50
Graham Plaᛏᛏner, skull enthusiast
(lemmy.ml)
me and my buddies getting skull tattoos #JustMarineThings
Also lets not forget his defense of SS rune tattoos
The rune enthusiasts that discussion is about
Anyone else notice the influx of anti-platner rhetoric the closer we get to elections?
The fact that liberals and conservatives are spending against him tells me what I need to know.
Huh? Libs are spending for him, he is being pushed by the consultancy firm "fight agency". The firm behind Fetterman. And you'll be hard pressed to find conservatives here.
Is it really so hard to believe that people just don't trust the former abu ghraib guard and blackwater mercenary that said he was in it for the love of killing, who got the insignia of the SS units staffing the nazi concentration camps tattooed on his chest? And then defended people getting SS bolt tattoos???
Got some sources for that? Cause I'm finding Fox News and idk if I trust that lol.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/platners-anti-corporate-crusade-hits-awkward-snag-receipts-tell-another-story
Liberals are most certainly against him with most of the hit pieces coming from DNC or Democrat backed articles. You've got establishment democrats that vote with republicans saying that he should be disqualified.
The Blackwater connection is documented and worth talking about. The tattoo is documented and worth talking about. The Reddit posts are documented and worth talking about. None of that is off the table. But "former Abu Ghraib guard who said he was in it for the love of killing" is a very specific claim and you should be able to source that independently of Fox News or DNC opposition research.
The tattoo was covered within 48 hours of him learning about the association. His former campaign director said he should have known given his military history background, which is a fair criticism. His Army background check apparently didn't flag it, which is either evidence he didn't know or evidence the system failed. Both are possible. Neither is a clean answer.
The Reddit posts are the harder thing to dismiss. PTSD and depression are real explanations but they're not automatic absolution, especially the sexual assault comments.
What I'm pushing back on is the pattern of concerns arriving in a coordinated way right before an election against someone who's running explicitly against the establishment and has Sanders backing. That's not saying the concerns aren't real but the timing and the sources matter and deserve the same scrutiny you're applying to him.
It sounds like you've not actually talked to anyone in real life. Go to Maine. Talk to the people. Listen to the platform. You can't let go of words for actions. You've been online too long.
Is it so hard to believe that someone who has experienced the disgust of our system can wake up to it? Isn't that the whole point? Or are you on the side that no one is redeemable and undesirables should be deported/executed?
the guy is a liberal himself so idk what you're saying here. As a reminder liberal -> believes in private ownership of the means of production, socialist -> believes in public ownership of the means of production and I haven't heard any democrat talk about seizing the means of production, the absolute core of any socialist movement. Certainly not Platner.
https://search.pullpush.io/?author=p-hustle&subreddit=usmc&type=comment&q=kill&sort_type=created_utc&sort=desc&before=1578009600&after=1577836800
he had that tattoo for 18 years. Did he never see an SS uniform in a movie or something? Did he never see a picture of a concentration camp guard? Pretty sure I'd recognise my tattooes if I had any. Here is him commenting under one such picture https://undelete.pullpush.io/r/CombatFootage/comments/auy0bi/_/ehbh3n6/?context=4
This exact skull is what SS deaths head units are named for, you know, the ones that were working the concentration camps? It's so well known that this is the skull the "are we the baddies" sketch is about. You can see it everywhere in pictures about the death camps. And this guy was frequenting military history subs.
Why do you think it's coordinated? It's pretty natural to scrutinise candidates before elections and that criticisms would become more frequent.
Also Sanders, the guy that voted for bombing yugoslavia is not really a socialist. Sanders who refused to call it a genocide for two years and when he finally did opened with "but hamas started it". Sanders who has not as much as uttered the words "means of production" in years now probably is not a socialist but a full on zionist. He's a lightning rod to diffuse leftists movements anyone who paid attention to the 2016 primaries saw that very clear.
Before you think I'm some Platner buff with a pocket full of links to rebuff everything, I got everything from 7 month old hexbear posts by searching for "platner" and checking "post title only". And they're all well sourced.
what actions? I'm not being snide, I don't know what actions you could mean here.
When it's all part of a political campaign then yes. If there is no grassroots organization outside of the dem establishment backing him then yes. If he gets endorsements from zionists like AOC, Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders, then yes.
I said it below somewhere, it would be so sad to see you yanks fall for it again but I believe you lot are desperate for any excuse to vote dem and not having to do any organizing work yourself and just latch on to it. I don't see any other explanation for the behavior I'm seeing from my POV.
Get organized and don't vote dem. They are pied pipers, it's a scam, you're gonna have to do the work yourself.
You're right that by strict definition there are no socialists in American electoral politics. I'd agree with that. And you're right that the Democratic Party has historically functioned as a pressure valve that absorbs leftist energy and converts it into votes for a system that doesn't fundamentally change. I've said that for years. I live in it after all. I've critiqued the protests that I've been a part of for gaining no concessions, no material clawbacks, etc. Believe me, I understand.
Where I'd push back on the liberal/socialist framing specifically: democratic socialism doesn't require the means of production language to be meaningful. It requires subordinating market mechanisms to democratic control in essential sectors. Platner calling out billionaires, opposing AI capital concentration, advocating for worker compensation reform, that's all functionally democratic socialist regardless of what label he applies to himself. Labels in American politics are chosen for electability, not ideological precision. Judging his politics by whether he uses the correct vocabulary rather than what he's actually proposing lets the framing do work the substance doesn't support. Democratic socialism is currently winning seats within America. And while not true socialism, it's far better than our current alternatives. Do I want to sieze the means of production and allow workers to be under democratic employ and control as opposed to our authoritarian employers? Fucking absolutely. But I don't see those candidates yet, nor have I gotten the call that the revolution is beginning.
On the kill comment: that's documented and I'm not going to pretend it isn't. Veteran gallows humor is real but "wanted to kill some people" as a stated enlistment motivation is a thing he wrote publicly. It sits alongside the other documented posts and I take it seriously. The redemption framing requires accounting for that directly, not around it.
On Sanders: entirely fair. Yugoslavia, the genocide timeline, the 2016 pressure valve dynamic. I'm not going to defend his record on those. I share those criticisms.
But here's where your argument hits its ceiling for me. You're analyzing this from outside the system that has to live with the outcome. The people who lose Medicaid if Collins wins another term aren't losing it as an abstraction. They're losing it this year. And their lives possibly shortly after. The critique that electoralism without organizing reproduces the conditions it claims to oppose is analytically correct. It doesn't tell the person losing their healthcare coverage what to do while the revolution matures though. Besides, I guess, starve? One of the things I have been pleading with the protest organizers is to use that energy to build alternatives to capitalism. It's only been...marginally effective. Community pantries, gardens, skill share groups, etc. Small and hyper-local and completely unequipped to handle what a general strike or anything if the sort could bring. Those of us who can are trying our best to break out if the system from within, however, the system has deregulated, defunded, diminished, stressed, dumbed down, and exhausted most of is to our breaking points.
Platner versus Collins isn't a choice between socialism and capitalism. It's a harm reduction calculation made under constraint in a system designed to offer exactly these kinds of choices. I'm not naive about what that means structurally. I'm making a judgment that incrementally less harm to real people is worth more than ideological consistency from the outside. We need people if we're going to have a revolution. If they're all sick and dying and starving...well. Unfortunately the conservative half of us has to experience pain themselves before they wake up and realize reality around them. And centrist libs are happy to tear down any attempt at mild leftist policies that could help people survive. So we have a while to go.
Leagues ahead of Collins isn't a ringing endorsement. It's just true.
Please read "state and revolution". Those candidates are not coming.
The entire globe has to live with the outcome of your elections. When this guy approves arm packages after arm packages for pissrael we'll think about the poor seppos that couldn't face the fact that their elections were a sham and who refused to learn from history or read any theory. Who came up with gallons of copium to check the blue boxes on their ballot. Oh also here is another perspective "on harm reduction" from within the settler empire.
Stop voting dems. They're a scam. Abortion rights fell under biden, because they didn't do anything. Literally nothing. Trump hit the ground running with the border camps thanks to the dems laying the ground work. There never was any meaningful student loan relief. The palestinian genocide went into overdrive with full-throated backing of the dems. Vote PSL. Organize with actual leftists. There is only one alternative to capitalism and the only way to get there is via a violent revolution that begins with you.
I've read State and Revolution. It's on my bookshelf. Lenin's point is exactly that electoral candidates aren't coming and I said as much. We agree there.
The global consequences point is fair. US foreign policy lands on people who don't vote in Maine. The US is the enemy of the world driven through systemic capitalist deregulation and consolidation. Gaza happened with full Democratic backing. It's a documented failure that I share your anger about. The harm reduction argument has real limits when the harm being reduced doesn't include the people bearing the worst of it.
The Indigenous Action piece I've also read previously. The settler colonial framework raises structural critiques that standard electoral calculus doesn't engage and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. Again, however, I live in this system. I'm incredibly frustrated, I'm watching my family have issues with healthcare and housing while my tax dollars get used to destabilize and bomb other countries. That's crystal fucking clear. But I'm not a billionaire, I don't have the capital to wage war against the controlling powers. I'm a single person who's attempting to build community and educate as many as possible. I can't fight a revolution on my own as much as media wants us to believe.
But here's where I get off the train. "A violent revolution that begins with you" is not a strategy. It's an endpoint dressed as one. Lenin also wrote extensively about material conditions, organizational capacity, and the specific historical conjuncture required for revolutionary success. The conditions that produced 1917 aren't the conditions of 2026 America. An atomized, exhausted, heavily surveiled population with no mass revolutionary organization, no dual power structures, and a state with the most sophisticated repressive apparatus in human history. Telling someone to begin the violent revolution is not serious theory. It's the left equivalent of "just vote harder."
On PSL, I'm genuinely open to that conversation. If the argument is build third party infrastructure, run candidates at local level, develop parallel institutions, grow organizational capacity over a longer timeline, that's a real strategic position worth engaging. I've been pushing for exactly that kind of local organizing. I've been involved with several groups like WFP and DSA. It's just not what you said. Again, while we door knock, create pamphlets, etc, we do not have the capital to fight the overwhelming capital that chooses to silence us, that quells dissidence, that chooses to run articles about jerking off in a portapotty instead of insider trading scandals and holding the other candidates accountable.
What it sounds like you're arguing is a generalized argument against all Democrats, regardless of policy or position. And I get it, I'm angry at them too. I'm just angry at the establishment. And this is something that is currently under discussion by many of us. Given the distaste of the party by its base, is it better to take over the democratic party by running those on the left, using the democratic name recognition for voters? Or is it better to abandon the party altogether. In my opinion, given what I've lived through for decades, absorbing the party is the better method given our first-past-the-post system. 3rd parties are incredibly weak, and until we get things like RCV and seats filled with popular representation (or a full on revolution) we have to play the game. This is a yes, and situation. We vote for those on the left AND build towards a revolution. Attempting to have the candidate with the furthest left policy disqualified flies in the face of that and our current lived reality. I despise democrats, maybe even more than some here. The establishment dems, the neoliberals, are fascist supporters at best. So, at this exact moment, what's our choice? Because, unfortunately, a general strike still doesn't have the critical mass it needs yet, let alone a violent coup.
What you said was stop voting, read theory, and start a revolution. The first person that advice kills won't be a billionaire, it'll be my friends, my family, possibly even myself, who all lose the capital we've tied our survival to. And the revolution would die right there and then with us.