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chatThe dude has literally dozens of easily discoverable quote-bites of him excitedly expressing how much he loves killing, can't get enough of it, wants to get back to doing it asap. How does he pass any smell test at all for anybody who is nominally on the left? I just don't get it, I feel like he should be seen as so rotten that touching him would taint you (looking at popular youtubers and twitch personalities).
(looking at popular youtubers and twitch personalities).
Why is everyone smelling bad? (Staring at pile of shit)
The dude has literally dozens of easily discoverable quote-bites of him excitedly expressing how much he loves killing, can't get enough of it, wants to get back to doing it asap.
Have you met Americans?
You're not thinking like a lib.
He is The Candidate, which means he is the Only Acceptable Choice. This is the most important and sacred truth about him. Anything else is either irrelevant or just an "attack" on him by the Unbelievers.
he appears to speak in the idiom of his potential constituents.
there's no shortage of support for out-and-out fascists in america, so i really don't buy this fluffed up consternation about not passing a "smell test"; if he were a fascist presumably there would be a world for him in or out of government. what matters is winning: if his experiences are necessary to give authenticity to a voiced/live anti-imperial project, so be it. God is enough to judge him.
There is huge demand for any kind of left-wing populism. Platner appeals to that.
Maine’s elderly democrats despised bernie but they adore platner even though their platforms are the same. The corporate media also has ~~endless positive~~ coverage of platner while they only ignored or denigrated bernie. It’s extremely sus. And I don’t think it’s just because platner fits everything that the average American voter wants (veteran, business owner, blue collar worker, progressive).
I don't live in Maine or know much about Graham Plattenkopf but doesn't the DNC mostly support his establishment opponent?
“Plattenkopf” sounds absurdly funny in German.
She dropped out a week or two ago after running a suspiciously incompetent campaign.
suspiciously incompetent
She's a Democrat, running incompetent campaigns is their strong suit. Kamala Harris had the presidential position dropped into her lap and threw the race because she couldn't lie about attempting to make peoples lives better or stopping genocide. And the party is having a conversation about running her again, this is normal party politics.
Since more than likely he's gonna win, I'm waiting to see what he actually does after. If he ends up being another Fetterman or whatever, oh well that sucks, but maybe he won't be?
As with many things lately, the bar has pierced the earth's mantle
He has extremely weak competition, he's a very good speaker who says the right things, and Trump has lowered the bar enough that it's easier to survive scandals that used to doom political careers.
Also worth noting that Maine is a bit, quirky when it comes to electoral politics. They seem to get off on electing people that are a giant ball of contradictions.
The talent pool up there is pretty shallow and anyone running for public office is immediately suspect. The good ol' boy network is thick as thieves. Like a woke South Carolina.
A healthy dose of DNC astroturfing helps too
The DNC does NOT like him at all wtf are you talking about? They would much rather Janet Mills be the democratic candidate.
I am once again posting my conspiracy theory which has no evidence that the mills campaign was fake and only meant to make it seem as though they didn’t want platner to win. The corporate media has been guzzling platner’s — HARD since he entered the race. His half brother has been photographed with the president of the entity. They want him to win, although they’re also pretty happy with collins.
Source will have to be "trust me bro" on this but she grabbed her bag and quit as soon as she got it. She was never going to win and never intended to. It was a personal favor to someone who wanted her to run.
That doesn't really fit with what I've seen?
Looking through the news now, it looks like the coverage of platner is either neutral or somewhat negative but not like viciously hostile. I can’t find it now of course but I swear to god my extremely bourgeois firefox recommended news items had a very Biden-esque headline a few weeks ago which read something like “Platner wants to do [X Good Thing].” After I saw that I assumed that they adored him, but I may have jumped the gun.
I think they're at least fine with him if they're not actively colluding with him. The "establishment" campaign against him was pathetic and they've fully transferred their support behind him after Mills dropped out even though the primary isn't even over yet.
And why wouldn't they be? He's clearly a petty bourgeois nationalist and stupid. He'll be very easy to keep in line.
The DNC does NOT like him at all wtf are you talking about?
They don't? All I ever hear about this chode from mainstream sources is how the totenkopf tattoo is a nothingburger and he just did a few lil wholesome chungus warcrimerinos and it's not that big of a deal. Dems (at least on the national level; can't speak to the Maine state-level apparatus) have proven in the past that they can and will ratfuck any candidate at any time, so I guess I assumed Mills just pissed someone off and this is how they're getting rid of her.
A cursory glance at mainstream media seems to show them being annoyed at his success, while the outlets playing down things like the tattoo the most are places like Jacobin
I mean, a deaths head tattoo turned out to not really be that big a deal for some 'leftists' so, with as little snark as I can muster, what does anyone expect?
Leftists in the US are mostly a joke. I include myself in that grouping so
The US media class are all nazis. The only thing they love more than promoting other nazis, is promoting nazis and pretending that they are somehow not nazis and that any critic must just want trump to win or whatever their current gaslighting script is.
There are sort of two lefts in Maine. The "populists" which have deep Trotskyist roots but are more like Greens (and the AFL), then the Marxist left which is much smaller and mostly Trotskyist ultras and two small MLish groups. The former have deep ties to the Bernie network (which is why he's gotten so much national coverage) and are all in for Platner. The latter might be quietly supportive of Platner but notably haven't endorsed him.
It turns out killing and loving killing are very popular with the electorate
I've been reading Ken Klippenstein about this and the dems just keep finding the oldest, most compromised people to run against him
Most people in Maine who are "Left" are more "I want government benefits, but I do not give a shit how many people must suffer for me to have them" types
You know, like most Democrats
Maine is a bluish purple state but it is extremely old and white.
Been up there a few times, mostly around Portland and Kittery
That's absolutely right
Friend's parents used to live up there too, moved away when they found out their neighbor was in the Klan
The entire state was in the klan 100 years ago. Multiple governors in the 1920s were klan governors. Any white mainer whose family has been here for 100 years is almost certainly related to klan members. The political divide here is: elderly white liberals, young and elderly nazis, and like 5 communists. Non-white friends who visited me here were freaked out by how white it is. I can’t fucking stand it (although it’s beautiful) but I’m fucking trapped here.
Go north of Augusta and there's fascists holding up banners in broad daylight on a regular basis. Esoteric neo-nazis building compounds in the woods. Real northern Idaho vibes past there. I spent a few weeks in Calais and it's suffocatingly Anglo there. All of northern New England is but Maine is something else. Extremely racist in ways I didn't know still existed.
Graham Platner is a perfect exemplar of the half of the boat dealership class that isn't - I don't even know how to put it. They're not sending their best.
Kinda this but not really
2 John 2 Fetterman
Death to Amerikkka
If you look at everything about the senate race outside of Platner being a blackwater mercenary it makes a lots of sense. The more the Democratic establishment tries to fight him the more popular he gets. People are overlooking his nazi past because the DNC called him a nazi, and even the average liberal is finally on the "fuck the DNC" bandwagon.
Like I'm not from Maine but I bet if you pointed out that Platner is/was a Nazi to a Platner stan they'd just write you off as a DNC shill and start making jokes about how you much you love pel grant recipients.
I live in maine and so far the only left-leaning people I know who don’t like platner are the ones who aren’t white. Conservatives and Marxists are the ones talking about his nazism while liberals are embracing it. My youtube ads have been nothing but platner’s comments on nazism and r— for weeks now. I assume that the tv maine’s old folks watch (so like 90% of mainers) is also packed with this shit.
So are the libs overlooking his past and saying "he's changed" or are they thinking its cool he was blackwater?
1.) Do you have links to these quotes? Not that it will change point 2, but worth seeing the full context of what you are referring to exactly.
2.) I have heard from him directly explaining his sketchy past quotes on reddit about being damaged mentally when he came back from the middle east and didn't get better until he rediscovered community, began working with his local ecosystem and going to therapy. Of course he could be lying and saying what needs to be said, but there is literally no way to know that, given he has no actual political background to go on. So people desperate for actual political change are willing to take a gamble on him and take him at his word, since the policies and platform he is running on are what people have been wanting for a long time. It's the same reason some nobody named Zohran Mamdani is now a highly popular mayor of NYC, despite his demonization by the entire establishment as a radical Muslim socialist who will destroy the city.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/12/05/graham-platner-maine-senate-collins-00677731
I “wanted to go to war as an infantryman. Which I did, and I enjoyed it immensely,” he wrote. “… actions taken in combat are morally reprehensible, period. Your job is to efficiently and brutally murder other human beings, and to sap their will to fight,”
https://nypost.com/2026/04/06/us-news/anti-war-candidate-graham-platner-once-defended-urinating-on-dead-taliban-called-war-the-most-enjoyable-experience/
“Wanted to have an adventure and kill some people,”
https://www.pressherald.com/2025/12/18/how-graham-platners-complicated-past-shapes-his-run-for-u-s-senate/
Any reservations Platner had about the Iraq War were gone by the time he arrived in the Middle East. In a letter to his mom dated early 2005, the 20-year-old wrote that the U.S. is “doing an amazing thing,” and “I love it here.”
These are just a few I found in 10 minutes of looking.
The thing to me is, present day Platner contradicts everything that past-day Platner had said. By his account, everything he's ever said or done was just "fucking around". He claims he didn't know what the Totenkompf was, when until he decided to run for Senate, war was HIS JAM, and he's highly knowledgeable about it. This all stinks to me of an operator that, at the very least, isn't trustworthy, all other factors be damned.
Again though, he has explained his mental state at the time of making those statements. There is no way to prove one way or another whether he is telling the truth, but looking at his arc, saying he was supporting Bernie in 2016, starting shellfish farming and community organizing, it does look like he made a real change. Of course that is what an "operator", as you put it, would look like, but the general logic of it does seem to at least be consistent. You are welcome to be skeptical, but you are not everyone, and clearly others are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I guess time will tell.
I'm still skeptical, but I appreciate the other perspective.
Someone who wants to commit homicide is objectively better than someone who is actively enabling genocide, and the democrats have trained their cattle to always pick the lesser evil. Yes, the bar is actually that low.
Honestly I have no strong feeling about Plattner besides genuine curiosity about how many people here seem surprised at his existence and political success. I feel like I see a Plattner post a few times a week and have been kind of over it for a while, as if statesian "democracy" doesn't regularly produce much greater monsters daily.
i have a hard line against blackwater mercenaries and you should too
And they differ from the average statesian veteran how?
do you not know what blackwater is or are you just saying that being a troop at all is beyond the pale? the latter is correct but isn't how electoral politics works here.
signing up to a mercenary company so you can go murder more people with less regulation or oversight because the regular military doesn't want you back is worse than just being a troop.
do you not know what blackwater is or are you just saying that being a troop at all is beyond the pale?
It's the latter for me, but again there's so many veterans in congress that to me he's indistinguishable from any others. Sure, he went to join a mercenary company. Again, how is this distinguishable from being in the army or any other evil corporation?
the military has some pretense to it for conduct and rules of engagement, screening people dumb enough to get gang or nazi tattoos, etc. there's at least a little bit of a leash on them. the mercenary companies have none, and do more personal war crimes per-capita, with even less accountability (somehow)
there's no propaganda machine tricking naive children into working for blackwater. if you get a job there you know exactly what the game is and you're in for the love being up close and personal with the war crimes.
i would also grade troops on a scale of how many times they re-up. 1 is bad enough but more is worse.
You should have strong feelings about a man who volunteered to invade a foreign country and murder its people for cash.
But I don't. You just described like 20% of the US. These people are hardly uncommon and more are already in elected positions all over the country.
