I was asked recently what I thought about Graham Platner and realized that I hadn't really formed a conclusion about him.
I've not written anything about him, either on socials or on here, and it seems like the time to strike that iron is probably running out.
I live in New York, and Platner is running for office in Maine, so while his campaign has made a lot of noise nationally, I've not really paid it much attention.
I know him vaguely as an outsider candidate with a general left-populist message who was disturbing people in the democratic establishment. He seems to have the kind of magnetic charisma that attracts the kind of attention you need to win elections these days. He's trying to unseat Susan Collins. These things seem fine to me.
I also knew him as someone who had served in the marines and had what was unmistakably a tattoo of Nazi imagery on his body. Marines are fine, but the tattoo is pretty far from fine.
Despite not having an early take and not being super well read up on him, I have had thoughts about his story and the reaction to it for quite some time, and I still haven't seen these expressed too much, so I thought I'd share them.
Despite not being a religious, I do believe in redemption, even for something as sickening and damaging as white nationalism. It's a long old road to get there, but there are credible examples.
Christian Picciolini became a skinhead as a teenager in the 1980s, but later in life committed himself to working to dismantle the systems of hatred he found himself ensnared in. He helped cofound Life After Hate in 2011, an organization which performed outreach to people who were caught up in white supremacist movements. Life After Hate was funded by the outgoing Obama administration in 2017, only to be undermined by Seb Gorka's wife after Trump's first electoral victory.
Adrienne Black, born Derek Black, rolled a 1 and started out in life as the child of the founder of Nazi group Stormfront Don Black and his wife Chloe, whose was formerly married to David Duke. When outed as a white supremacist at university, Black was eventually deradicalized by what must have been an truly exceptionally patient and tolerant group of Jewish students. She's since come out as trans and written her memoir, "The Klansman's Son", a biography and refutation of her former white nationalist ideologies. She's done interviews and been invited to speak about her journey at holocaust museums.
I've seen a documentary on Christian and a talk by Adrienne, and they have traveled a path of ideological reconfiguration that is frankly astonishing. I find their stories, at least as far as I understand them, to be inspiring. I hope they continue to live up to the redemption they've earned and can inspire more people to come back from that brink.
From what I know about him, Platner didn't do the hard yards. He did not work for his secular absolution. He unconvincingly claimed that the tattoo's likeness to Nazi imagery was unintended, or that it was just japes from his time in the Marines, and had the tattoo covered up.
From everything I know about his writings and his political behavior prior to running for congress, which I will again stress is not much, I believe him when he says he did not secretly harbor any kind of Nazi adjacent ideology, but it was always troubling to me that I didn't believe the rest of his story.
Journalists found his old reddit account, which was clearly not maintained with a view for a future Senate run, and if there was ever anything that would out him as some kind of latent Nazi edgelord, that certainly would have done it.
A lot of my friends on the left wanted to disqualify Platner immediately for the tattoo. While I felt there was space in my ideology for such people to redeem themselves, I didn't see a ton of evidence that Platner had ever put in that work.
It's kind of a nuanced difference, and one that isn't flattering to me on retrospect, but I don't think this experience has changed my opinion. I am not going to stop giving people a chance because other people failed to live up to that opportunity.
I also have a bit of a soft spot for those who somehow emerge from a rough campaign of military service with politics to the left of Genghis Khan. Unlike the carousel of dorks and back-office SPC's we usually see going into government as Democrats, at least those not named Tammy, Platner was a Marine who saw combat in Fallujah. Like the river Somme, Fallujah's primary claim to fame is the brutality of the battle that was fought there.
There is an obvious throughline from the inhumanity of war toward leftist politics, but the prevalence of Black Rifle Coffee style fascist vet bros leads me to assume that the culture of our modern military makes this a difficult one to see. Sherman might have said "War's glory is all moonshine", but he didn't get the kind of sweet gear that our modern soldiers use to spray a volley of return fire vaguely in the direction of the enemy. Maybe if he had some flamethrowers with him on his march he wouldn't have tired of war to the same extent.
Platner coming through that crucible with what felt like genuine empathy and consciousness for the powerless makes me very sympathetic to him. We already fail our soldiers enough by fighting one pointless war after another.
Of course, it's now clear that the urge to disqualify him was a good one. Probably not a shocker that lying about your Nazi tattoo is not a great indicator that there's no more scandalous material in your background.
The accusations of sexual assault against Platner aren't new, but the amount of evidence and the credibility of the reporting is. Given the way that the center-left establish Democrats have attempted to undermine Mamdani's campaign and administration and have sworn to fight against the DSA after the recent run of positive primary results, it doesn't sound that crazy to think that some of this was more muckraking to try and derail Platner's campaign. Recent reporting suggests that they would have probably done the same to Platner himself, having urged another Democratic hopeful to not run against the nationally favored Janet Mills in the primary.
The new reporting is definitive, and his previous backers in the wider Democratic party are withdrawing their endorsements in droves. Everyone who supported him must admit that the signs were certainly there.
What now for Maine is anyone's guess. The last time the Democrats had to emergency audible away from a poisoned chalice didn't go so well, and they lost an election to someone who everyone temporarily forgot they hate, only to eventually remember again just 18 months later. Seems like the same result is likely here, too.
One unfortunate thing is certain. After a great performance by DSA, who is already being blamed for this despite not being affiliated with Platner, the Democratic establishment will do what they do with every embarrassing defeat and blame the left. It has to be said that there's slightly more credibility to that charge this time around.
With some apologies to Steinbeck, this The Pearl was a monkey's paw all along. Throw it back into the sea.