I think this is an excellent post and sums up my feelings well. I doubt he’ll be a great Senator, but he’s going to be our nominee, and any Democrats who don’t like it can try to come up with someone better than Janet Mills in the 2032 primary.
Interestingly, I ran across Stew Peters just a few minutes ago on a different podcast. Not in a positive way.
I’ve been listening to Search Engine a lot, which is basically long-form journalism about a different topic each episode. This one was “The Obituary”:
It’s about a particularly monstrous aspect of the antivax movement, based on a belief that the Covid vaccine is a bioweapon engineered by The Elites to reduce world population. Adherents of this conspiracy theory like to search for obituaries containing phrases like “died suddenly” and harass the bereaved.
Wanna guess who one of the boosters of this theory is? Who also shills for “J-proof Crypto”, and you’ll never guess what the J stands for? It’s our pal Stewy.
Platner really really needs to pay attention. He needs to not say he’s a fan of white supremacist podcasts when he’s never listened to them. He needs to not retweet people just because they say one reasonable thing. I hope there’s somebody smacking his hand with a ruler and telling him to fucking think before he opens his mouth or Internet browser.
But none of it adds up to deliberate antisemitism or white supremacy or fascism, as far as I can tell. It’s just really, really sloppy and foolish.
Yeah, that’s where i am coming down, too
I still think these apparent dumb mistakes are awfully coincidental - if he only had a nazi tattoo or only said he was a fan of a nazi once itd be one thing.
People seem incredulous that Platner could actually be a nazi with all his other views, which makes sense, but this is just giving people way too much credit for ideological coherence.
ETA: I know very little about Stew Peters but based on this thread, if we put aside the antisemitism, I don’t think he’s appealing to planter because he says one reasonable thing. I think he sometimes says one populist conspiracy-adjacent thing that appeals to people’s general sense of being wronged by elites but isn’t specific enough to actually be some insane thing like chemtrails or something actually reasonable.
I see that–but what’s missing, for me, is any direct evidence of Nazi views. Nazis tend to say Nazi shit, not just do Nazi-adjacent shit. They don’t repudiate their Nazi-adjacent shit; they’re proud of it. Building a case that’s someone’s a Nazi without having evidence of them holding Nazi beliefs results in an unsupportable case, IMO.
How do you possibly know that this is what happened, as opposed to him saying that he’s a fan of a white supremacist podcast specifically because he has in fact been a long time listener? Why would he lie about that?
Yes, he’s probably not a nazi like that.
It’s more likely he has some vague conspiratorial views that align with Nazi or similar ideology while also thinking that lgbt people should have rights and unions are good.
There are tons of people like this who compartmentalize their views to the point where you might never know. Think about it in terms of other forms of racism. Tons of anti-immigrant sentiment taps into fears that Muslims or Mexicans or whoever are trying to destroy American culture from the inside - and it works on people who otherwise would never view themselves as racist. There are actually people who get scared seeing people waving Mexican flags at protests in the US who would never support race science or anything else you would view as American-style white supremacy.
Of course we don’t actually know and if we were in a courtroom I would say none of the evidence against Platner is definitive. But we aren’t in court and ca make judgements about this.
Okay–but what specific “vague conspiratorial views” has he expressed? I’ve read him railing against billionaires for hoarding wealth, but that’s not conspiratorial, that’s definitional. Are there specific quotes showing these beliefs?
If you just keep calling it a white supremacist podcast enough maybe it will become true.
You’re welcome to take that up with @Left_Hand_of_Dorkness, who I was quoting there.
Maybe you just don’t think that these are white supremacist views?
A clarification: Stew Peters was the guy whose Tweet Platner retweeted and then deleted. The podcast he went on was a different podcast, and I’ve not got any additional information about that podcast.
Why would a politician start off an interview by flattering the interviewer? You’re actually posing that as a serious question? Next you’ll be accusing him of campaigning at a donut shop and falsely claiming to have enjoyed the donuts. His mistake there was in going on the podcast at all, not by opening the interview with a bog standard platitude.
The idea that Platner is definitely a liar about his core political beliefs, but is definitely telling the truth when he gives generic compliment to a podcaster whose listeners he’s hoping to win to his side, is a bit confusing to me.
Who on Earth said this?
The only things I think he lied about are his sympathy for Nazi style conspiracy theories about cabals of elites controlling the world, and not knowing the origin of his tattoo.
You can be left wing, even progressive on some issues, and still believe nonsense like that. And align with Nazis as a result.
You? I mean, you’ve flat-out stated “He’s a Nazi,” repeatedly. Platner says opposing racism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia are part of his core political beliefs, so either you’re accusing him of lying about that, or you think someone can be a Nazi while not being a racist, anti-Semite, or homophobe.
Someone can believe in the Nazi conspiracy of international jewery controlling the world while being a progressive in other ways. Maybe you take issue with referring to such a person as a Nazi, even if they get a Nazi symbol tattooed onto their body; I’m fully comfortable calling them a Nazi.
I just found this line on a Substack I know nothing about, and I just had to quote it.
I like to imagine Graham Platner came into existence around this time last year after someone wished for a Democrat that didn’t have any credentials tainted by support for Zionism, after which, the finger on a monkey’s paw curled
Didn’t you learn anything from Platner’s experience? Now you’ll find out it was a Nazi substack and no one will believe you when you say you didn’t know at the time you quoted them 
A lesson we can probably learn whether Platner holds these views or not
Do you think someone can be a Nazi and also be opposed to racism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia?
The same way that you can be a Mexican Nazi like Nick Fuentes, sure. People hold contradictory positions all the time.
And when someone says they are “against anti-semitism”, are they against anti-semitism, or are they for using criticism of their Anti-Semitic opponents when convenient but also happy to engage in it when it suits them?