I was asked recently what I thought about Graham Platner and realized that I hadn't really formed an opinion about him.

I've not written anything about him, either on socials or on here, and it seems like the iron is rapidly cooling so I might as well have a strike.

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 ok to me.

I also knew him as someone who had what was unmistakably a tattoo of Nazi imagery on his body. To quote the poet Marsellus Wallace, that's "pretty fuckin' far from ok."

Despite not having an early take and not being super well read up, 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.

I'm not religious, but 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 ex-husband was David Duke. When outed as a white supremacist at university, Black was eventually deradicalized by what must have been a 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.

Maybe he didn't feel like he had to. I believe him when he says he did not secretly harbor any kind of Nazi adjacent ideology. 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.

But it always bothered me that I didn't believe his excuses. This isn't the kind of thing you hide. It only works as part of your narrative of failure and growth. It's a lapse in judgement that you can overcome, but you don't get to avoid talking about.

A lot of my friends on the left wanted to disqualify Platner immediately for the tattoo. There's space in my ideology for such people to redeem themselves, but I didn't see a ton of evidence that Platner had ever put in that work.

It's a nuanced difference, and one that isn't flattering to me in retrospect, but I'm still comfortable with my opinion. A lot of his detractors are triumphantly telling his supporters "This is what you get when you support a Nazi", but I don't think his sexual violence proves anything new about that story. I was never a supporter of Platner's, but I am not going to stop giving people a chance because other people failed to live up their redemption.

I 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.

People will say that it's only because his race or his politics that I would give him these allowances. I think these are interesting questions to ponder.

While I would personally extend the same reservation of judgement to a Black candidate with prior gang affiliation, I think it's clear that "the system" does not. This tends to be disqualifying, despite being arguably less toxic of a background.

Regarding his politics, I think this is true. Someone running credibly on a politics that I believe are ideologically opposed to white nationalism having a troubling past affiliation with that ideology troubles me less than a right winger who has been part of the militia movement but claims they've repented. I don't think this is weird; people on right of the political spectrum are relentless in calling progressive communists, even if they don't have any kind of extremist background. They do this for naked political advantage of course, but they also do this because they see a real ideological proximity there.

It's now clear that the urge to disqualify him was a good one. Not a shocker that lying about your Nazi tattoo is not a great indicator that there is 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, initially, this was in some part more muckraking to try and derail Platner.

Recent reporting suggests that the Democratic establishment 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 it 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. The same result seems 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.

But sexual violence against women is not a question of ideology.

The current President is as far away from Platner politically as is imaginable, and he's an adjudicated rapist. Justice Kavanaugh was as credibly accused of rape as is Platner, yet he sits on the bench and commands the support of the GOP. Investigations around Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz for the statutory rape of a 17 year old girl were already well known when he became a frontrunner in the race for Attourney General at the beginning of Trump's second term. Mark Foley, another Florida congressman, was chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children in the mid 2000s when his sexual exploitation of male pages as young as 16 was uncovered. None of these people have ever been punished aside from losing power and influence.

The Democrats have a similarly blotted ledger. Minnesota Senator Al Franken was compelled to resign from the Senate by Chuck Schumer after a slew of allegations of inappropriate contact mounted. Congressman Eric Swalwell was a leading California gubernatorial candidate until allegations of rape and sexual misconduct led to him losing his support and dropping out. Lest you think that only the GOP continues to support its sexual predators, Andrew Cuomo, who resigned the New York governorship under highly credible suspicions of sexual misconduct, was supported over Mamdani by the Democratic establishment, and maintained support among some Democrats even after losing the primary!

The vetting process doesn't always come up with good candidates. It doesn't always filter out problematic candidates. Mamdani came in from outside of the establishment, and he's turned out to be squeaky clean.

Platner did the same, and it turned out he was dirty. With some apologies to Steinbeck, this The Pearl was a monkey's paw all along. Throw it back into the sea.

Jul 7