Another day, another bad news update for Graham Platner. The Maine socialist who is running as a Democrat to unseat Susan Collins has spent the week denouncing himself for all the things he said on social media over the past decade.
This story was kicked off last Thursday when CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski reported that Platner had labeled himself a communist and said white, rural people in Maine were stupid and racist.
That was quickly followed by stories from the Washington Post and Politico revealing a bunch more of his Reddit comments which included him downplaying sexual assault in the military and promoting the Socialist Rifle Association. His political director quit on the day those stories came out.
Then, this week we learned he was a member of the Maine chapter of the Socialist Rifle Association, which promotes gun ownership among lefties as a way to fight fascism. His membership and recruiting for the group seemed at odds with his denials that he was really a socialist.
The story which really took this whole thing to 11 was the revelation that he had a Nazi tattoo, which he had gotten overseas in his Marine days. Platner quickly denied knowing what the tattoo meant, telling the AP that he’d only just recently learned the thing on his chest was a Nazi symbol.
But that claim of ignorance was quickly undercut by a story at Jewish Insider where a former acquaintance said Platner had known a decade ago what the symbol was.
…according to a person who socialized with Platner when he was living in Washington, D.C., more than a decade ago, Platner had specifically acknowledged that the tattoo was a Totenkopf, the “death’s head” symbol adopted by an infamous Nazi SS unit that guarded concentration camps in World War II.
“He said, ‘Oh, this is my Totenkopf,’” the former acquaintance told Jewish Insider recently, speaking on the condition of anonymity to address a sensitive issue. “He said it in a cutesy little way.”
Today, Andrew Kaczynski has a follow up at CNN where he puts the final nail in this particular coffin. He has dug up even more old Reddit posts in which Platner specifically mentioned how some Nazi symbols had been adopted by US service members.
In one thread from 2019, Platner weighed in on a conversation about the “Totenkopf” — the skull-and-crossbones emblem worn by Nazi SS units that his own tattoo would later draw scrutiny for resembling — to note that many US service members had adopted similar imagery, such as the Punisher skull used by some Navy SEALs.
Using his longtime Reddit handle P-Hustle, the former Marine infantryman and future Democratic Senate hopeful also argued in a 2020 online discussion that “SS” lightning-bolt tattoos were a “culture” marker within Marine Scout Sniper units, not an expression of White supremacist ideology…
“I know a bunch of black and latino HOGs with bolts, they’d be quite surprised to hear they are part of a conspiracy to infiltrate white supremacists into the Marine Corps,” he said in another comment, later adding that “Bolts were a STA icon since the ‘80’s at least, if not longer. It was never official, but it sure as shit was tattooed on almost every HOG I knew between 2004-2012.”
Platner also wrote in the posts that he was liberal and was merely explaining military culture.
“You could read through my post history and see that I’m pretty radically left,” he wrote. “But this is a specific culture that I am close with, and know intimately. I’m not being willfully obtuse, I’m explaining something that is far more nuanced than you’re willing to understand.”
In this case, I think Platner is telling the truth about himself and about why some people in the military get these tattoos. I don’t think he’s a secret Nazi. I do think he’s a liar who made up a story about not knowing what this was because it was easier than trying to explain himself to a bunch of left-wing partisans who were already headed for the fainting couch over his previous comments.
Even MSNBC is having a hard time supporting him.
Bottom line: Even if one accepts Platner’s apologies for his past behavior, believes his account of when he learned about the meaning of his tattoo, and thinks that he may have evolved from his past errors, it’s clear that he has a questionable track record. There are legitimate reasons to be suspicious of how deeply held his current progressive beliefs are, and how disciplined he would be as a politician.
He’s a confirmed liar as of this week, not four years ago. I guess we’ll see if that matters to Maine voters.
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