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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.
People latching onto this like it's some huge dealbreaker or a story about someone traitorous to progressive politics, you are probably the same people worked up about Hasan's dog. You guys NEED to take up reading actual novels with stories. Divert your emotional investment to actual stories you are allowed to get caught up in. It feels good, I recommend it highly.
You are all as bad as the right. I fucking swear, if this story bothers you, you are not well and you need to either touch grass or touch books. Just let this bullshit go. We have such bigger problems.
The right is going to elect actual nazis with nazi histories and nazi ideology to go with whatever symbols they have hidden away, and they're going to ignore every candidate on their side who has pictures surfacing of them wearing drag or having progressive takes in the past. They don't care. They want to win. Do you want to win?
I am quite convinced the old meme that the left hates victory and wants to lose is real. It's the exact same phenomenon as how conservative MAGAts want "daddy to choke them" but the left wants to be choked by institutions and politics broadly. I've never seen a political movement so intent on losing.
I hope you all get the perfect candidate so you can talk about how great he is while you're getting loading into train cars.
People latching onto this like it’s some huge dealbreaker or a story about someone traitorous to progressive politics, you are probably the same people worked up about Hasan’s dog.
What? These two things are not at all the same.
Platner seeks a position of power and the mere existence of a nazi tattoo shows questionable judgement at best and nazi sympathies at worst.
Its a pretty tame position to take in not wanting a politician with ANY connection to nazis
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?
Maga. Israel. The usual. Possibly the Dem party. They really don't like these new unbought Dems coming in and making them look bad.
Cuomo is literally a sex abuser and establishment democrats can’t get enough of him.
Jeffries should be ashamed it took him this long to endorse Mamdami. But good to know he’s a traitor to his supporters.
Cuomo is literally a sex abuser and establishment democrats can’t get enough of him.
It's not that they like Cuomo. It's that they hate Mamdani because he represents an actual threat to the wealth of their friends. They just have to cling to Cuomo because he's the only way they can fight Mamdani; stumping for the Republican instead will get them in trouble and give the game away.
I don’t care if it sounds incredibly naive, but getting money out of politics would make life better for everyone who deserves it.
People would become politicians because they genuinely have passion to fix things for the people.
Australia just banned corporate pac money. We should too.
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...
They don't need it for liability reasons; they just want to sell it as AI fodder.
So is he a goodie or a baddie. TELL ME WHAT TO THINK
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.
Even if you know history, this is a fairly obscure symbol. I would bet there's a lot of people who know a lot about WWII and still wouldn't recognize it. For one, I don't think I would. I may have an "I've seen this symbol before..." moment, but I don't think I'd place it correctly on the spot.
I mean my contention isn't that he didn't know what it was, it's that you gotta be kidding me that he didn't learn what it was in the 20 years since. I don't give a shit about his reddit history; if anything its just kinda affable to me. Hell, I'd be willing to even take the tattoo at "I learned what it was at a really dark time in my life, and I just haven't confronted the tattoo itself, even if I conquered the ideologies that led to both its creation and its application to my body." Like obviously military service is its own alt-right pipeline. But like, bro, you got the super non-pirate skull and crossbones across your tit, bro, what are you doing?
Like I'm not even saying don't vote for him, deadass I'd still take his dumb ass over some Zionist shill 8 days a week. But, can nobody just call a spade a spade?
To be fair, just look at all the people who have Chinese words written on them that say something that they weren't trying to say. How many of those people have had those tattoos for many years without ever learning that they were incorrect or fixing them?
I wouldn't go this route personally, but I know enough about tattoos to say with a high degree of confidence that many people just pick something out of the books on the day of the walk-in because they think it looks cool. I could totally believe this guy and his marine buddies said "that's a cool skull, let's get that".
It's like, how many people have Punisher stickers or t-shirts but have never read a comic book in their lives? Probably most of them...
If I had Chinese symbols saying I was a nazi tattooed on me, I'd be at the nearest open parlor to get it covered up the same day I learned about it.
If he really did somehow just learn about it during the campaign, it should be gone by now.
Edit: which apparently it is, so good on him for that.
Yeah, that is generally referred to as "flash". The catalogue of stencils that an artist has on hand for walk ins and the like. And considering this was apparently some hole in the wall in Croatia (unclear if it was when he was in the military or at Blackwater), there is a good chance that entire catalogue was full of nazi shit and this had the least amount of swastikas.
But you, and many others, are fixated on him getting it. Which... it raises questions on his judgment, but people do stupid shit all the time. The issue is more the having kept it for 20 years while being terminally online (almost impossible to have not seen the Mitchell and Webb "are we the baddies" meme that is literally about totenkapfs) and being a self proclaimed military history buff. And then 5 years ago having talked about "punisher skulls" in association with, gasp, SS totenkapfs.
No true Scotsman faults the guy for making a mistake 20 years ago. We very much fault him for not having rectified it at all in the two decades since.
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).