Progressive Politics

Not yet but I'm sure that's coming

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To me, just dealing with the Lemmy reaction to Platner, by far the most telling indication that the obedient Lemmy freakout about him was fake news was how focus-group-driven it seemed. There actually are reasons to criticize him that I could see a Lemmy-minded person seizing on. He was in the US military, for fuck's sake, he almost certainly shot a whole bunch of people in service of the American empire. Why the fuck weren't they screaming about that? And I'm sure there are things you could cherry-pick out of his Reddit history that would be sure problematic (the Jacobin article lists some of them, as well as some Reddit posts that partially exonerate him for having been in the US military at least in my opinion).

But anyway, it is none of that. Nothing along the lines of what the average Lemmy user seems to me like they would have as a reaction if you just surprised them on the street, described Graham Platner in 100 words, and then asked what his pros and cons were. It's all this focus group driven "Did you hear he had a SECRET NAZI TATTOO? Yeah I'm sure he just never noticed in all the years, just another lying politician pretending to be progressive like all the rest, he's as bad as Bernie, etc etc blah blah." It's the "tan suit" "invented the internet" "Bernie didn't call it a genocide" type of picking one objectively accurate fact that looks pretty bad if you light it from one very specific angle, and then banging it like a fucking snare drum relentlessly from that exact angle to try to attach it to whoever it is indelibly.

To me it is incredibly notable that it's all that second thing and none of that first thing.

There are some differences, but yeah, there's plenty in his background to suggest possible scumbag. We won't know til he's in, but I do take a little heart in the fact that the positions he's advocating for actually work against him getting elected, which suggests authenticity.

I think Susan Collins' campaign is probably doing some of the heavy lifting on this one.

For other audiences, they are claiming that his Reddit comments expose him as a secret communist.

It's exactly the same as Kamala Harris. To some audiences, she was a corporate tool who was going to sell us out to big business and make immigration worse because she loved ICE. To other audiences, she was a horrible communist who was going to kill business in America with her communism and believed in open borders. And they both bought it.

Fortunately, if Lemmy is any indication I think this kind of stuff is becoming less effective. One of the problems about Platner is that unlike Kamala Harris, he actually seems like he has genuine very good sincere things to say about what he wants to do, which makes a lot of this stuff kind of fall at the first hurdle. Hopefully.

I mean they've still got time to refine the strategy for a while, I'm sure they'll keep workshopping it.

You don't have to die! The article is right there to read. The lie is that he is a Nazi, the article has a bunch more explanation, but basically, there's no reason to think he is a Nazi and several compelling ones to think he is not (which the people who are doing the freakout about the tattoo are willfully ignoring).

People aren't actually saying he's a Nazi. Well, most of them aren't, some are. Most of them are just saying he has a Nazi-adjacent tattoo (which he does) and it's a HUGE problem (which, given his politics, it isn't.) They are carefully staying away from the question of whether the death's-head tattoo actually means he's a Nazi, because it has an answer which isn't the answer they want to portray.

I had to look up the Reddit comments and I can say they don't make me hate him. It reminds me of the musings of a edgy teenager.

I watched the video, but it is hard for me see the tattoo. I can't tell if it is a Totenkopf. The fact that he won't show a before and after picture is pretty sus.