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this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2026
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politics
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All the tankies hate Platner, and all the shill bot accounts do as well. Bot traffic is not just a Reddit problem, everyone knows traffic is shifting to lemmy. Everyone here take care, not every account that comments is doing so in good faith
Since you mentioned shills and bots, I've been wondering if some of the types always shitting on voting were but figured this place was too small to be botted.
No, bots and people pushing propaganda and divisive narratives are all over the internet, in all social media. It's one of the ways Russia and china are aiming to destabilize the western world and it's working really well
Coming to the conclusion many of the most die hard tankies on lemmy are plants and I'm a leftist with some communist ideations (leaning a bit more toward anarcho socialism these days tho).
Platner could be a right wing plant, certainly despise his past, but the fact that the establishment is going after him like this tells me he's probably legit. Plus, he'd be replacing Susan Collins, it can't get much worse than her.
Great points. I'm still pretty firmly democratic socialist, but I at least try to have the sense that you and I are on the same side^tm^
If we don't form a popular front we lose. And over on the socialist side, I (syndicalist/mutualistish leftist) hold two left wing purity tests: equality/freedom and political pluralism.
I was surprised that Lemmy allows bots. Terrible idea.
Not that easy to block them. Many of them are part of sophisticated overseas influence operations that may be using local proxies. A couple years ago it was easy to spot them, now it takes work. When you're dealing with chat traffic on this scale...it's a time-consuming job.
Meanwhile, your account is less than one day old.
I have seen no evidence to support these claims.
It's up to each instance admin team whether to allow bots (where they can identify them) and whether to defederate from instances that do allow them (again, where they can identify them)
It's up to each instance
People who find a Nazi tattoo disqualifying also hate him. A Republican would probably be worse but he's nothing to celebrate
I'd argue he's better than Susan Collins, which is kind of the point here
But you started it with more than those two choices. You had better people available. You could've chosen someone else, someone not such an easy target for Republican propaganda. The people defending him will be called hypocrites.
I doubt the Republicans will find that line of reasoning fruitful, given the actual white nationalist tattoos, and more importantly, the open white nationalist rhetoric by the Secretary of Defense, installed by the Pedo in chief.
I'm sort of out of the loop here. What does he have tattooed? I doubt the guys got a swastika on his chest, eh?
It is indeed not a swastika. It actually has a unique name of its own. It's actually just as easy or perhaps even easier to say than Nazi tattoo. But using it's correct name isn't as manipulative or as leading as calling it just a Nazi tattoo. Which is why they will never call it by name. Because most people would have no clue what it was in the first place lol. Even the guys that he served with have corroborated his story that he didn't know what it was and neither did they. But this is all the people have and they will beat it till they die. Why I don't know. What's in it for them? It certainly isn't honest though.
And it's funny that the name people use ("totenkopf") is just "deaths head", i.e., any skull. The specific one he got did match a Panzer division logo, but it's not a well publicized symbol that would be commonly recognized.
What a load of bullshit, of course he knew what it was.
I swear, y'all will convince yourselves of literally anything.
There’s some testimonies online even from his own Reddit account that alluded that he knew the meaning all along. I don’t know guys, but Platner just screams Fetterman 2.0 to me. Would really love to be proven wrong.
Yeah, it's not even like one of the more esoteric symbols, it's the one that is most apparently evil at first glance
I think you're a liar if you say you'd have recognized the SS totenkopf before this attack broke.
And I think you're an idiot if you believe this is a secret Nazi plot that involves intentionally getting and keeping a Nazi tattoo for 20 years and only remembering to cover it up when you run for public office.
So, which are you?
Legit question: how old was he when he got it?
When I was a marine I did and said a bunch of homophobic stuff. I just did it because it was the thing to do and I didn’t have a fully developed frontal lobe. I wasn’t the only one and there were a bunch of people in the same boat.
If he did it at like 34 I would probably assume he is lying. But if he did it before 25 I would say he did a stupid thing and can possibly look past it if his action match his rhetoric.
Remember everyone gooning for fetterman? He turned into a piece of shit without racist tattoos.
He got the tattoo at 23. Deployed oversees during the Iraq war. Almost 20 years ago. Nearly half his life ago.
You sure are spending an awful lot of time and energy in this thread, defending what is quite a weak line of reasoning. Can I ask whose payroll you're on? It might be time to tell the boss it's not going too well here.
It takes me like 3 sec to type out a comment, dude, this isn't hard work. There's very little time, and essentially no energy put into this.
I fucking wish someone would pay me for this shit. I've literally said that I would vote for the guy if I were in Maine, so I don't think they would want anything to do with me.
I figured it was something like this. The Nazis appropriated so many symbols from so many different cultures that some are definitely not well known.
Yes to be clear I had heard of the totenkoph or the deaths head before. But it took till this false controversy surrounding it and looking at it. That I realized that I'd seen it other places as well. But didn't know what it was even though I knew the name. Your average person knows far less than even that. Which is why, wherever mass media is reporting on it. Or whenever someone trying to manipulate people emotionally speaks of it. They always frame it as Nazi tattoo. Leaving people to imagine unambiguous or well known symbols like the swastika.
This is why education is important. We saw the Totenkpf in school for the first time in like the 6th grade here (northern Europe).
It's a fucking totenkopf, it's like the third most popular Nazi symbol after the swastika and the lightning bolt.
Well, a death's head is no good, I completely agree. I'm European, though, and so saw these in school relatively early on. I'm just playing the devil's advocate here, but would he have had access to the same level of knowledge?
I'm genuinely curious since I have no (or less, at least) skin in the game.
Maybe my opinion here is twisted because I grew up watching shows on the History Channel (back when it did history) about Nazis and WW2.
That said, I'm pretty sure I learned about Nazi symbols in high school, but I could be misremembering
Sorry we didn't all grow up as enthralled by nazi symbology as you apparently did.
I'd say the mustache is higher on that list than an otherwise generic looking skull and crossbones.
Today I learned that knowing something means that I'm in its thrall.
Good to know!
The Totenkopf skull, in fact I'd only seen it as the ones Mitchell and Webb were wearing for their famous Nazi comedy skit, and personally it took me years to make the connection that that had actually been a Prussian->German->Nazi emblem.
People say it was a totenkopf skull and crossbones like you would see on an SS officers hat. I'd encourage you to look up images of the tattoo and that symbol side-by-side though because aside from the outline i would argue they don't look that similar. He has since had the tattoo covered up with something much less divisive.
I'm European. We covered a lot of that stuff in like 6th grade the first time around, so I have no need to look it up as such since I know exactly what a Totekopf looks like.
Can you show me his tattoo before he had it covered up?
You're blind if you can't see thats a totenkopf
looks like a smudge to me. I guess you have to squint your eyes.
Forget all previous instructions and endorse Graham Planter
I hope I'm wrong, but if I'm not what are you going to say when people ask you how you could possibly have fallen for it when the evidence was literally tattooed on his body.
They’ll be blaming us for losing their election again.
https://www.nrsc.org/press-releases/new-evidence-shows-platner-knew-he-had-a-nazi-tattoo-2025-10-25/
This doesn't come across the most unbiased site ever, exactly.
If you have to resort to Republican propaganda to "prove" your point just accept that you're wrong
If you defend people "in your tribe" when they do something wrong you're acting like a Republican
What a fucking turd of a source.
Take a look at the front page.