will they be brave enuff to leave them as a monument 
(#jacobin David Sirota, Branko Marcetic and Ben Burghis)
text collection of bylines
Graham Platner Could Be the Bellwether of a New US Populism
Graham Platner has traversed a long and unlikely road to become the Democratic nominee for the US Senate in Maine. Can he beat longtime GOP incumbent Susan Collins and live up to the promise of his firebrand populist campaign? #sirota 30.05.26
You’re Being Lied to About Graham Platner
We read Graham Platner’s whole Reddit archive. The vilification of the Maine candidate for Senate doesn’t square with what he actually wrote in his posts. #marcetic 27.10.25
Why the Smears Against Graham Platner Didn’t Work
Opponents went all in on smearing Graham Platner as a Nazi based on a bad tattoo choice. It didn’t work. Maine voters decided they’d rather have universal health care and an end to reckless wars than a polished politician with an unblemished past. #burgis 07.05.26
Democrats Cynically Wield “Wokeness” Against Graham Platner
Establishment Democrats spent a full year complaining the Left forced them to be “woke.” But then a left populist, Graham Platner, threatened to win in Maine, so they went right back to trying to cancel someone over old internet posts. #marcetic 24.10.25
Judge Platner’s Character by How He Fights the Oligarchs
The fact that Graham Platner still holds a general election lead amid scandalous personal revelations should give us hope. Voters may be shifting to judge politicians more on their willingness to take on economic inequality and war than their private lives. #sirota 02.06.26
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Opponents went all in on smearing Graham Platner as a Nazi based on a bad tattoo choice.
It’s not a fucking Rick and Morty tattoo, Ben. This goes well past a “bad tattoo choice.”
It’s not a fucking Rick and Morty tattoo, Ben.
flawless, no notes
lmao of course it’s Ben Bourgeois
Doing the thing where they frame it in the vaguest terms possible because they know the details are extremely damning. It’s the equivalent of “this SNOWFLAKE got offended because I voiced a non-mainstream opinion” and then it turns out the “non-mainstream opinion” was some shit like Holocaust denial.
It’s not a fucking Rick and Morty tattoo, Ben. This goes well past a “bad tattoo choice.”
Sentences that feel like they were written by Guy Ritchie and would sound right at home being said in a cockney accent
This whole thing is deeply embarrassing for all those american
leftist commentators who supported this guy uncritically. Even if you assume that Platner is some kind of repentant leftist veteran (he’s not), shouldn’t you be more cautious about supporting him? This guy spent 20 years, half of his life, traveling oversees murdering people. He’s completely desensitised to violence, he likely puts very low value on human life, he has PTSD. Why would you think he’s just a normal guy without some really fucked up skeletons in his closet? Did you really have to defend this nutter with a nazi tattoo?military brainwashing is no joke and doesn’t just go away because you decide poor people should be allowed to live actually
it probably starts with recognizing that people outside the us are people too
The opportunist self-sustaining cycle of “americans don’t care about foreigners, so we can’t care too much about them either”, works with any radical topic really.
they think it makes it better that they actively uphold genocides just because they give thoughts and prayers
Yes and that’s too advanced for most liberals to grasp
I feel like it would be okay for a political official to have PTSD, there are lots of ways to get it. But yeah, the other factors are really bad.
Jerkoff emojis as scare quotes is pure fucking art.
if they really believed or cared that he was “repentant” they would have scrutinized his current views on the military, if only to win an internet argument about him.
Probably worth putting the word Jacobin here or the search feature will not find this when it’s needed later.
Also gonna mention David Sirota, Branko Marcetic and Ben Burghis
i’m leading protracted person’s war so that jacobin is referred to either as la jacobiña and el fedcobiño on the hexbear, depending on the current opportunism of the authors. *some might call this quixotic, but those people are haters
Removed by mod
R.I.P. (Removed by mod In Peace)
doesn’t matter, hexbear search is hot garbo
Wasn’t finding it before, is now.
I use the search feature all the time, it’s pretty ok unless you’re looking for longer search strings and then it finds 10million news megathreads.
i sometimes entertain the idea of hashtagging bad takes machines (jacobin, adl) for ease of search in the future, but then forget :( it’s a good point to mention
Probably not necessary given they haven’t removed say the about dozen articles in 2022 hyping Fetterman as the savior of the working class though maybe this is different.
Jacobin is never beating the social fascism allegations.
Stalin: Socialdemocracy is objectively moderate wing of fascism
Jacobin: takes it as praise
I mean, I doubt they’ll memorialize them but I also doubt they’ll take them down. This will make good study for the future about candidate vetting, inasmuch as it happened in the first place, but moreso for voter vetting of candidates.
For my part I was Plattner-skeptic-skeptical before today because I couldn’t see why we’d focus so much on him while liberals and conservatives who did much worse got away with murder (metaphorically and literally). Today presented us with strong evidence of a thing he himself likely did outside the influence of an organization. The bar was already extremely low and today he finally and irrefutably sank below it.
my beef as person outside of usa is that allegedly leftist influencers torching their cred on him, not him existing as political entity.
i don’t give a fuck that some usa state elects a nazi, that’s par for the course, their whole senate has been filled with people of this caliber, if not so hands-on. i care that dude that was giving off nazi vibes just by his history alone (nevermind sicko posts or tattoo or current and past sa allegations) somehow passes smell taste of allegedly leftist people (as exemplified by three different authors in fedcobin image in the post). it’s like they don’t talk to different people and can’t clock him in 5 minutes of surface research.
and what are they left with? morally naked, electorally compromised
*and two points for caring about it: (1) local politically plugged-in people are also fed by usa media empire and (2) shows the extent of solidarity usa will have with anyone outside (which is approaching nill, even for alleged leftists)
allegedly leftist influencers torching their cred on him, not him existing as political entity.
Maybe, I’m not sure that’ll happen. The leftist space in the states is relatively small and nascent and so can’t really afford to be as overly demanding. It’s also only relatively recently that it started to have this surge in popularity so I think it’s understood that there will be errors along the way. That’s not to say that said errors can be completely excused either, but there’ll be some forgiveness as the culture adapts as a whole.
Maybe, I’m not sure that’ll happen.
it already happened. Jacobin, Drop Site News, Bernie Sanders and all his associated PACS and organizations, the Squad, Hasan, Chapo Trap House, etc. all stuck their necks out covering for Platner and calling everything against him GOP smears and telling people to shut up and just vote for him if you’re in Maine. Sanders downplayed the nazi tattoo as nonsense, even using his status as a Jew in a statement to shield him. The entire “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party were all totally rallied behind him before this even happened.
For most normie libs, these “progressives” are “socialists” and “leftists”. It’s discrediting us by association if we don’t clearly distance ourselves from them, which we have been criticizing them the whole time that this sort of thing would happen and that he was toxic.
he already got away with murder multiple times for the military and for private mercs and you were letting him off the hook for it?
stop it, those were just brown people. this crime happened (MAYBE!!! ALLEGEDLY!!! women do be lying after all!!!) to a white person so it’s real
we should just be thankful he didn’t sign up with SA Incorporated beforehand, or else he’d be innocent again
SA Incorporated (blackwater)
I saw someone on Discord say “if it was just the Blackwater stuff it would be one thing”
They’re literally doing the meme
Also, isn’t it the same dude that has an actual nazi tattoo ? from long before today ?
Who in the military didn’t? That’s like 20% of the US. I don’t condone being in the US military, I just don’t see any reason to hold it against someone, especially the propaganda machine being what it is there. Unless you were raised on a commune or somewhere with a decent school system virtually no statesian knows any better fresh out of high school. And while Plattner didn’t fit this bill the recruiters usually predate on the most young and vulnerable communities for their meat.
The problem was that he never repented for his military service, and he served time and time again. This isn’t someone who bought into imperialist propaganda and served for a brief term, this is a war-lover who went back time and time again to keep killing. He loved killing people. It wasn’t just the propaganda. And again, he also never decried the US Armed Forces and his illegal wars, like someone such as Michael Prysner.
I just don’t see any reason to hold it against someone
the only way that can be true is if you do not believe people outside the U.S. are human beings
On the contrary, people everywhere are very capable of being monsters if indoctrinated from an early enough age. We can make jokes about Germans all day long but it’s not like they for instance are genetically predisposed to genocide, the Nazis built up a propaganda machine over years that hit at many sectors of the society. And despite this some of them still found their way out of it, though at different times.
Yeah but an important part of ceasing to be a monster is acknowledging your crimes. Something that Platner never did(or I am unaware of him doing, in reference to his murders. He’s actively denying the assault crimes)
I actually never bothered to look up his military record so I don’t even know that he ever actually killed anyone. Outside of the dialectics he was always irrelevant to me. Another aspect of him was always that he always struck me as all bluster and bravado, compared to the former military I’ve spoken to who tend to be much more reserved, possibly ashamed, about their actions with the military. This gave me the impression that he never actually saw combat based on my own preconceptions.
That said for whatever reasons those were mostly ignored by the media but the evidence for the SA charge is much stronger and more public than anything I’ve seen.
This is what Platner posted on reddit when they asked him why he joined the Marines:
He wasn’t just in the military, he went on to be a mercenary.
That’s like 20% of the US.
I’ve got bad news for you about the other 80% of Americans too
i’m being facetious, of course it’s not the case that 100% of US adults are irredeemably fascistic. But the number who are is certainly higher than 20%, and in the volunteer military the ratio will be far more fucked still since it’s self-selecting for chauvinists who care more about themselves and their college loans and Mustang payments than killing children or innocents.
I mean, a solid 5% have to have broken out of the propaganda at least, maybe even 10%.
young and vulnerable
Thank you I was trying to fins this to post it
Upvoted for an interesting article, will have to finish reading that later.
Who in the military didn’t? That’s like 20% of the US.
Unless you were raised on a commune or somewhere with a decent school system virtually no statesian knows any better fresh out of high school.
He enlisted to become a crayon eater for a reason. If he’s just someone who wanted to enlist for the GI Bill, why didn’t he enlist in the navy or the army then? They have lower physical requirements, so someone who enlisted in the marines purposely did so. Propaganda has marines going on epic adventures
committing warcrimeswhile sailors have gay jokes thrown at them for being stuck on a boat for too long.
no amount of vetting will ever fix the structual problem of putting the cart before the horse. The fundamental strategy of horse in back, cart in front, is flawed at its very core and will never work. You won’t find a magic horse that will make it work. Stop searching for magical horses, and start putting your affairs in order. First things first is to create a workers party who will lift up their own internal candidates for nomination, who are subject to party discipline and retraction.
Squishy electoralist leftists often think the critique we issue from their left is that their chosen candidates aren’t “pure” enough, so when they inevitable fail (like they always do) their supposition is that they need to go and get an even more pure magical horse this time. You fundamentally do not understand our critique of your entire method of politics and why your succ dem politics always ends up like it does in 100% of cases.
Until there is first a disciplined worker’s party from which candidates emerge, electoralism will be a pointless dead end and complete waste of resources because the uncoordinated newcomers will just be subsumed into the system or unable to do anything useful and just blocked out, that’s if they even had good intentions and weren’t just naked opportunists or feds like this guy. Even once you do have a disciplined socialist party, you can’t actually win total control via elections but it may be useful to run in them to gain influence, a foothold of power and to demonstrate the cheating nature of the establishment. A revolution will eventually be required.
And no, the DSA is not a party - nor do they require membership in it to endorse candidates and give resources to them, meaning that every single opportunist can easily grift off the resources of the DSA and there’s nothing the DSA can do to enforce any kind of discipline over them.
deleted by creator
Um more like the Girondin Magazine
trio of chapo friends
good lord lmao, glad i moved on from that years ago
at least brace, liz & YC stay winning
It’s all love.
