Reading through Platner’s many hundreds of anonymous comments, it’s hard to paint him as a secret white supremacist or far-right extremist of any kind. In fact, his posts more or less align with the persona he has presented to voters in the two months since he launched his campaign: a rough-around-the-edges military veteran and oyster farmer with a penchant for crude language and a passion for firearms and sustainable living who holds a variety of standard progressive views alongside some heterodox ones.

I smelled a hatchet job.

Is it from the republicans or liberal dems?

Well, for the terminally online, the knee has already jerked. And in their defense, once bit, twice shy.

That being said, the number of terminally online Mainers for whom the oppo was a deal breaker probably can fit in a swimming pool.

And there are two things happening at once in this story. One is, the primary thread of the oppo; Platner did post those things, Platner did have a tattoo.

The second thing is the oppo release, its source, Mills, Schumer, and the act of Mainers being told who to like and whom to vote for. And at least in last weeks polling this seemed to be the case. So who does the oppo work on? Early polling seems to be showing that the timing of Mills announcement and the research being release/ coming from some of the least popular standing groups (specifically, corporate Democrats).

So it looks like the oppo was supposed to work on the more progressive types (and clearly, has been, I mean, look around), and that while thats been effective, Mainers dont care/ dont like being told who to like. This oppo dump may actually end up working against those who sourced it (corporate Dems). We need the polling pudding to thicken up a bit, but should know more when polling comes out this week (weds/ thurs/ fri).

that seems unlikely, considering i'd never heard of the man before this

Everybody is talking about Platner and that is fine, but i wanted to recognize the Jacobin for publishing this.

Here is a socialist magazine defending a man with a sketchy tattoo on the basis of the bulk of his posts. Jacobin (and Marcetic, the author) are cutting against cancel culture accusations and upholding the truth-finding principle of good journalism. Bravo.

I think for many people getting a tattoo is a huge deal and we would never allow our skin to be marked without out a lot of forethought.

But I think there is a good chunk of the population that doesn’t think about it and don’t see it as a big deal. I think a lot of these people are concentrated in the military, the lack of forethought is increased when you are in a job that may well see you killed soon.

I’d like to see him reaching out to new and old military members to educate them on the meaning he apparently didn’t know about and pushing them to remove it.

Someone with some art skills should come up with a suitably cool modification tattoo that neutralises the nazi aspect and but still lets these guys support and identify with battle mates.

It’s not their fault the nazis happens co opt heaps of cool symbols and I don’t blame some 22 year old jar head for not knowing history (they should but the US education system has a lot to answer for).

If you give people an easy way out that lets them save face you’ll only be left with the actual racists.

Just as a context for people like myself that want to get their own look onto the tattoo situation. I cant find any less blurry pictures, but the shape matches quite well. He already got it covered up now, so no way to check.

This is an Nazi SS Totenkopf badge:

This is the tattoo:

the fucked up thing here is how did they find his reddit account? That post was years ago and he didnt even use some stupid username like "RealGrahamPlatner". Makes you wonder if those reddit post removal tool work at all...

So is he a goodie or a baddie. TELL ME WHAT TO THINK

Why are people so fucking stupid? Idiots who probably didn't even know what a totenkopf was a week ago are now like "OMG secret Nazi 😱."

Are you saying he didn't serve in the military?

Or are you saying he did apologize for spreading capitalism with the sword of US imperialism?