WASHINGTON — Lefty Maine Senate hopeful Graham Platner, a Marine veteran who has positioned himself as a staunch anti-war candidate and critic of the US military campaign in Iran, once defended a Marine who urinated on a dead Taliban fighter, newly unearthed Reddit posts show.
The left-wing populist further described war as the “most enjoyable experience of my life” and combat as the “[b]est goddamn thing in the world” in a series of since-deleted Reddit posts from 2013 through 2020 reviewed by The Post.
“I find the urinating on bodies as a poor choice, but only because of the current state of media affairs,” Reddit user “P-Hustle,” which CNN traced back to Platner, 41, wrote in a since-deleted July 2013 post on a thread about a Marine getting fined and demoted for urinating on a dead Taliban fighter.
“It’s amusing that today killing a man isn’t worthy of comment, but god forbid you display dominance. Only 50 years ago, and for the rest of the history of warfare, this stuff was pretty standard.”
Platner scrubbed his Reddit history before launching his Senate campaign in August of last year, but he seemingly copped to past posts on the site in an interview with CNN, where he described it as “me f—king around the internet” and claimed that it’s not “indicative of who I am today.”
“I was a teenager when I enlisted in the Marine Corps,” Platner said in a statement to The Post. “I was searching for a way to serve my country and I had pride in that service. But also in the years since, like many veterans, I realized how much we were taken advantage of and developed a new understanding of war.”
In the present day, the oyster farmer has leaned on his time in the Marines to publicly crusade against what he called the “tragic, stupid, ill-conceived” bombings in Iran.
He has also zinged incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) over her initial support for the Iraq war. Collins, notably, later soured over how that conflict was conducted.
“Susan Collins sent me and my friends to die in Iraq twenty years ago. She learned nothing from it,” Platner, who volunteered for the war and later worked for military contractor Constellis, formerly known as Blackwater, chided on X last year when Collins opposed a resolution to prevent attacks on Venezuela.
Years ago, under his anonymous Reddit account where he gave unvarnished takes, Platner argued that the war in Afghanistan was never about “fixing the place” and once he “just focused on the work, I enjoyed the hell out of myself.”
Some of Platner’s hot rhetoric on war in his since-deleted Reddit posts were previously covered by the Portland Press Herald.
“Wanted to have an adventure and kill some people,” he wrote in a 2020 Reddit exchange asking Marines why they enlisted. “Joined up in ‘04, did Fallujah and Ramadi, and managed both. Hell of an excellent experience.”
In another, Platner underscored the “feeling of accomplishment that cannot be replicated” from combat and lamented that “civilian life really seems devoid of purpose or excitement after intense combat.” He also called “leading a rifle squad or machinegun section in combat was a really fulfilling experience.”
“It’s hard to explain how much I enjoyed combat,” he wrote. “It is both physically and intellectually challenging, and incredibly exciting (especially the first few times). I was never a huge fan of killing, at least not for killings sake, but I did love winning and that required killing.”
The left-wing oyster farmer conveyed similar sentiments in other since-deleted posts, writing in a different post that Marine and Army infantry warfighting was “one hell of an awesome experience,” and in another post describing it as the “Best goddamn thing in the world.”
Platner is a veteran of both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. At one point, he explained that he “enjoyed the hell out of fighting in Afghanistan” due to its varied terrain but found Iraqi cities to be “just a terrifying experience.”
Back in 2014, Platner appeared to champion aggressive military action in response to the gruesome ISIS beheading of American journalist James Foley.
“We are going to kill thousands. By the end of it, it may be millions. Our way of life is better, and if that is what it takes to prevail, let’s get this show on the road,” he wrote. “I don’t disagree with your point, I just disagree with the fact you seem to think we shouldn’t do it.”
“There are times in this world when, for the good of tolerance and humanity, you need to kill a motherf—er,” he wrote in a deleted 2013 post. “Sadly most people who are true believers in tolerance and humanity find that activity repulsive. Which I suppose is morally good, but pragmatically a shortfall.”
Platner has described growing increasingly cynical and disillusioned with the military, particularly during his brief time as a private military contractor.
“I can tell you my life would be better if I had not had to fight in Ramadi in 2006,” he told CNN last month.
A review of Platner’s past Reddit posts also shows his evolving views on US excursions abroad at time went on. In 2020, he lamented seeing “another generation of young Marines get all pumped up to get into a fight that is frankly pointless and of disastrous strategic consequence is depressing in a way I can barely put into words.”
“None of this bulls–t was worth the people we lost to it. Waste of time (unless you’re a politician or a defense industry stockholder, then it was well worth all the suffering.),” he wrote in a 2021 Reddit post about casualties in war.
After the Kabul bombing during the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, Platner fumed that “this stupid f–king war can’t come to an end soon enough.”
“Maybe it’s because I’m older now, but I just feel…protective,” he went on. “These guys are the best of us, and we don’t deserve what they’re willing to give up, not after 20 years of this dumb bulls–t.”
The populist is running neck and neck against Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) in the June 9 primary for the Democratic nod to compete against Collins in November. Platner is averaging a 19.2 percentage point lead over Mills, according to the latest RealClearPolitics aggregate of polls.
Collins, the sole New England Republican in either chamber of Congress, is widely seen as the most vulnerable sitting Republican in the Senate, though she has a history of overperforming the polls and winning in tough election years.
Platner’s candidacy has been dogged by a hodgepodge of controversies.
Last year, his unearthed Reddit posts exposing his raw takes on politics showed Platner describing himself as a “communist,” blasting “all” police officers as “bastards,” and chiding that rural white Americans “actually are” racist and stupid.
Perhaps most infamously, he was caught with a Nazi-linked tattoo that looked like a Totenkopf or “death’s head” symbol used by the notorious Nazi SS secret police force. Platner claims to have gotten that ink in Croatia while inebriated in 2007.
Platner has since inked over it with what he characterized as a “Celtic knot with some imagery around dogs” and insisted that he’s “not a secret Nazi.”
