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.[Tyler Austin Harper: How ‘big tent’ are Democrats willing to go?]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.[Ali Breland: Who gets panzer tattooed on their arm?]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.