Maine Democrat With Nazi Tattoo Also Made Homophobic Social Media Posts, Report Finds - "Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner, who is already facing controversy over racist social media posts and having a tattoo of a Nazi symbol, also made Reddit comments containing "homophobic slurs, anti-LGBTQ+ jokes, and sexually explicit stories denigrating gay men"... The news comes on the heels of reports this week that Platner has a tattoo of a Nazi "Totenkopf," or skull, on his chest. While the Maine Democrat claimed to be unaware of the symbolism, one former associate of his said the candidate "knows damn well" the meaning of the tattoo, and another said Platner referred to the ink as "my Totenkopf."... The Democratic Senate hopeful already faced backlash earlier this month over Reddit posts in which he called himself a communist and denigrated both white rural Americans and black people. In other posts, Platner referred to "all" police officers as bastards and suggested that people wearing "underwear designed to prevent sexual assault" should "take some responsibility for themselves and not get so fucked up." Platner, who is running to challenge Republican senator Susan Collins in next year's midterms, still holds a commanding lead in Maine's Democratic primary, with 58 percent support, according to a University of New Hampshire poll released Thursday. His nearest rival, Gov. Janet Mills, received only 24 percent support."
If there's one Nazi at a table of 10...
Theo Wold on X - "His grandfather is an architect who designed the Ford Foundation headquarters, his father is a corporate lawyer who funds his lifestyle, he attended expensive private schools-- but he has a lot of tattoos and talks in a deep voice, therefore he's a working class hero to the online left"
Coddled Affluent Professional on X - "The future of Dem politics is failchildren of the affluent - whether it’s Mamdani, AOC (whose father was an architect), or this guy - LARPing as the working class and disinherited. A lot of these people are broken in some fundamental way and the spectrum of pathology ranges from vacant narcissism (best case scenario) to ideologically bizarre and dysfunctional schizos."
Democrats Keep Falling for Political Fantasies. When Will They Learn? - "Will Democrats ever learn to stop swooning?... It goes something like this: Political outsider or mostly new name mounts statewide campaign with online video that leans heavily on compelling biography or powerful oratory, out-of-state liberal hobbyists quickly fall in love and fork over money, and journalists rush to profile the latest heartthrob before inevitable disappointment when the candidate loses or, well, becomes John Fetterman. Platner is the latest example. A military veteran turned oysterman who looked the hirsute part, the Mainer’s populist candidacy seemed to be an immaculate conception. The contributions piled up, the profiles were published and then suddenly there was a disruption to the formula. Or maybe it was more of an acceleration. Once his Democratic rival, Maine Gov. Janet Mills, entered the race, Platner was hit with a nor’easter of oppo research that had the added value of being his own damning words. Rationalizing political violence, calling himself a “communist,” referring to all police as “bastards” and calling himself an “antifa supersoldier,” Platner’s paper trail was the stuff of Senator Susan Collins’s dreams. And that was before Platner tried to get ahead of the next hit by revealing the apparent Nazi tattoo on his naked torso. There is more to come, I’m told by sources very familiar with the Platner opposition file who spoke on the condition of anonymity. And some of it will be even more localized, which will make for ready-made targeted mail and digital ads from his opponent I’ve learned, for example, that in 2020, Platner went online and called the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office a den of “overweight pansies” and flatly said: “cops are opportunistic cowards.”... This won’t slow Platner’s apologists. The left-wingers so enamored with Platner’s politics, apparently forgetting the lessons of Fetterman, have rushed to offer him the sort of grace they’d never bestow on a more moderate candidate, let alone a Republican. However, and this is crucial for Democrats to face their addiction, Platner just happened to be a lefty. This trend isn’t limited to one faction. There’s a reason why Bill Clinton likes to say, “Republicans fall in line, Democrats fall in love.”
What Progressives Keep Getting Wrong - The Atlantic - "The Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner has absorbed enough oppo research to kill half a dozen healthy candidacies. Among the stream of revelations, Platner has called himself a Communist, hinted at political violence, labeled all cops bastards, broadly described rural white people as racist and stupid, downplayed sexual assault, and mocked gay people. He recently covered and apologized for a skull-and-crossbones tattoo associated with the Nazi SS, claiming he hadn’t been aware of its political connotations. There is a famous comedy sketch in which an SS officer, finally noticing in the final stages of war that SS caps feature “little pictures of skulls,” is moved to wonder: “Are we the baddies?” The joke is that it took until 1945 for this Nazi to grasp the symbolism of the death’s-head logo. Yet Platner spent 18 years blissfully unaware of the implications of the symbol inked on his torso. Platner is toughing it out, as scandal-plagued candidates almost always do. What’s surprising is that his supporters appear completely unfazed by the bad-news avalanche. Rather than abandon his candidacy, or even back off slightly until they’ve seen the end of the damaging stories, they have accepted his apologies and backed him to the hilt. “I suspect that Graham Platner is not the only American to have gone through a dark period,” Senator Bernie Sanders explained. Indeed, progressives have treated the Platner revelations as a scandal revealing more about the perfidy of his enemies than about him. “Still like Graham Platner a whole lot more than I like the prim little hall monitors digging up dirt on him, sorry,” Ben Burgis, a philosophy professor and Jacobin contributor, wrote on X. “Not to overstate it, but this is a crucial moment for the Democratic Party,” Ryan Grim, a former D.C. bureau chief of The Intercept, argued on X. “If they decide that normal people with some small skeletons in their closet (or inked on their chest) are not welcome, they are finished.” You’d think it would be possible for Democrats to find a normal person who is not a one-man Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. (Most normal people, in fact, would qualify.) But the left’s continued embrace of Platner has a certain logic. Progressives have a theory of political change for which he remains, despite his massive and ever-expanding political baggage, the ideal prototype. That is, rather than abandon unpopular positions, Democrats should court voters by nominating more candidates who look like, talk like, and ideally even are working-class people. The progressive donor network Way to Win recently held a conference in Washington, D.C., to advocate for the left-wing blueprint for regaining power. The conference’s argument was that the party cannot compromise any of its left-wing social-policy commitments, as this would amount to “throwing constituencies under the bus.” To the extent that a majority of Americans hold regressive social positions on issues such as immigration and trans rights, these “unacceptable” beliefs, in the words of one organizer, are a kind of false consciousness—a dire product of economic desperation and right-wing propaganda. The solution progressives propose is to avoid addressing these concerns at all by changing the subject to economics, advocating a left-wing populist program, and recruiting candidates who can speak to blue-collar white voters... As his candidacy emerged over the summer, a procession of left-leaning journalists made the trek to Maine (where some already summered regularly) to pronounce him the movement’s next star... The theory here is that progressives can win over these voters by convincing them that they have been manipulated into holding their socially conservative beliefs, rather than ceding any substantive ground. The evidence strongly suggests this theory is bunk. People are more likely to vote for politicians who agree with them on issues, and politicians with moderate voting platforms tend to do better. The most reliable way to deal with voters holding views that are more centrist than yours is not to convince the voters they’ve been brainwashed, but to adopt more popular positions... But the reason Democrats are underdogs in this race is that its incumbent, Susan Collins, has won election after election by cultivating a reputation as a moderate, which illustrates the value of ideological moderation. So far, Platner is making little effort to do this. While he and his backers seem to believe his populist economic message is all upside, his former self-description as a “Communist” may be a potent general-election liability—although Platner has tried to use the Nazi-tattoo controversy to negate the Communist label. (If you average out both ideologies, he winds up as a safe moderate.) The gushy New Republic profile from August proclaims that “what he’s building now is rooted in the work of a lifetime.” Given that Platner is disavowing things he posted on social media four years ago, maybe lifetime is the wrong word. But he is the product of a political movement that still has few better prototypes, and has invested too much hope to walk away just yet."
Ryan Grim on X - "Not to overstate it, but this is a crucial moment for the Democratic Party. If they decide that normal people with some small skeletons in their closet (or inked on their chest) are not welcome, they are finished Because they’ve tried the other way and it didn’t work."
Mary Katharine Ham on X - "An SS tattoo on your chest, that you allegedly got while drunk and didn’t know what it was, but also told people you knew what it was, and chose not to get covered for 20 years doesn’t seem like that small a skeleton. It’s a Home Depot 22-ft Halloween special skeleton."
Tom Royce on X - "Plattner has a SS tattoo, no worries, a youthful mistake. Hegseth has a Christian Cross tattoo, panic and declare him a public menace. The left are a hot mess at this point."
Meme - Billy Binion @billybi: "Am I going crazy? Elon Musk waved at an audience in January & it inspired a national news cycle because people said it resembled a Nazi salute. Meanwhile, a Democrat gets a tattoo he allegedly called his "Totenkopf" and it's no big deal? What kind of standard is that?
Krystal Ball @krystalball: "For me personally I'l take a candidate with a regrettable tattoo over one who has steadfastly supported a genocide."
Readers added context: "Graham Platner's Nazi "Totenkopf" tattoo-aka the "Death's Head" symbol- was used by the Nazi SS division responsible for running concentration camps during The Holocaust. Today, neo-Nazis use the symbol to glorify that genocide. He reportedly bragged about the tattoo."
Krystal Ball on X - "For me personally I’ll take a candidate with a regrettable tattoo over one who has steadfastly supported a genocide."
Brad Brown on X - "OK sign: Nazi
Heart goes out to you gesture: Nazi
Jerusalem Cross: Nazi
Nazi SS Totenkopf tattoo: what could mean?!
You people are fundamentally unserious."
Meara on X - "Lmao you went from, "Elon is a Nazi because he made a common hand gesture that Democrats make all the time" to "a literal Nazi tattoo is fine if you cover it up later because it is politically inconvenient.""
Rowdy ๐จ๐ฆ on X - "the “regrettable tattoo” supports genocide. But it was against Jews, so OK I guess?"
Pudge on X: "Translation: “I’ll support someone who supports the Nazis over someone who supports the Jews.”"
LiberalTearCreator™ on X - "You mean the tattoo that is a a symbol celebrating the greatest mass genocide in human history?"
Michael J. Hout on X - "You guys would never in a million years accept this answer about a conservative lol"
Scott Jennings on X - "Dem after Dem called Trump, Elon, etc. Nazis. They accused Hegseth of Nazi tattoos (FALSE). And now? The most popular Dem Senate candidate in AMERICA has actual Nazi tattoos & the full backing of the radical Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. OWN IT."
Western Lensman on X - "Chris Murphy on Elon’s ‘heart goes out to you’ gesture: He did a Heil H*tler salute. This may be the most dangerous moment in modern American political history.
Murphy on Platner who got a N*zi tattoo: He just seems like a guy who made a mistake. Plus he’s polling really well."
Not to mention the left ignores Tim Walz and Cory Booker's Nazi salutes, because they're on the "right" side
Mike Ginsberg ๐บ๐ธ๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ง on X - "The same people that tried to make Elon Musk @elonmusk into a secret Nazi because of an awkward hand gesture are covering for a man who has a Nazi tattoo."
Maine Kampf: Democrats silent on Nazi running for the Senate : r/NewsWorthPayingFor - "Platner reminds me of that Republican Senate nominee in Delaware who took out an ad to make it plain that “I’m not a witch”—even though she had made the claim on Bill Maher’s Politically Correct show a few years earlier, saying:
I dabbled into witchcraft—I never joined a coven. But I did, I did. I dabbled into witchcraft. I hung around people who were doing these things. I’m not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do. One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar, and I didn’t know it. I mean, there’s little blood there and stuff like that. We went to a movie and then had a midnight picnic on a satanic altar."
Bad Hombre on X - "It took less than a week for Democrats to go from “we should ruin those kids’ lives for making Hitler jokes in a group chat” to “we should make that guy with Nazi tattoos a U.S. Senator.”"
Scandal-ridden candidates expose Democrats' turmoil - "In California, the Democratic frontrunner to replace Gavin Newsom, the governor, suffered a major fall from grace after a series of bad-tempered interactions with interviewers and her own staff came to light. In Virginia, the Democrat campaigning to be elected governor next week, has tied herself in knots by failing to condemn death threats made against Republicans... Mr Platner shared a video showing he had had the tattoo, a skull and crossbones, covered and claimed he was not aware until recently that the style of his tattoo resembled the insignia of an elite division of the SS, known as “Totenkopf,” or “death’s head”. But far from taking responsibility, the Bernie Sanders-backed candidate blamed the furore on “the establishment”, which he claimed is “trying to throw everything it can at me”. Joel Rubin, a Democratic strategist, told The Telegraph that Mr Platner’s explanation was a “swing and a miss”, and “does nothing to assuage Jewish voters’ concerns”... In the race to win the Democratic nomination for California governor, frontrunner Katie Porter has also made headlines for all the wrong reasons. In the deep blue state, the former representative looked all but certain to succeed Mr Newsom, but after a series of on-camera meltdowns emerged, her campaign is in free-fall. Earlier this month, she stormed out of a CBS interview after being asked how she would win over Trump supporters. Days later, Politico uncovered a 2021 video of her berating an aide for accidentally stepping into the camera shot while she was on a webinar. “Stay out of my f---ing shot,” she barked, causing the aide to scamper away. Ms Porter said she was trying to “be more intentional in showing gratitude to my staff for their important work”, in a statement to Politico. But her various infractions have spectators asking: in the wealthiest blue state in the country, is this the best the Democrats can do? Steve Hitlon, the Republican candidate and former Downing Street adviser, pounced on the opportunity, saying she represents the “smug, arrogant ruling elite of the California Democrats”. In Virginia, Abigail Spanberger’s run for governor has been sullied by her failure to denounce Jay Jones, a fellow Democrat, who spoke about murdering Republicans in leaked texts. In his 2022 messages, reported by National Review, Mr Jones suggested Republican House Speaker Todd Gilbert should get “two bullets to the head”, called his children “fascists” and said he would urinate on the graves of some state GOP delegates... Aside from scandal, age is another factor marring the party. Nancy Pelosi, the 85-year-old former House speaker, has not yet made a decision about whether to retire. Reacting furiously to her support of anti-Trump “No Kings” protests last week, Republican commenters claimed she is the “closest thing we have to a modern-day monarch”, having served as an elected politician since 1987."
