Politics
NEW: Far-Left Senate Candidate Called Himself A Communist, Espoused Violent Rhetoric In Unearthed Social Media Posts
Recently resurfaced social media posts have thrown a Bernie Sanders-backed Senate candidate’s campaign into disarray after he was caught espousing violent rhetoric and referring to himself as a communist.
Graham Platner, a U.S. Marine and Army veteran who is seeking to unseat longtime Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), posted on the far-left social media platform Reddit in 2018 that “all” police are bastards and called himself a “communist.”
In a separate post, the progressive Senate hopeful stated that if people “expect to fight fascism without a good semi-automatic rifle, they ought to do some reading of history.” In another comment, he said “an armed working class is a requirement for economic justice.”
Platner has been billed as a “rising star” on the progressive left
The posts, which were first reported on by CNN and Politico, were deleted shortly before Platner announced his Senate campaign back in August. Platner — an oyster farmer who progressives hope can help win back male and working class voters who have moved away from the Democratic Party in recent years — apologized for his posts in a video statement released Friday.
“As you’ve probably seen, there’s a story that’s broken about comments I made on Reddit in an earlier part of my life. As I read through them, I read things that I absolutely do not agree with, I read through and I see things that, words and statements that I abhor. I also see the trajectory of my life,” he said.
Platner went on to state that the posts were made shortly after he got out of the service in 2012, which he described as a volatile and dark time in his life, though some of the posts in question were made as recently as 2018.
“The infantry was a very male -dominated place. It’s a very masculine world. When I was in, women weren’t allowed in the infantry. It’s changed now, and that’s a good thing,” Platner went on to say. “But when I got out, I still had the crude humor, the dark feelings, the offensive language that really was a hallmark of the infantry when I was in it. I made comments that I’m not happy about, that I do not agree with, but they came from a time and place in my life.”
Despite his apology, the posts have already done damage to the Sanders-backed candidate’s Senate hopes, as his campaign political director announced her resignation on Friday. “These statements were not known to me when I agreed to join the campaign, and they are not words or values I can stand behind in a candidate for the United States Senate,” said former state lawmaker and veteran political operative Genevieve McDonald after the comments came to light.
In the wake of the assassination of prominent conservative activist and organizer Charlie Kirk, violent political rhetoric from Democrat candidates has been under the microscope. Democrats in Virginia are reeling from violent text messages from attorney general candidate Jay Jones, who fantasized about murdering his political opponents and their children in messages to a former colleague.
Jones’ comments have shifted the race from a lean Democrat contest to pure toss-up territory, while Democrat gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger has also suffered a dip in the polls since the scandal emerged.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), the political arm of the Senate GOP, responded to the latest round of violent threats in a statement Friday.
“Graham Platner is a communist who supports violence against Republicans to promote his radical agenda. These posts are not just him messing around on the internet as he is trying to claim, they paint a very dark picture of a candidate not fit for office,” NRSC Regional Press Secretary Samantha Cantrell
The messages emerged just days after soon to be term-limited Maine Governor Janet Mills formally announced her own Senate bid. Mills is the preferred candidate of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who sees her as the party’s best chance at defeating Collins, who is the only Republican senator up for re-election in a state carried by former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024.
