Declaration 127 was first laid down three years earlier by investigative work by groups like Circle Ansuz, which proved the AFA’s ties at the time to white nationalism and neo-Naziism. As for the Declaration itself, the spark which lit the fuse was a 2016 Facebook post by the AFA’s then-new Allherjarsgodi where he directly paraphrased white nationalist David Lane’s 14 words.

The same may also be true of the United States now. Social media is positively flooded with communities spontaneously resisting ICE raids. Demonstrations against the Trump regime have escalated from isolated pickets at Tesla dealerships to the No Kings movement setting the record for the second largest mass mobilization in US history on June 14^th, when around four million people took the streets, before shattering it on October 18^th by mobilizing over seven million demonstrators who marched in nearly every city and town in the United States.

It seems that disgust with the cruelty and brutality of this regime is overcoming apathy and despair. The Heritage staffers’ revolt, though unlikely to amount to much on its own, shows that even some of the rank and file agents of fascism may not have the stomach for it.

Hopefully, the growing revolt will translate into momentum for addressing the deep, systemic problems which made this “Nazi moment.”

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