Any politics anywhere in the world. Inevitably it'll be 99% US stuff, but that's not a rule.
This community works differently to how most politics communities work. It has strict rules designed to facilitate productive discussion. You can be rude, to a point, but you can't participate in bad faith:
The idea is to make the discussion productive. Let's see how it works. Maybe this is a fool's errand but IDK how any set of moderation could be worse than lemmy.world.
Other misc rules:
People are gonna be real upset when he pulls a Fetterman. Dude was a security contractor with Blackwater in Afghanistan in 2018.
Platner attended John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor. He earned the "most likely to start a revolution" yearbook superlative in 2003, appearing in the photo with a sign declaring "Free Kosova, Chechnya, Kashmir, Palestine, Kurdistan, Tibet".
Sounds like he was like me, someone who is left aligned but fell for the propaganda surrounding 9/11. That and him being disillusioned with the security contracting makes me think he isn't a plant. But wikis can say anything, only time and his voting record will tell.
I’m sorry, but anyone that joins up with Blackwater in 2017 after having already served 4 tours in the middle east is not someone who fell for the propaganda. First three tours, sure fine, whatever. But coming back and going to college and then pulling another tour, and after that working as a mercenary? No wonder he said don’t shame the old lady who hates immigrants.
Asked why he served in the Iraq War after protesting it, Platner said, "I thought I could do some good. And I wanted to play soldier. I might have read too much Hemingway."
Again, I hope I’m wrong about this guy, but this quote from his wikipedia says a lot to me. Everyone else I’m sure will read the first sentence and say he was simply misguided or swayed by propaganda, but that second sentence is far more telling than the first.
Yeah, and then he quit saying that what he was going on there was fucked up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Platner
Graham Platner (born 1984 or 1985) is an American oyster farmer, harbormaster, and military veteran who is running in the Democratic primary in the 2026 United States Senate election in Maine, seeking to unseat Republican Susan Collins. His platform emphasizes progressive and populist policies focused on the working class, including support for affordable housing, universal healthcare through Medicare for All, expanded veterans' benefits, and higher taxes on billionaires and large corporations. His campaign has received significant national attention, and has drawn comparisons to that of New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.
In 2018, Platner returned to Kabul, Afghanistan, for about six months as a State Department security contractor with Constellis, the private military company formerly known as Blackwater.[14][7][15] He returned to Maine the same year, saying he quickly grew more disillusioned with the military and what he called fraudulent funneling of taxpayer money to private defense companies.[9][6]
IDK dude. I get your point, and it's a little confusing how it took him four tours and a stint with Blackwater to become disillusioned, but I wouldn't automatically start up the "Bernie is a Zionist" purity testing against him quite yet.