most americans are historically (and politically) illiterate, so I don't think his take is incorrect
this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2026
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I think you can demand a little higher political literacy from someone running for office, whether you get it is another matter but it's hardly an excuse.
Def. I'm by no means telling people to vote for Platner (and neither is NJR).
But the comment is about the literacy of the voters.
so, why not run candidates on "we must secure the existence of our people"? will nathan j robinson take it as a sign that centrist democrats can now be defeated as well? the phrase is obscure and not known among wide public as well.
I don't think he's suggesting an electoral strategy.
he suggests amerikan innocence, right. they don't know (a) what military does (b) why it does it (c) why someone inside might get nazi tattoo as a celebration ritual
a neutral and accurate description of an american voter is not socdem dipshittery. this is the psychology of the average american voter. this is a fundamentally rightist nation at its core, especially in extremely white and rural parts of the country like maine. if the fancy lad made an excuse for this behavior in some way, then show that, but right now you're just complaining about the acknowledgement that the average american voter is still incredibly ignorant and reactionary. any socialist movement you imagine, whether it be vanguardist or anarchist, will have to contend with that. you are reading innocence into this, and you apparently need to figure out why you need him to end every statement analyzing the electorate with "and that's why electoralism is bad" so you understand that it's analysis.
Look at what has just happened in Maine, where insurgent left populist Graham Platner has driven incumbent governor Janet Mills from the state’s Senate primary.
Platner, an oyster farmer and populist with the backing of labor groups and Bernie Sanders, was up against a candidate hand-picked for the race by Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer. But by the end, Platner’s lead in the polls and in fundraising was so great that Mills decided not to even go through with the primary, since defeat was inevitable.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-democratic-establishment-can-be-defeated
as compared to: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/graham-platner-and-the-lefts-masculinity-crisis
would you get from the first piece any oppositional bent?
hey so you see how that's what you're actually talking about and not the tweet you posted? that's my point.
Those all seem like true statements as well.
Betting on the ignorance of the American public is always good odds, I think.
he's being an electoral pervert. i think he's just describing why something works with liberal conservatives and conservative liberals.
people like AOC and Platner are just part of a DNC consultant civil war and one should not expect much from them. or the electorate
Is he marking a normative claim or a descriptive one?
This seems an accurate interpretation of reality
Yeah, it reads as entirely descriptive to me, too.
I feel like this is the core of almost every struggle session here
Klemperer, a Jewish German, who survived because of his marriage to an ‘Aryan’ wife, records a conversation with a friendly stranger in 1943. When he observed that as a ‘non-Aryan’ restrictions were placed on his freedom of action, his interlocutor inquired without a trace of disingenuousness, ‘What is a non-Aryan?’¹
(Source.)
I feel like a lot of the time people say a thing and people take that statement of fact to be an endorsement of the fact stated and this really feels like one of those times. Like, what? I think they're 100% correct, do y'all not know how profoundly ignorant the average american is? they're not going to know what a totenkopf is if they can't even spell it
nobody is suggesting Americans are "innocent" when they say they were too ignorant and stupid to even recognize fascist iconography, they're saying it didn't affect the polls because people didn't even recognize it as such. Americans are fascist pigs so if they were wrong, the nazi tattoo would have increased his support or something, instead of having the impact of a wet fart.
Americans are fascist pigs so if they were wrong, the nazi tattoo would have increased his support or something,
Like he would be in the running if he was living of disability for other reasons than killing people overseas.
Yeah being A Troop gets the hogs to the polls. I imagine Maine is probably really bad for troop worship shit
I don't buy this. Turn on the discovery channel at any hour of the day and it's probably WWII programming, where you will see by osmosis the regalia of the third reich and most likely the death's head staring you right in the face.
Just because the information is AVAILABLE doesn't mean most Americans internalized it. I mean there are a lot of Americans who can't find their own country on a world map. This is the same country that refused to wear masks during a global pandemic.
I get where you're coming from that most americans are historically illiterate but I'm just pointing out that a lot of pop history about wwii had been out there for decades.
in my experience, americans recognize that the nazis had a skull and crossbones symbol but don't pick up on there being a particular nazi version that we know as the totenkopf. they don't necessarily see a totenkopf removed from the context of a nazi uniform in a wwii setting and recognize that it's a totenkopf and not just a pirate symbol.
Yeah for sure. I just think they guy in the tweet is 100% right that the average American saw that story and was like "A toten what now?" so it fell flat. If it had been a Swastika they'd have reacted very differently.
Exactly. Do these people want us to believe that this 40 year old man had the 2nd most recognisable nazi symbol tattoed on his chest for 20 years and never knew about it? For this to be the case all of the following needs to be true:
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Nobody in his life ever told him or asked any questions about it.
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He never tried researching what this symbol meant.
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He never watched a WW2 movie or a documentary film.
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He hasn't played any video games featuring the nazis.
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He hasn't... used the internet I guess? Never seen "are we the baddies" skit???
This story is 100% bullshit
Not disagreeing with your point, but I'd say it's 3rd after the swas and the SS bolts
I don't buy this.
Same, he was in the military, they teach people about extremist symbols in there, the skull is not just some random pirate skull or whatever, it's the third most well known neo-nazi/nazi symbol. He could have got literally any other tattoo, even a cringe US flag, but he decided on a Nazi one, and he wasn't a dumb teenager he was an adult.
the innocence of treatlerism must be protected at all costs and voting for career killer is natural outcome of that, i'm just a neutral observer from left wing magazine, and bear no responsibility for this, just calling balls and strikes.
If only there was some way to remove tattoos. Ah well, nevertheless
he had it covered after the scandal. the problem is he got it in the first place and had a decade+ to stop being a nazi
Also, the tattoo he covered it with is a Celtic knot and wolf
Which is very Nazi adjacent
"Obviously he was too ignorant and uneducated to know one of the most famous Nazi symbols in the world, so it's fine."
Cool opinion, fancy lad. I don't buy it for a second. US Marines are specifically educated on hate symbol identification. They recently had a training session that featured Pepe the Frog and 1488. You cannot tell me with a straight face that they don't know what a fucking death's head is.
So Graham Platner is one of three things:
- Ignorant to the point of negligence.
- An insubordinate troop.
- A Nazi.
Pick one, Western Liberals.
the average american is so incurious and uneducated that its possible more people who saw the skull tattoo thought he was a wannabe pirate than a nazi
Even if Americans were smart enough to identify and recognize Nazi symbols they wouldn't care. Americans are already George Bush-ifying Nazis and have been for many years
"obscure, unknown nazi symbol" and it is litterally most known nazi symbol after swastika
I think especially people on this site just need to realize they are massive outliers. Most Americans couldn't pass a 2nd grade history quiz. I'm not defending it but I think that it's 100% true to say that they had no idea what a totenkopf was. As for Platner himself I've got no idea. I don't support electoralism so certainly don't support him regardless. Don't think it matters if he knew or not. He's still a reactionary and every reactionary is just a bit of economic hardship away from being a fascist.
Literally, most Americans are not smarter than a 5th grader.
It's third after the SS bolts
I would say totenkopf is more popular than SS bolts but still they are very close
"The SS" is also the only way people outside of Germany remember the Schutzstaffel. Easier to remember and pronounce, after all.
The truth is that Americans yearn for the nazis and you can't change my mind.
America is the OG Nazi country so it only makes sense. Nazis had lebensraum, Americans had Manifest Destiny, the only differences are the cardinal direction they went and America completed their genocidal project
Maybe it was all the leftist influencers that usually posture as antifascists coming out to say that his Nazi tattoo and his mercenary career are no biggie.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
me, posting about mr platner and conspicuously shaking my head, so everyone on the leftist forum knows i don't agree with getting nazi tattoos
no, i'm posting about fancy lad running interference/pondering the neutral orb for this. again, would he post a similar thing if a republican won on the "we must secure the existence of our people"? after all, its a very niche slogan so it doesn't say anything about voters, party or state when such a thing happens?
difference being I don't think there are any registered Democratic primary voters who consider themselves Nazis and were voting for Platner because of the totenkopf
whereas I imagine that there are plenty of registered Republican voters who consider themselves Nazis who would vote for someone because they said the 14 words
I don't know about registered or consider themselves Nazis but look at some of the guys in the replies
my little prince obviously wouldn't because republicans wouldn't disclaim such associations, and because, republicans have a set of policy positions which are despicable, whereas platner has avowed righteous, anti-imperialist positions; and it is qua these policy positions, not qua his tattoos or his philandering, that he is attacked by the institutionalist media, and it's against that media that njr runs interference.
if Mainers found someone who wasn't a shithead, i'm sure njr would prefer it. if you ran in Maine and had the opportunity to be a voice for feeding the homeless in Maine and Gaza, i'm sure njr would prefer you, and would run interference for you as well.