Platner, a US veteran and mercenary, has continued to receive support from “progressive” Democrats even after it was revealed he had a Totenkopf, the favored symbol of Hitler’s SS, on his chest for nearly two decades.

That such iconography could circulate for years within the US military and diplomatic-security apparatus underscores what the World Socialist Web Site reported six years ago in “Neo-Nazi networks exposed across US military”: fascist and white-supremacist currents have been cultivated inside the armed forces.