Bret Stephens vs. Graham Platner
Graham Platner just won the Maine Democratic primary. I’m glad. To be honest, I can’t say that I was all that invested in Platner’s candidacy. I only really took notice of it a few days ago, and only because it belatedly occurred to me that Platner’s popularity is a slap in the face to centrist liberals, something I greatly enjoy. So I’m feeling good about their misery today.

I prefaced a recent blog post about Platner in this way:

Platner is accused of saying and doing some problematic things, mostly many years ago. The accusations fall into two categories. Either the facts are contested, or not. In the most serious cases, the facts are not only contested but essentially unknowable, which raises the suspicion that many of the allegations are either exaggerations, false memories, or lies. In the uncontested cases, what is alleged is simply not serious enough to be disqualifying.

I didn’t elaborate then, so let me elaborate now by way of a commentary on the bill of particulars advanced by Bret Stephens in a New York Times column on Platner. Here’s Stephens: 

Lest you’ve been wintering in Antarctica, here’s what’s lately been learned about Platner, the 41-year-old combat veteran and oyster farmer:

That his wife had told a campaign aide that he had been trading sexually explicit messages with six women, and perhaps as many as a dozen, before the beginning of his political run. That a former girlfriend, Lyndsey Fifield, alleges that he lied when he claimed he did not know a chest tattoo he had gotten during his military service strongly resembled an official insignia of the Nazi SS, and that he had once referred to it as “my Totenkopf.” That Fifield also alleges that he had once “twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom and held the door closed from the other side so she couldn’t get out” and that she later described him as “the most toxic literally abusive man on earth.” That she said he referred to women as “hatchet wounds,” using a crude word for female genitalia. That other women romantically connected to Platner also described unsettling behavior.

Fifield also told The Times this: “He said this a lot: If anybody ever broke in here, I would rape them,” adding that he told her it would be in “a sexual way, not in a gay way. He was like, I would rape them to show them that I’m dominant.”

Disqualifying? Platner has rejected some of the allegations and acknowledged others, all the while trying to put them in the context of the emotionally turbulent period amid and after multiple deployments. OK, uh-huh, maybe.

This is supposed to convince us that Platner is too evil to elect. Let’s work through it. Forgive the length.

First of all, it begs the question–i.e., commits the fallacy of begging the question–to say that we “learn” anything about Platner by mere reflection on the claims in the list. You can only “learn” what’s true. But the list consists of claims that Platner disputes. Stephens is trying to convince us that the claims Platner disputes are true. But he can’t do this by assuming their truth without proof. Doing so is a fallacy out of Intro Logic 101. But Stephens jumps straight into it.

We can’t “learn” anything about Platner from the accusations he disputes unless there’s conclusive evidence to rebut his claims. We have to consider the possibility that any given accusation is false. It could even be a lie. Stephens shows no awareness of this elementary fact of logic. He presents no evidence at all for his claims beyond hearsay from Fifield. I won’t belabor all of the ways in which Fifield may be an unreliable, partial, biased, even mendacious witness. Others have covered that topic, and the issue is not directly relevant to what I want to say. The simpler point is that hearsay can legitimately be doubted. So we can’t legitimately be said to have “learned” about Platner from the cases that Stephens lists. 

If hearsay was conclusive, Stephens would have to admit that the State of Israel is committing systematic rape in its prisons (see this as well). He would then have to conclude that anyone supportive of Israel is supportive in part of this system. He would then have to concede that Platner, the most anti-Israeli candidate in the race, is less supportive of Israel’s rape system than anyone in the race, and so, less complicit in the evils of systematic rape than anyone else in the race.

Having reached that conclusion, Stephens would then have to ask himself the obvious question: which is worse, being complicit in mass rape, or having allegedly said some misogynistic things years ago and apologized for them? Since the answer is “being complicit in mass rape,” Stephens would then be forced to infer that Platner was the least morally compromised candidate in the Maine primary, and is the least morally compromised candidate in the race as such.

Stephens doesn’t reach these conclusions because he doubts the evidence brought forward in favor of the accusation that Israel has committed mass state-sponsored rape (among many, many other things). Well, I doubt the evidence he’s brought forward via Fifield. And so can anyone. This observation should be the starting point of any inquiry into Platner’s alleged malfeasances. Platner is alleged to have said some misogynistic things a many years ago, but his rivals are alleged, by virtue of their support for Israel or indifference to the issue, to be complicit in mass rape, genocide, and prolonged military aggression, conquest, occupation, and apartheid. What we face, then, is a choice between “evils” of this sort. It’s only if you keep these alternatives in mind–distasteful talk and alleged threats vs. alleged complicity in mass rape, mass murder, and wholesale conquest–that you keep the full context in mind, and so, can judge the relevant issues impartially. If you focus only on the first alternative, however, you’re evading the full force of the second.

Let’s work through the particulars, one by tedious one.

(1) [Platner’s] wife had told a campaign aide that he had been trading sexually explicit messages with six women, and perhaps as many as a dozen, before the beginning of his political run.

This is prima facie bad behavior (assuming deception was involved) but not disqualifying for Senatorial office. If Stephens thinks it’s disqualifying, he needs to make an explicit argument for that conclusion. None so far has materialized. Stephens prides himself on his supposed capacity to convince liberals and leftists out of their hidebound dogmas on the basis of cool, emotion-free arguments, but he makes no attempt to do so here. Is he sure that Platner’s wife thinks that Graham’s behavior is disqualifying? I’m not. But if not, what is the objection here? That Stephens is offended but Graham Platner’s wife isn’t? Why should anyone care?

I once jokingly asked my girlfriend for permission to have an open relationship. She misunderstood me, taking me to be asking a serious question, and actually granted me permission to do so (what a gal). Now, imagine that we were married, imagine that I took full advantage of her permission, and imagine that I not only sexted with a dozen women and a dozen men, but had sex with all of them (all at once, come to that). Now imagine that I run for Senate, and Bret Stephens shows up to object. I see the comic potential in this situation, but what’s the argument? How did Graham Platner’s marriage–or hypothetically, mine–become Bret Stephens’s business? And if he makes it his business, why should anyone care?

(2)  [A] former girlfriend [of Platner’s], Lyndsey Fifield, alleges that he lied when he claimed he did not know a chest tattoo he had gotten during his military service strongly resembled an official insignia of the Nazi SS, and that he had once referred to it as “my Totenkopf.”

An allegation is not proof. A tattoo that “strongly resembles” a Nazi SS insignia is not a Nazi SS insignia. A tattoo gotten in a drunken stupor does not indicate an intention to express the values of the insignia that upon sober inquiry will be revealed to resemble a Nazi one. There is no real proof even that Platner lied–there could be some more complicated backstory going on–but supposing that he did lie (bad but not disqualifying), there is absolutely no evidence at all that his getting the tattoo is evidence of a commitment to Nazism. 

Consider an analogy I’ve used before: AC/DC fans the world over have gotten tattoos of the famous AC/DC logo, whose trademark thunderbolt design also “strongly resembles” a Nazi SS symbol. In fact, there are two songs in the AC/DC catalogue that implicitly mention the Nazis: “Night of the Long Knives” (1982), and “The Furor” (1995). But no matter how you slice it, none of this, however distasteful to some, suggests an actual commitment to Nazism by AC/DC or their fans. The thunderbolt could be there because despite looking Nazi, it also looks “cool.” The songs might allude to the Nazis, but not endorse Nazism. Most fans might have no clue even of any attenuated connection to anything Nazi-esque, and upon learning of one, might shrug it off as irrelevant to their own commitments. Something similar could easily be true of Platner. 

Yes, AC/DC’s thunderbolt looks like the “S” of “SS,” but if you got a tattoo of it not knowing this (as likely millions of people have), and later learned of it, you might think, “Well, what difference does it make? I’m not a Nazi, and strictly speaking, it’s not a Nazi symbol. It looks Nazi, but Nazi stuff looks cool, and there’s nothing to be done about it now, so let it go.” It may be distasteful to some that a Nazi-like aesthetic is thought to look cool, but distasteful or not, it doesn’t indicate an actual commitment to Nazism. Adopting such an aesthetic is neither necessary nor sufficient for being a Nazi, nor indicative of being one, nor probabilistically related to being one. It’s neither here nor there. To think that Graham Platner is a Nazi is like thinking that AC/DC’s fan base is a Nazi cult. I don’t put that inference past Bret Stephens, but I think most people have more sense than that.

I once had a colleague whose full name was “Ghassan Nazi,” which he spelled that way. His last name “strongly resembled” the abbreviated form of the name for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Was he an actual Nazi? No. Why didn’t he change his name? I don’t know. But was he an actual Nazi? No. Moral of the story: likenesses aren’t identity, and appearances aren’t reality. Hate to break the news.

Bret Stephens has spent the last four years defending the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine. Yet he shows no concern for the fact that this aid is going to actual Nazis armed with actual weapons, who seem to want to establish an actual Nazi regime. From an expert on Ukrainian nationalism (see the original article for references): 

Neo-Nazi networks are deeply embedded in parts of Ukraine’s military structure. Their presence is visible in units such as Azov, the Third Assault Brigade, the Russian Volunteer Corps, Bratstvo, the German Volunteer Corps, Karpatska Sich, and others. Yet Ukraine’s Western backers continue to arm, fund, and train these units without meaningful scrutiny.

Even more striking is the normalization of Nazi imagery itself. Official Ukrainian military channels and mainstream media regularly publish images of soldiers wearing swastikas, Waffen-SS insignia, and patches linked to neo-Nazi groups like Combat 18 and Misanthropic Division. This is no longer treated as scandalous. It has been normalized. …

Ukraine’s Western partners have made their own bargain. They, too, depend on Ukrainian manpower to weaken Russia. And so they tolerate extremists inside Ukraine’s armed forces as long as those extremists continue fighting. More than that, they remain largely silent about the ideology and symbols involved, because acknowledging them would mean admitting an uncomfortable truth — that the neo-Nazi problem in Ukraine is not simply a Kremlin invention.

How is Graham Platner’s covered-up tattoo a bigger Nazi problem than this? If this author is right, the advocates of military aid to Ukraine are much more obviously complicit in Nazism than Graham Platner. If so, accusations of complicity in Nazism should be pointed directly at them, not Graham Platner.  

(3) Fifield also alleges that he had once “twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom and held the door closed from the other side so she couldn’t get out” and that she later described him as “the most toxic literally abusive man on earth.” 

She also “said he referred to women as “hatchet wounds,” using a crude word for female genitalia.”

Yes, Fifield alleges all those things, but what if all, most, or some significant part of what she says is false? Stephens doesn’t consider this possibility, but suppose we do. We then have reason to ask: What reason do we have to believe her? He gives none. 

(4) Continuing the same thought, “other women romantically connected to Platner also described unsettling behavior.”

Well, “unsettling” isn’t disqualifying. 

(5) Fifield also told The Times this: “He said this a lot: If anybody ever broke in here, I would rape them,” adding that he told her it would be in “a sexual way, not in a gay way. He was like, I would rape them to show them that I’m dominant.”

Fifield alleges he said this, not that his assertion expressed an actual intention. I’d take her allegation more seriously if she could somehow prove that he meant it. But no one has proven this or even tried to, and the explanation seems obvious: because he didn’t mean it. It sounds like drunken blather to me, but it’s well in the past, and whatever the original context, it now seems irrelevant to the present. 

Seems like a guy you could have a beer with. Except that I don’t drink alcohol.

Beyond this, it’s impossible to know what Fifield’s motivations are for telling this story, and how much of it is true or confabulated. It’s also impossible to know what Platner actually said, or under what conditions, much less what he meant, or what he would have done or would do if confronted with the improbable situation described. But the relevant point is that no rape ever took place, or was likely to take place, or was ever thought imminent by anyone ever. So the whole issue is a notional one, confined to the realm of memory, speculation, and wild hypotheticals. Recall that the Israeli rapes are none of these things. They are alleged to have been real, with real dogs and real instruments of torture shoved up real bodily orifices causing real pain and real injury. Graham Platner is the only politician in this race who (if you’ll pardon the pun) gives even the slightest fuck about stopping the regime engaged in them.

The whole Fifield accusation episode is theater in search of an audience–non-events being treated as events, unserious claims being treated as serious ones, unintended assertions being treated as intentions. The whole thing, in short, has the look and feel of Orwellian propaganda zealously manipulating us into a Two Minutes’ Hate for Graham Platner, and should be resisted as such. 

The explanation for the zealotry is pretty obvious, I think. Platner is an anti-war populist; his critics, pro-war elitists. If Platner wins, their agenda suffers a loss. If a Senate of Platners were to win, it’s game over for them. I view Platner’s win with favor not so much because I’m such a big fan of his but because I long for the day that the game ends for the pro-war elites who dominate American discourse, like Bret Stephens and all of his asshole centrist colleagues at The New York Times (and elsewhere). Whatever his flaws, which are trivial as compared with theirs, Platner is a step in the right direction. Hats off to more forward momentum. 

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For good discussions of Platner, I recommend Branko Marcetic’s article in Jacobin (October 27, 2025), Michelle Goldberg’s column in The New York Times (May 8, 2026), Qasim Rashid’s recent blog post on Substack (June 10, 2026), and this video, also linked to above, by Caroline Debnam of Jacobin. Unlike these authors, I’m less invested in Platner per se than dismissive of the attacks on him, which strike me as pure, orchestrated propaganda intended to block his anti-war agenda. If Platner wasn’t anti-war, I wouldn’t have bothered with him.