Senate Candidate With Nazi Tattoo Says Campaign Stronger After Communist Posts Surface

Let’s examine the facts here, because they reveal something deeply troubling about the modern Democratic Party and its relationship with basic honesty.

Graham Platner, a Democratic candidate seeking to unseat Senator Susan Collins in Maine’s 2026 Senate race, now claims his previous self-identification as a “communist” was merely joking. The candidate published multiple Reddit posts between 2020 and 2021, including one stating explicitly, “I got older and became a communist.” These posts have since been deleted, which raises an obvious question: if they were jokes, why the need to scrub them from the internet?

Platner’s explanation strains credulity. He told reporters Sunday that his communist identification was simply “internet posting” and suggested that because he supports Medicare-for-all, expanded union rights, and higher taxes on the wealthy, people will call him a communist anyway. “That’s the joke,” he claimed.

This defense fails on multiple levels. First, the logical disconnect is staggering. Platner essentially argues that because his critics might unfairly label his policy preferences as communist, he preemptively called himself a communist as satire. This is not how humor works, nor is it how honest political discourse functions.

Second, these posts were not isolated incidents. Platner also described rural white voters as “stupid and racist” in heated online arguments. He now claims these are his “neighbors and friends” whom he defends regularly. The contradiction speaks for itself. A man who anonymously attacks rural white voters as stupid and racist, then seeks their votes while claiming to champion their interests, demonstrates either profound dishonesty or a troubling lack of character.

The Reddit posts represent only one component of Platner’s recent controversies. Photographs revealed he possessed a tattoo depicting the Totenkopf, the death’s head symbol used by Hitler’s SS paramilitary forces. While Platner has since covered the tattoo, the combination of Nazi imagery and communist self-identification paints a disturbing picture of political extremism.

Multiple senior campaign staffers resigned under pressure from these revelations. Yet Platner insists his campaign has never been stronger, telling reporters, “It is amusing for me to watch the campaign described in the media as collapsing or falling apart when internally, we frankly have not felt this strong since the beginning.”

This statement reveals either remarkable delusion or calculated spin. When your top staffers abandon ship and you’re explaining away both communist sympathies and Nazi tattoos, your campaign is not strengthening. It is hemorrhaging credibility.

The broader issue extends beyond one flawed candidate. Platner’s ability to remain in the race despite these revelations demonstrates the Democratic Party’s tolerance for extremism within its ranks. Senator Bernie Sanders has defended Platner, which should surprise no one given Sanders’ own history of praise for communist regimes.

Maine voters deserve better than a candidate who hides behind claims of irony when confronted with his own words. They deserve honesty, not post-hoc rationalizations designed to memory-hole inconvenient truths. If Platner truly believed his communist identification was harmless satire, he would not have deleted the posts. The deletion reveals consciousness of wrongdoing.

The facts matter here. A candidate with extremist tattoos and communist sympathies seeks major party nomination for the United States Senate. His explanations insult the intelligence of voters. Whether Maine Democrats accept this insult remains to be seen.