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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026

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His working-class credibility

Possibly more assumed than real, or at least in my 'farm labourer/navvy on building site' family background, there weren't any Modernist architects:

Platner was born on September 1, 1984, in Blue Hill, Maine. He was raised in Sullivan, a coastal town near Acadia National Park, and in Ellsworth. He is the elder of two sons born to restaurant owner Leslie Harlow and lawyer Bronson Platner. His grandfather was the modernist architect Warren Platner.

I have no opinion on his politics, and all the screaming about "Fascist Nazi!" due to his tattoo left me rather more than less sympathetic to him (young guy joins army, serves overseas, does usual dumb young drunk squaddie shit like getting bad-ass skull and bones tattoo, oh dear turns out he should have studied the history and cultural symbolism of such images in that society because eighteen years later he will be quizzed on why didn't you realise this was the Nazi Death's Head you Nazi?)

He reminds me in a way of Fetterman, who I do dislike based on his public image, but if elected I imagine he'll just be the usual idiot and not the second coming of Hitler/Stalin (delete as applicable).

Possibly more assumed than real, or at least in my 'farm labourer/navvy on building site' family background, there weren't any Modernist architects:

He also went to an expensive private school and had Daddy give him money to buy his house. There's a funny bit there where after being caught lying about not getting support like that, he admitted that his dad did "loan" him the money, but it was ok because it was purportedly a higher interest rate than the VA would have charged him.

Which, honestly, is kind of believable. That's about the level of financial literacy I'd expect from a caviar communist.

My understanding is that he got the tattoo in Croatia. Nazi tattoo parlors are illegal there. He went to an illegal parlor that apparently had a lot of Nazi shit that you’d recognize. So at best it was highly questionable.

There's nothing at all in his post history that suggests he would be sympathetic to Nazi ideology in any regard. Why would he do that, do you think? I've heard others say it was from Croatia, so I'm guessing he said it in some podcast or appearance, but I feel like there are a lot of things we're assuming about this. How respected is that law, for one thing? Was he sober enough to even parse the other imagery in the shop? Or did the shop even have that other imagery? Where'd he hear about the shop from, one of his friends whom he respected? I don't even like tattoos, but there's a lot of unknowns, and it's couched by sympathetic factors like he was young and that there is a very pervasive culture of getting tons of tattoos on basically a whim in the military.

Sure I highly doubt he is a literal Nazi. I do think he was edgy for the sake of being edgy.

There's nothing at all in his post history that suggests he would be sympathetic to Nazi ideology in any regard.

Aside from the general left-authoritarianism and the anti-Israel stuff.

But the actual point here is, since when does that matter? Rules for Radicals #4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." Every Democrat who doesn't denounce Plattner (and all of his supporters) as a Nazi, which he is by their own standards for the last 10+ years, themselves deserves to be called a Nazi.