It has been an interesting year for consumers of US online media, particularly on the left.

Horrified by the fascist takeover, Americans flocked to hear current events analysed by “online journalists/ influencers” decrying the state of the country and looking for hope in new candidates for all kinds of positions. Anti-fascists outside the US followed these channels as well, as whatever happens there seems to infect the entire world. Recently, as the latest revelation, those considered for years to be anti-imperialist have let their masks slip.

First domino: The Young Turks

For the past decade at least, The Young Turks had been a staple of online progressivism in the US, having amassed over 6 million subscribers. They were best known for advocating for grassroots political candidates, as opposed to ones backed by lobbies and corporate donors. Get money out of politics was their slogan.

After Trump’s election, in a move that astonished their subscribers (some of whom were supporting TYT financially and had donated towards their new studio), Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian declared their openness to the MAGA base and conservative speakers. They were about to start building bridges with emboldened fascists who were now drunk on power. Also, they were being sponsored by betting company Polymarket, among other curious issues, and Kasparian was complaining about not earning enough. Their viewership was dwindling. It was seen as, and very likely was a business decision.

Even Zuckerberg had caved, they must’ve thought. MSNBC anchors who had impugned Trump for years were now taking the trip of shame to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring. That’s where the money was, it appeared – in pandering to MAGA.

Had they waited a few months for Trump to turn the country upside-down, bleeding support as he impoverished his own base to the point of destitution (while shamelessly enriching the wealthy even more), they wouldn’t have made this error. Former Trump supporters would’ve flocked to them effortlessly.

Such are the ways of opportunism. Sometimes you make the wrong calculation.

Almost overnight, Kasparian became acidic towards the left, with its so-called purity testing and radicalism – even justifying aspects of Trump’s inhumane persecution of immigrants. She started participating in an imbecilic right wing talk show, Her Take, run by con artist Patrick Bet-David, filled with insanely bigoted views and Q-Anon style conspiracy theories. It was far below her previous level of analysis, culture, commentary etc. The highlight of the show was a man throwing a tampon at one of the female panellists. The whole endeavour screamed double IQ digits.

Cenk Uygur has been slightly better on average, participating on popular shows with sound leftist points, mainly against Zionists. He can, if he wants to, be very efficient. Nonetheless, their attempt to recruit from the MAGA base was and continues to be nauseating (not to mention futile).

His argument for taking any money offered to him, as well as trying to “expand” ideologically, was that TYT employed 80 people or so and he was responsible for keeping it afloat. That justification might work in other environments – not when your business is solely based on a political platform. If principles are bended or erased to keep the enterprise going, what’s the point of it continuing to exist? What good does it do?

Obvious Democratic Party shills, proven as such

Secondly, there was the dark money group paying influencers like David Pakman and Brian Tyler Cohen to generate conveyor belt propaganda for the Democratic Party, namely seeking to restore and maintain the status quo before Trump’s election. They were paid in accordance with the size of their platforms, from a measly 200$ up to 8000. People farther left than them could see their true colours easily, even before Taylor Lorenz broke this story. They shared a few traits, noticeable overtime:

  • Regular access to elected officials for interviews (they obviously had connections);
  • A refusal to cover the genocide in Gaza, some even making excuses for Israel, like David AIPAC-man;
  • Their videos were non-stop anti-Trump slop (one video per Trump’s every fart, with 10 minutes of speculation filler); this was content for the sake of content.

When the story broke, Pakman’s former producer also disclosed that during a White House visit (!) this group of influencers had discussed why they would not cover the genocide. They only considered audience retention and the possibility of angering one side or the other. Not facts, not morals, not decency, not informing the public or how this would pan out in history books. Their numbers at the time. Their money. This was, after all, a business.

The Platner issue

Self-proclaimed progressive channels had many people fooled, appearing grassroots by opposing mainstream narratives and the legacy media. These include The Majority Report, Hasan Piker, Krystal Ball and Kyle Kulinski – staples of leftist media consumption. TYT as well, though as mentioned, they had revealed their grifting ways.

Their audiences tended to be more refined, taking the anti-imperialist stance as a given.

There were murmurs occasionally, suggesting some were mimicking leftist principles to gain trust, then using that trust to gain votes for the Democrats, just like the hacks they were criticising, with the same finality. There was no way to tell for sure. Now there is.

Lo and behold, seemingly out of nowhere pops a candidate for the Senate in Maine, named Graham Platner – a veteran they glaze unreservedly, despite his 4 tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and one as a mercenary for Blackwater, as recently as 2018. He once worked as a security guard at Abu Ghraib prison, the notorious torture facility, where he gloriously stopped an attempt by locals to free the people being tortured. He remained proud of that for years.

On Reddit, in a blasé manner, Platner described first joining the Marines for an adventure and to kill some people. He had achieved both, he boasted. Is that perhaps indicative of a tiny character flaw? Something wrong with the upstairs wiring?

His online description of his time in the army is evocative of Chris Kyle’s, whose autobiography was adapted into American Sniper, a revolting propaganda film portraying US soldiers in Iraq as heroic, as well as the invasion itself as motivated by 9/11 (which, reminder, had nothing to do with Iraq). Like Platner, Kyle had very much enjoyed killing; he boasted the highest kill count out of all Iraq veterans. A number of stories in his book (heavily promoted and a best seller) were gradually proven false. In fact, he lied in rather pathological fashion, claiming to have committed other killings on US soil – two robbers and 30 looters during hurricane Katrina. No evidence of the incidents or deaths could be found. The man was a fabulist.

By 2014, when American Sniper came out, the invasion of Iraq was unanimously seen as a mistake, and the weapons of mass destruction pretext, as the lie that it was. Nonetheless, Americans continued to view Iraq veterans as heroic, focusing on their personal stories – a privilege that isn’t given, say, to the Nazi experience while invading Poland.

Something is fractured in the American brain, compartmentalising similar events or actions and interpreting them in diametrically opposing ways, against all logic.

Progressive warmonger? Genuine underdog?

Today, Graham Platner claims to be populist, on the left and in opposition to the genocide in Gaza, which is a guaranteed way to win votes, as the issue is so important to many. He enounces disdain for pointless wars, costing the US money and American lives. Implicitly, he has nothing against US military aggression per se, should he find it justified.

As enounced in interviews, he aspires to rebuild the US army, increase the number of ships and recruit more, in preparation for a war with China. There’s a recruitment problem nowadays, he claims, caused by low wages.

You have to vote for him, the progressive choir sings in unison, wagging fingers at those who are appalled by Platner’s actions and lack of genuine remorse (to this day). He wants universal healthcare for us.

Never mind that in Platner’s case, progressivism consists of words and promises, as part of a well-orchestrated campaign. The election is one year away. There are candidates with similar platforms, who haven’t, to the best of public knowledge, killed anybody, let alone boasted about it. Why him?

These influencers are obviously being “managed” and told to endorse him, whitewashing his past, as well as his militaristic obsession, to a degree that defies logic. They rephrase and contradict his own words to make him look better. It’s more blatant than Trump’s dementia and insults their viewers’ intelligence.

Platner’s image is now fashioned by consultants who worked on Obama’s campaign. The underdog façade is such obvious theatre. It’s a branding issue. Noise over a candidate, at this level, in the mainstream and online media simultaneously, is only present with enough financial and political backing.

Does anyone remember Julian Assange?

It was only last year that Julian Assange regained his freedom, after 12 long years spent isolated, either in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London (that sold him out eventually) or in prison, awaiting extradition to the US. His crime? Publishing leaked footage of US soldiers wantonly shooting innocent Iraqis from a helicopter, laughing, as if they were playing video games.

Soldiers like Platner, who had gone to Iraq for an adventure and to kill some people. How come this doesn’t compute in anybody’s head? Americans largely call the actions shown in that footage despicable and psychopathic, then praise a guy who described the thrill of killing in the same manner, same place, during the same invasion?

Last year, the left celebrated Assange’s release with blaring trumpets and what you’d think was genuine empathy and respect for his sacrifice. This year, they are whitewashing the actions he made public at such a high personal cost.

Does anyone remember Aaron Bushnell, the US soldier who set himself on fire protesting his country’s backing of Israel’s genocide in Gaza? His actions were extreme, yet the mental breakdown caused by the carnage and inhumanity he was witnessing was very normal. He was having a human reaction. And it didn’t take him 20 years of holding the gun, as it did for Platner to half-acknowledge the humanity of those killed in the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Americans are more outraged by a tattoo than imperialism and serial killing

The Totenkopf tattoo (one of the best known Nazi symbols) Platner sported for two decades, until recently, was common among soldiers, he argued. He was a history buff, he claimed on Reddit, listing the wars he would have liked to partake in, including the genocide of the Native Americans (!) and the invasion of Vietnam. However, he didn’t know what the infamous SS skull and crossbones symbol was. He described taking part in combat as thrilling, categorising wars by level of personal enjoyment. He preferred small ones.

When his Reddit comments were leaked, as well as a video displaying his Nazi tattoo, the media influencer cohort only emphasised the latter. Zero importance was given to the people he killed in illegal invasions, enlisting again and again, as the lifestyle resonated with him.

The tattoo story was debated ad nauseam – did he really not know? Why didn’t he remove it sooner? Is it really common for drunk soldiers to get Nazi tattoos? Can you even get a tattoo while intoxicated in Croatia? Etc. etc. As if having an image on his body was in any way worse than operating a machine gun in a country invaded to seize its oil. Or guarding and defending a prison where people were being tortured in real time.

The horrors his tattoo evoked, versus the horrors he actually committed. American stupidity and fickleness are unbelievable.

“It’s just a job”, says Emma Vigeland of the Majority Report

In other words, it’s completely fine to oppress and kill innocent foreigners for money, as a choice, as opposed to working at McDonald’s or stacking shelves. The flippant way in which she waived off any moral implications was staggering to the audience.

Ms. Vigeland, Iraqis and Afghans are people too. You seem to get that about Palestinians, thankfully. Yet the recognition of people’s humanity seems to vary for you. Which is slightly less surprising to me, given how you discuss late term abortion, in abstract, sterile, reality-divorced ways. But I digress.

There are horrifying images from the invasion of Iraq. Entire families executed. US soldiers holding up fingers cut off bodies to take home as a trophies. The photos from Abu Ghraib, which the entire world has seen. It’s not just a job, and Platner went back several times, and would have gone again if permitted.

The going narrative that lack of opportunities and unemployment drives young people to enlist did not apply to him; he came from a wealthy family and had attended a private school.

There is a case to be made for those who enlist once, not knowing what it entails, and get out, express remorse and so forth. Platner loved it so much he would’ve done a fifth tour, yet the Marines wouldn’t take him back, as he now had forearm tattoos. He became a mercenary for Blackwater instead. He lives and breathes militarism and doesn’t hide it.

A few years ago, Platner was arguing online that US culture was superior (if not the best) and should be exported to other countries against their will, even if hundreds of thousands had to die. He mentioned Syria should benefit from that treatment and the mass murder of Syrians would be worth it.

These comments date from 2018, when he was working for Blackwater. However, he was issuing these opinions after 4 tours in the Middle East. Namely he still didn’t see innocent foreigners, be they civilians or the local resistance, as human.

Serving the country

This abstract trope never ceases to fascinate me, in terms of being perceived as a positive by default. The Nazis also served their country – they were fed an agenda by the establishment of their day and tried to achieve it militarily. They served the ambitions of those in power. As to what that did to the country itself, have a look at some photos of Dresden from the end of WWII.

The delusion is hard to elaborate on, with so many falsehoods in a few lines. One thing can be singled out though: Platner didn’t hate war. He loved it. He discussed it affably after 4 tours. He still doesn’t hate it. For people so invested in his mindset, they fail to read and analyse his own words on why he enlisted and how he felt about his actions.

“Libs”

In his supporter camp, there is talk of superficial libs engaging in cancel culture. A mirror image of what is actually happening – namely Platner using the vernacular of progressivism and social justice, newly adopted, to appeal to the electorate.

As a PR stunt, his campaign released a video of him talking to a trans woman (he had exhibited all kinds of bigotry online previously, including misogyny, as in blaming women who were sexually abused in the army). Americans are so, so, so fucking stupid, that a candidate’s pink-washing PR stunt brings them to tears. They are moved by soundbites.

“Oversensitive lib types”, as in murdering, imperialism (he still had the mindset in 2018) and torture are now micro-aggressions. Normal people, in contrast, see these things as a regular part of life. Americans murder and plunder with impunity. It’s normal to them.

They live in Disneyland

Americans imbibe Hollywood feel-good narratives since their early years. Fiction makes everything possible. The hardened criminal becomes soft-hearted in a come to Jesus moment, after years or decades of sociopathic behaviour. Just like that.

What they see in Platner is the Hollywood hero story – the protagonist evolving through perilous and gruelling adventures. He is well-rounded and humanised, while those briefly crossing his path are mere props. He shoots them, throws them off a cliff, sets them on fire. Oh well, they happened to be there at the time, so what the heck. In the next scene, he is brooding over an old photo, to sad music. The public has already forgotten the 25 bodies presumably being pecked at by vultures at the same time. They are inconsequential to the narrative. Out of sight, out of mind.

They only serve the purpose of developing his character; improving his skills, showcasing his courage, perhaps making him a bit softer at times. Either way, it’s all about him. His life experience. Teachable moments.

Isn’t it great to kill with impunity?

Reality is starkly different, of course.

Participation in killing, torturing and oppressing, with no remorse for decades, indicates “qualities” Americans very much fear at home. Psychopathic detachment, thrill seeking in the darkest ways, the dehumanisation of victims, perhaps even sadism. Not only are these traits highly undesirable – it’s impossible to fix them. They are hard-wired into the brain.

When a person chooses such experiences, seeking them again and again, for a good 20 years, is their complete change believable, in terms of recognising the humanity of every person? Would they act differently in the future, and do you just take their word for it?

If someone has killed for money, would they perhaps lie to you for money as well? Or are they above that?

Americans would be horrified by the prospect of a serial killer walking the streets freely one day, after claiming to have had a change of heart. Brown people abroad, however, are nameless and faceless; they are numbers. They are inconsequential. They can be reduced to a nebulous abstraction.