Who Gets Panzer Tattooed on Their Arm? The ink that tells the story of Trump's second term.

[Celerity]

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/05/tattoos-trump-panzer-pete-hegseth/682661/

https://archive.ph/GEuzQ



On the long list of reasons the United States could have lost World War II—the terribly effective surprise Japanese attack, an awful lack of military readiness, the relatively untrained troops—there is perhaps no area in which Americans were more initially outmatched than armament. Americans had the M4 Sherman, a tank mass-produced by Detroit automakers. Germans had the formidable panzer, a line of tanks with nicknames such as Panther and Royal Tiger that repeatedly outgunned the Americans. In the 1940s, you couldn’t pick up a newspaper in the United States without reading about the panzer’s superior maneuverability and robust armor, qualities that made it especially hard for Americans to stop. “This doesn’t mean our tanks are bad,” The New York Times reported in January 1945. “They are the best in the world—next to the Germans.”

The panzer invoked Nazi might and aggression even decades after the war ended. Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy,” first published in 1965, contains this stanza: “Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You—— / Not God but a swastika / So black no sky could squeak through.” In the 2000s, popular video-game franchises—including Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Medal of Honor—released installments set during World War II that featured the panzer, etching it into the collective consciousness of a new generation of Americans.

So you can see why it’s noteworthy that Joseph Kent, Donald Trump’s nominee to head the National Counterterrorism Center, has a panzer tattoo. Last month, Mother Jones’s David Corn uncovered a shirtless picture of Kent from 2018, in which he has the word PANZER written down his left arm. Why? It’s not clear. Kent did not respond to multiple requests for comment, and the Trump administration hasn’t offered an explanation either. Olivia C. Coleman, a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, directed me to a post on X in which Ashley Henning, a deputy chief of staff at the agency, calls Kent a “selfless patriot who loves this country and his family.”



Kent’s tattoo is all the more curious considering his background. A former member of the Army Special Forces who twice ran for Congress in Washington State, he has had repeated interactions with far-right extremists. During his unsuccessful 2022 congressional bid, Kent consulted with Nick Fuentes, the young white supremacist, and hired a campaign adviser who was a member of the Proud Boys, a violent far-right group. (Kent ultimately disavowed Fuentes, and his campaign said that the Proud Boys member, Graham Jorgensen, was a low-level worker). The tattoo “could mean that he’s glorifying the Nazis. Or it could have a different context,” says Heidi Beirich, a co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, an organization that tracks right-wing extremism. Despite what the word evokes in history, panzer references are not common on the far right, Beirich told me. “I don’t think I’ve run across a panzer.”

snip

[UpInArms]

1. The tattoo "could mean that he's glorifying the Nazis, or

…

Don’t believe your lying eyes

[flvegan]

2. Tattoo artist misspelled "WANKER"

Simple enough mistake, really.

[MagickMuffin]

3. His deceased wife worked for the navy in Crytologic Technologies

Navy Chief Cryptologic Technician (Interpretive) Shannon M. Kent, 35, of upstate New York. Kent was assigned to Cryptologic Warfare Activity 66, based at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland.[8] Her husband was Joe Kent, an army officer who would later run for a U.S. House seat.

She got blown up in 2019 Manbij bombing. I guess cryptologic can’t stop remote bombings.


And I’d wager another guess Joe Kent loves Nazis, why else would he be considered in this role. He’s only 45 years old and stuck playing war games except now he isn’t sitting around playing his video games.

[Dan]

4. Whenever I think of the Sherman Tank from WWII

I think of buying military equipment from the lowest bidder.