Graham Platner’s campaign said the Senate candidate had no idea he had accidentally reposted a comment on X from a Holocaust-denying antisemite.
I suspect there is a giant sign in the campaign headquarters of Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner that counts the number of days since the candidate has been connected to the Nazis or antisemitism. Platner — who insists he is not a secret Nazi, and claims to be a military history buff — says he accidentally got a tattoo of the Totenkopf death’s head symbol of the Nazi SS, and never recognized it as a Nazi symbol for 18 years. Platner’s former political director tells a different version of the story.
Either way, that sign just got set back to zero.
Graham Platner, a far-left Senate candidate in Maine, amplified a social media post on Thursday from a far-right conspiracy theorist well-known for viciously antisemitic commentary — before quickly deleting the statement.
In a comment to X late Thursday morning, Platner approvingly boosted a remark from Stew Peters, an extremist radio host who has frequently promoted antisemitic tropes and engaged in Holocaust denial, calling a war with Iran “the only thing Republicans and Democrats have both given a standing ovation for.”
…The Anti-Defamation League has described Peters as a “prolific antisemite” who blames “‘the Jews’ for everything he believes is wrong with society,” while the Southern Poverty Law Center has said his radio show has “become a central hub for antisemitic and conspiratorial content.”
He has said Judaism is “satanic” and a “death cult,” promoted blood libels, called for a “final solution” to mass-deport American Jews and questioned the existence of gas chambers that exterminated Jews during the Holocaust, among other conspiratorial assertions.
Asked for comment, a Platner campaign spokesman, retired Army Sergeant Hans Schultz, stated, “For ze thousandth time, it vus just a ko-vinky-dink zat ze tweet vus from a Neo-Nazi, just like it vus a ko-vinky-dink zat ze tattoo un his chest vus ze Death’s Head Totenkopf symbol of ze Schutzstaffel! Lots of Volk accidentally do Neo-Nazi zings all ze time!”
Nah, I’m just kidding. The campaign claimed it was an oversight and that they had no idea that Peters was a raving antisemite.
But Platner is strangely enthusiastic about putting people onto trains.