Revisiting this article from Oct 2025 - You're Being Lied to About Graham Platner - a deep dive into his Reddit posts

[Nanjeanne]

So many times the Reddit comments that are shameful and which Platner has apologized for and discussed come up. And some people also have spent time saying that those comments are indicative of his total mindset and though they may have been from years past, the trajectory to where he is now is difficult to grasp. But Jacobin back in October did a thorough read and came up with a very different conclusion. It’s a long article but I hope it will be read. I am sure many won’t but for anyone that is interested in a fuller understanding, it’s a complex and fascinating read. Jacobin obtained the full archive of posts under Platner’s Reddit username, P-Hustle, which numbers more than 1,800 comments from July 2009 to November 2021

Reading through Platner’s many hundreds of anonymous comments, it’s hard to paint him as a secret white supremacist or far-right extremist of any kind. In fact, his posts more or less align with the persona he has presented to voters in the two months since he launched his campaign: a rough-around-the-edges military veteran and oyster farmer with a penchant for crude language and a passion for firearms and sustainable living who holds a variety of standard progressive views alongside some heterodox ones.

In post after post, Platner expressed disgust at both US troops’ mistreatment of Afghan civilians and Washington’s betrayal of their Afghan allies, whose resettlement in the United States he celebrated and felt should have been granted months earlier, with the security and immigration hurdles cleared once they were safely in the country. He bitterly criticized US atrocities during the war there and verbally smacked down users who apologized for soldiers accused of war crimes.

“Shooting innocent civilians for fun and stabbing wounded prisoners is simply disgusting and illegal activity that wouldn’t be condoned within a professional fighting unit,” he told one Donald Trump supporter seeming to excuse the actions of Eddie Gallagher, the Navy Seal accused of a litany of abuses in Afghanistan whom Trump pardoned in 2019. “So you can f*ck right off back to whatever disgusting little hole of cowardice and immaturity you crawled out of.”

When a Trump-loving GOP candidate said that African Americans commit more crime because they were raised in fatherless homes and that police only shoot a black person who “needs to be shot,” Platner called him a “racist motherf*cker.” When a fellow Hancock County resident defended the local sheriff for blocking an addiction recovery nonprofit from working with inmates because of its support for BLM, Platner told him, “F*ck off, racist.”

Needless to say, these are all deeply strange views for a white supremacist or fascist to express.

That’s because, as Platner made clear in dozens of comments over the span of years, he was not a right-winger. He was, rather, “a vegetable growing, psychedelics taking socialist,” as he explained in one 2020 thread, a two-time Bernie Sanders voter who had been “radicalized” by his years fighting foreign US wars, who liked folk singer Phil Ochs and left-wing media like the Michael Brooks Show, the Majority Report, and the Intercept, and who was both contemptuous of Trump and the threat he posed to American democracy, and alarmed at what he saw was an increasingly violent, armed far right that was emboldened by the president.

Lots more in the article that ends with this

But read in their totality, Platner’s posts paint a different picture of the candidate: someone who, far from a secret fascist, was openly and passionately opposed to fascism; who held a variety of typical progressive views even as he expressed himself in ways many liberals would regard as crass and offensive; who sympathizes with rural Americans despite being vehemently opposed to many of the candidates they vote for; and who was disillusioned with and radicalized against the system by US wars.

Platner, in other words, comes off as a flawed, complicated, and sometimes contradictory human being whose political views don’t always fit neatly into a box. In that, he resembles millions of Americans — including some of the exact voter demographics that American liberals say they want to win back, yet seemingly can’t help but vilify.

https://jacobin.com/2025/10/platner-maine-senate-reddit-media]

[gab13by13]

1. I support Democrats

[-misanthroptimist]

2. But...but...

...he had an objectionable tattoo! Clearly, it's better to select a candidate that will lose to Collins.

[Nanjeanne]

3. This really resonated with me

Several times, Platner, as a former service member who had completed four tours in two countries, used Reddit to give his much younger compatriots advice. “If sh*t is getting rough, talk to somebody,” he told one Marine posting about his struggles. “Military OneSource, a civvie therapist, whatever. But don’t bottle that sh*t up.”

He advised them on how to successfully navigate their VA entitlements, urging them to file claims and compile evidence before their health took a catastrophic turn, and how to claim for injuries that had developed after their military service.

“It doesn’t make you a leech or a pussy,” Platner told users of a subreddit for US Marines. “This country pumped billions of dollars into the bank accounts of defense contractors, all on the backs of your suffering and sacrifice.”

[leftstreet]

4. +1

“It doesn’t make you a leech or a pussy,” Platner told users of a subreddit for US Marines. “This country pumped billions of dollars into the bank accounts of defense contractors, all on the backs of your suffering and sacrifice.”

[Arthur_Frain]

9. Thanks for this.

I’m an Alaskan, opposite side of the nation, and I really had no inkling what this was all about.

This kind of spelled it out.

[stopdiggin]

5. this is good to hear, but ....

The posts and positions you point to here - would never have gotten a nickel's worth of opprobrium from Democratic leaning voters in the first place. Everything listed here gets graded an A or A+. So ... Kinda' obvious that these things were not what were causing the "Oh no .. !" reactions arising in some quarters.

Other hand ... If the large preponderance of the man's online presence was .. unexceptional, and in fact fairly conventional .. that is also something that deserves airing and exposure.

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[Nanjeanne]

7. Not sure what you are saying exactly but why I posted it was because many people have been

suspicious of the guy who is now running a a Dem and talking about progressive things s if he is a secret something pretending to be something else. But for more than 10 years of posts it is obvious that’s not true. And THAT person is much more than the shameful few posts that get played over and over again that he has addressed. It is a much more interesting story and that man is the one that is connecting with Mainers.

[stopdiggin]

10. fair enough. And, to be honest - I had not really run across the arguments

that the man was being 'used' as a stalking horse, Manchurian candidate, political mole, what-have-you.
(We live in such a wacky conspiracy inclined milieu that I shouldn't be the slightest bit surprised - but my own thoughts have just never taken me there in regards to Platner. More on the order of, "what you see .. what you get ." )

[GoodRaisin]

6. It's easy to cherry pick a few past comments or occurences when trying to create and advance a

desired narrative. It’s another thing altogether when there is a volume of work that accompanies it. Thanks for sharing.

[Nanjeanne]

8. This is interesting for the Nazi to say back in 2021

In April 2021, he fretted about the presence of American neo-Nazi group NSC-131 in the northeastern United States and rebuked other users for claiming its members were simply disingenuous trolls. “The energy these subreddits are putting into glossing over the fact we have organized Nazis in New England is pretty godd*mn concerning,” he wrote.

Months earlier, he chastised a user of a subreddit devoted to military gear for posting a picture of a tactical vest branded with the letters “AKP,” which Platner took as a reference to the Islamist party of Turkey’s authoritarian ruler, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. “Is this a f*cking joke? AKP patches just fly around here?” he wrote. “I’ll make sure to post kit with swastikas and then say ‘hey bro, it’s just gear’.”

[Uncle Joe]

11. Kicked and recommended

Thanks for the thread Nanjeanne

[Sneederbunk]

12. Mainers will decide.

[Bumbles]

13. I voted early for Graham.

Early on I worried he was another Fetterman. No longer. Nanjeanne, thanks for affirming my decision.