Critique: Why the Smears Against Graham Platner Didn’t Work

Source: jacobin
Authors: ByBen Burgis
URL: https://jacobin.com/2026/05/platner-senate-maine-nazi-smears

What the article reports

Ben Burgis argues that a "smear campaign" accusing Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner of Nazi sympathies failed, and that Platner's primary victory vindicates a "be ruthless with systems, be kind with people" political philosophy associated with the late broadcaster Michael Brooks. The piece describes the origin of Platner's Totenkopf tattoo, summarizes his policy positions, and quotes selectively from a Jacobin colleague's earlier reporting on Platner's Reddit archive to rebut the Nazi accusations. It concludes that Maine voters prioritized economic populism over opposition research.

Factual accuracy — Partial

Several verifiable claims appear accurate or are internally consistent: the Left Reckoning podcast interview is cited with named hosts (David Griscom and Matt Lech), Michael Brooks's signature quote is rendered specifically ("Be ruthless with systems, be kind with people"), and the article correctly notes that the Totenkopf was used by the Nazi SS. The claim that Platner's tattoo "raised no red flags" during "standard screenings for hate symbols for a stint working security for the US embassy in Afghanistan" is presented as established fact with no sourcing — it cannot be independently verified from the text. The description of Abdul El-Sayed's Senate race as ongoing ("if he wins his own race") is a temporal claim that readers cannot assess without a dateline anchor. The phrase "one of the most intense smear campaigns in the history of modern electoral politics" is a sweeping superlative stated as fact with zero supporting evidence or comparison.

Framing — Advocacy

1. "Smears" in the headline and repeated in the body ("the smears against Platner failed") — the word presupposes the accusations were false and made in bad faith before the piece has established either. A neutral framing would be "accusations" or "attacks."

2. "secret Nazi" — "he was widely accused of being a secret Nazi" renders the critics' position in its most cartoonish form. The article never quotes an actual accuser making this precise claim, making the characterization impossible to evaluate.

3. "angry conservatives and left-bashing liberals" — lumps critics into an emotion-coded, ideologically dismissive phrase. This is authorial voice, not attributed to anyone.

4. "fever pitch of absurdity" — "the whole thing reached a fever pitch of absurdity" is an editorial verdict on the opposition research episode, stated without attribution.

5. "drove the sitting governor to despair" — "coalesced behind him in numbers that drove the sitting governor to despair" attributes an interior emotional state to Governor Mills with no sourcing.

6. "drew the obvious conclusion" — "like many vets who saw friends killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, he drew the obvious conclusion about starting similar wars" presents Platner's foreign-policy stance as simply the correct inference any reasonable person would make, foreclosing the reader's own judgment.

Source balance

Ratio — Supportive : Critical : Neutral = 4 : 0 : 0. Not a single critic of Platner is named, quoted, or given a fair paraphrase of their strongest argument. The "Jacobin's Branko Marcetic" citation is from the same publication as this article. No independent fact-checker, neutral political scientist, Maine voter opposed to Platner, or even a named critic appears.

Omissions

1. The critics' actual argument. The piece characterizes opposition as a "smear" but never quotes a single critic by name or reproduces their strongest evidence. A reader cannot assess whether the rebuttal is persuasive without knowing what was actually claimed and by whom.

2. Primary vote totals or polling data. "Voters coalesced behind him" and "drove the sitting governor to despair" are asserted without numbers. What margin did Platner win by? What were the polls?

3. Governor Mills's own stated reasons for withdrawal. She is described as dropping out due to Platner's support, but her explanation — whatever it was — is not quoted or paraphrased.

4. Other Senate races context. Comparing Platner's ideological position to Sanders and El-Sayed without noting how left-wing candidates have performed in general elections in competitive states omits material context for assessing his November prospects.

5. The Reddit posts' "actually embarrassing" content. The piece acknowledges "there was much there that was actually embarrassing" but declines to characterize it, leaving readers unable to weigh what Maine voters chose to overlook.

6. Disclosure of Jacobin's editorial relationship to Platner. Jacobin has published favorably on Platner across multiple articles (Marcetic's piece is cited here). The house advocacy posture is not disclosed to the reader as a potential interest.

What it does well

• The specific origin story of the tattoo — "picked the design off the wall of the tattoo parlor" during "shore leave in Croatia" — gives readers a concrete, checkable narrative detail rather than a bare assertion of innocence.
• The Michael Brooks quote ("Be ruthless with systems, be kind with people") is sourced precisely, correcting Platner's own vague memory, which is a small but genuine act of factual precision.
• Marcetic's Reddit-archive findings are summarized with direct block-quotes, giving readers the actual text of Platner's posts rather than the author's characterization alone — the excerpt about "No quarter for fascists" is the one moment where evidence, not assertion, does the work.
• The piece identifies Platner's policy positions specifically (ICE abolition, citizenship pathway, healthcare, taxing billionaires) rather than relying on vague ideological labels, which gives readers substantive information.

Rating

Overall: 4/10 — A campaign victory lap that reads as house advocacy, omitting all adversarial sources and presenting contested characterizations as settled fact.