There was the SS tattoo. There was the fact that he had in the past publicly stated that rape victims bear “some responsibility” for being raped, and that women should “not get so fucked up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to.” Platner is also an AR-15 owner, an AWB (Assault Weapons Ban) opponent, and a former Blackwater contractor.
Overlooking all the red flags, Platner was presented to the world as the “progressive” alternative to Janet Mills, who is staunchly pro-abortion rights, pro LGBT rights, and pro universal healthcare. So what was it that made Platner supposedly so much more “progressive” than Mills? Prior to 2025, Platner had never been involved in any political activism. He was never a union member or had shown any interest in labor organizing.
On almost all issues where Platner and Mills differ – it is a matter of degree. But there is one issue that clearly distinguishes them: Israel. So it’s ok to have Nazi tattoos, be soft on rape, and be pro-gun – as long as you show sufficient hatred for the world’s only Jewish state, you’re OK. Apparently.
This isn’t some new phenonmenon. It even has a name: The Double Standard of Salience.
Below is a quote from: Antisemitism and the Left: Confronting an Invisible Racism by Sina Arnold & Blair Taylor
Journal of Social Justice, Vol. 9, 2019
https://transformativestudies.org/wp-content/uploads/Blair-Taylor-and-Sina_Arnold.pdf
The double standard of salience translates into a political context where the left assigns vastly more attention and importance to the issue of Israel/Palestine than any other conflict in the world today. Israel is one of the few issues that unites a typically fractious left. This one conflict is so central to the U.S. left’s self-understanding that that it is often a highly visible element even in demonstrations for completely unrelated topics like climate change, police brutality, or gay rights. This ideological omnipresence suggests that the left views Israel as both a unifying factor as well as a political lynchpin upon which various other forms of oppression rest. Yet at the same time, various other occupations, civil wars, and violent conflicts receive little or no attention from the left–there are no sustained left campaigns targeting other contemporary examples such as India’s annexation of Kashmir, Turkey’s brutal suppression of the Kurds, Russia’s occupation of the Crimea or Iran publicly executing gays.
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