The Dem with the Nazi tattoo

Readers of spiked, I have some very, very shocking news for you. Are you sitting down? Do you have your smelling salts handy?

Remember when American liberals, progressives and lefties yelled and screamed ‘BELIEVE ALL WOMEN’, incessantly, for about a million years?

You are not going to believe this but… they did not actually mean all women. Sorry, that was a misunderstanding. They meant ‘only women who are affiliated with, or working on behalf of, the Democratic Party agenda’. Hope this clears things up.

How else can you spin Graham Platner – the ‘humble’ 41-year-old oyster farmer who this week was selected as the Democratic senate candidate for Maine?

Platner, who will face longstanding Republican senator Susan Collins in November’s midterm elections, has some skeletons in his closet. He won in spite of an onslaught of accusations from women, alleging aggressive and dishonest behaviour going back years. These include a string of infidelities, claims of assault by one former partner and homophobic slurs. Oh, and one last thing: Platner has a Nazi tattoo on his chest. For the past 18 years, his right pectoral has been decorated with a Totenkopf – a symbol widely used by the SS, the Nazi regime’s elite guard.

Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator and folk hero for addled rich-kid Commies, summed up the vibe nicely: ‘Is he a saint? I guess not.’ That’s one way of putting it.

Look, accountability is for the other side, okay? Being true to a set of values is just not what the Dems are about. Get with the programme, you guys.

Platner is what the New York Times considers to be ‘a fiery populist running on his working class credentials’. Yet, even there, we cannot be so sure.

Turns out, he is a legacy member of the professional managerial class. As the Wall Street Journal reported, his grandfather was a well-respected architect who designed high-end interiors, including Windows on the World in the former World Trade Center. His father, a Democratic Party supporter and lawyer, sent him to private schools and fronted him $200,000 for his mortgage. This is what Democrats consider to be ‘an authentic working-class voice’.

Ever since Kamala Harris’s loss to Donald Trump in 2024, Democrats have been trying to figure out how to win back the blue-collar men they lost when they jumped with both feet into toxic, woke, identity-driven politics and left behind bread and butter, commonsense economics that appealed to a broad base of Americans.

A year ago, it was revealed that the Democrats had spent $20million on a report titled ‘Speaking with American men: a strategic plan’. The consultants recommended things like: ‘shift from a moralising tone’ and ‘study the syntax, language and content’ that men use online. This creepy, slightly shapeshifter play to insinuate their way back into the hearts of Real Men™ was heavy on style and light on substance.

Platner, it seems, is the Democrats’ new and improved plan. At least he is a combat veteran who knows how to do manly things, like be a harbourmaster.

Even though Dems may have thought they found a rough-and-tumble guy’s guy, what came out about Platner during the primary is evidence that he is just another theatre kid who is acting a part – just like Kamala acted the role of heroic African-American crusader for justice (she is neither of those things) and just like Joe Biden acted the role of wise grandpa of the nation (he was barely sentient). The Democrats cannot seem to find an actual authentic human being, no matter how hard they try.

Platner’s rise within the Democratic Party is very much attributable to the fact that its leadership would not recognise a ‘real man’ if they tripped over one. All that matters is that he looks like what they imagine a real man to be. He wears baseball caps! He’s hairy! Oh, yes, he’s also got a dodgy history with women and, er… that Nazi tattoo. But that’s normal for these guys, right? That’s how little they think of working-class men.

None of this matters to the Democratic cadres. They just want to keep their grift going: the non-profit gravy train, the community-organiser slush fund, the labour-union racket, the cushy government jobs – that is what they are out to protect, rather than the hunting and fishing class.

Most of all, the Dems are in it for the vainglorious grandstanding, the fulminating against an imaginary ‘far right’, and those sweet gigs talking up the party line on networks that no one watches anymore.

As Trump would say – sad!

Jenny Holland is a former newspaper reporter and speechwriter. Visit her Substack here.