<
https://www.garbageday.email/p/young-republican-nazis-and-democrat-redditors>
"Heading into No King’s Day weekend,
CNN published a story focusing on Maine
oyster fisherman and Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner’s Reddit
history. Platner, a man so New England that I just know his car’s upholstery
has a permanent Dunkin Donuts smell burned into it, has quickly grabbed the
spotlight over the last few months. He’s been compared to New York City mayoral
candidate Zohran Mamdani, thanks to both Platner’s economic populist messaging
and his casual and comfortable use of video.
Platner’s Reddit history is, if you’ve ever met a millennial man from the
Northeast of the US, fairly unsurprising.
CNN found screenshots of Platner’s
posts where he wrote that he was a communist, that all cops are bastards, and
that white southerners are racist idiots. Waow (based based based), etc.
Decidedly less based were the Reddit posts
The Washington Post unearthed
where Platner wrote that women should “just take some responsibility for
themselves and not get so fucked up they wind up having sex with someone they
don’t mean to.” Platner, who was deployed to Iraq as a Marine in 2005, also had
a handful of other posts equally dismissive of sexual assault within the
military.
Platner, to his credit, told
CNN, “That was very much me fucking around the
internet.” And told
The Post, “I can honestly say I did not know what the
fuck I was talking about.” He also released a five-minute video, filmed
seemingly in his backyard. A visual aesthetic I can only describe as, “your
childhood best friend’s wife is making him FaceTime you to wish you a happy
birthday.” He openly and earnestly talks about grappling with the dark, edgy,
and sexist culture of the military and how that collided with post-traumatic
stress disorder and depression after he got home. Again, this is something that
should not surprise anyone who has ever spoken to an American man born after
1980. Also, his team has since pointed out that much of his Reddit history was
actually pretty good.
After the two pieces hit, Democratic insiders were quick to claim that the
comments were leaked to the press by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign
Committee to, as US Rep. Ro Khanna wrote on X, “destroy Platner the day their
hand-picked candidate entered the race.” Seemingly referencing 77-year-old
Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, who just announced her candidacy last week.
But the Platner Reddit stories also hit right as the Republicans have been
dealing with their own “edgy” humor scandal. Though, the differences could not
be more stark. Text messages — from literally the last few months, not eight
years ago, mind you — were published by
Politico revealing that Young
Republicans are in a group chat fantasizing nonstop about gassing minorities
all day. The New York State Young Republicans were suspended after the story
was published, but, for the most part, the official line from the GOP is that
these texts are a nothingburger, even if Republican staffers are currently
doing Zoom calls with Swastika flags behind them.
Differences aside, both stories shine a very bright light on what I consider to
be the most important political story of the 2020s. Namely, how do we deal with
the political extremism that’s been brewing online for the last two decades?
Political extremism that overwhelmingly targets and captures young men.
Political extremism that, if we want to keep having a democracy, now has to be
managed. And political extremism that, we cannot ever forget, was fomented and
mainstreamed by far-right operatives like Steve Bannon in the early 2010s to
bring us to the exact future we’re living in now."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
