A Massachusetts town is trying to stop a gloating MAGA diehard from projecting a Punisher skull logo with Donald Trump-like hair onto the local water tower.
Officials in Hanson brought in floodlights Wednesday, the day after Trump was elected president, to obscure the bright red projection put up by a local resident.
The resident, a male who the town has not identified, has been a thorn in the side of local officials for weeks.
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In mid-October, he began projecting a Trump 2024 campaign logo on the water tower, which first prompted authorities to bring in floodlights.
The town, home to 10,000 and about 20 miles south of Boston, also began fining him $100 a day.
Town Administrator Lisa Green told the Boston Globe that the town “respects the free-speech rights of all residents” but added they can’t promote political views on public property “in a manner that makes it appear that the Town of Hanson is endorsing any political candidate.”
When the resident finally relented in late October, he refused to sign a pledge that he would not project the Trump campaign logo again, and so officials kept the floodlights running through election day to prevent city property from being illicitly used to promote a campaign.
That created a nightmare for other local residents: one told the New York Times last month how they were subject “to the incessant roar of industrial generators from dusk to dawn.”
With the election finally over Wednesday, for a moment it seemed things could go back to normal.
Local officials finally ended their efforts to block the projection, figuring the resident no longer had reason to subject the town to his pro-Trump messaging.
They were wrong. He immediately projected a far more menacing image than before.
Up went a Punisher skull logo with a combover coiffe akin to Trump’s iconic, bizarre hairstyle, allegedly the result of scalp-reduction surgery.
Hanson officials were forced to turn on the floodlights again and reinstated the daily fine.
“Regrettably, the party involved in the image projection resumed projecting today and as a result we have had to yet again take measures to block the projected image,” Green, the administrator, added.
The Punisher skull logo, taken from the Marvel Comics character Frank Castle, has taken on alarming connotations in recent years.
It has been adopted—and frequently worn—by white nationalists, the neo-fascist Proud Boys, and far-right extremist groups. The skull emblem was also worn by several Jan. 6 insurrectionists who tried to overturn the 2020 election.
The Punisher is an ultra-violent vigilante anti-hero, depicted as a Vietnam War veteran willing to kill, torture and kidnap in order to exact revenge on criminal enterprises after his family is murdered by the mob.
The character‘s logo has also been controversially adopted by many police officers, with the alarming implication being they don’t care about due process.
Marvel Comics, which owns the rights to the character, has faced calls from some to retire the logo or even the character altogether.
“I doubt there’s anyone who would suggest that any of the clowns who wore the Punisher skull would have acted any differently in D.C. had it or the character never existed,” said comic book writer Garth Ennis, whose run writing the character is one of the most critically acclaimed in the Punisher’s 50 year history. “They did what they did because their demented turd of a leader convinced them the election had been stolen.”
For now, that “demented turd” has convinced the Hanson resident that he needs to project the skull on the local water tower. Fortunately, the town is responding with restrained municipal enforcement measures, and not MAGA-like vigilantism.
