Take it from someone who grew up in a multi-generation military family and lived on base, I wouldn’t hold his record, the tattoo or his old reddit posts against him. I still don’t buy that he never found out the tattoo was a nazi death’s head, but I can believe he didn’t know it at the time.

Military service is a black hole of a religion, providing structure, community, money and ideology. It throws people into the most horrendous situations with the brightest promises and leaves them unable to function outside of that structure. I’ve watched friends join before their brains are even fully developed because of school or work or lack of purpose or genuinely thinking they can make a difference, ship off, come back saying exactly this kind of shit, and struggle for years to get out and make a different kind of life.

One of my buddies went to Afghanistan as an IT guy, who was told he wouldn’t see combat, and he ended up doing “crowd control” against civilians. He’s never expressed remorse in public, just thinking about it triggers him. He saves it for therapy. It took him five years to extricate himself while they kept trying to push “Just one more tour!” offering more money and a discharge when he got back, only to up the pressure when he returned.

And that’s just one of many stories I have about friends and family. My dad tried to leave about a dozen times, didn’t make it out until he retired with severe hearing damage and PTSD.

So, with Platner, I’m going with more recent evidence. He condemned the US military actions in the middle east, recognized the Palestinian state, called out the genocide, supports free healthcare and housing for everyone, and LGBTQ+ rights.

At least that’s what he says. We don’t have a voting record or much information about him, except what he says. So, if we’re going off just his statements, I would rather judge him by who he seems to be now, what his friends and family say about him, and how well he can stick to his convictions.

I have my reservations. But if military service, a handful of old reddit posts and a questionable tattoo make this guy a genocidal nazi, the bar is pretty fucking low.