Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner has been caught promoting political violence and Communism in a series of now-deleted Reddit posts.
The 41-year-old oyster farmer and Marine veteran, who is vying to unseat longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins, attempted to scrub his online history just before launching his campaign in August 2025.
Unfortunately for him, archived posts paint a picture of a man deeply entrenched in socialist rhetoric, calling for an armed uprising and bashing police as “bastards.”
Platner, running as a self-styled outsider focused on Maine’s working class, posted under the username “P-Hustle” in left-wing forums like r/SocialistRA and r/politics around 2018 to 2021.
In one inflammatory post, he urged leftists to “Get Armed, Get Organized. The Other Side Sure As Hell Is.”
In another, he advised militant leftists to arm themselves with semi-automatic rifles, warning, “if they expect to fight fascism without a good semi-automatic rifle, they ought to do some reading of history.”
Platner even echoed socialist Eugene V. Debs, declaring, “An armed working class is a requirement for economic justice.”
The candidate also openly identified as a communist, saying, “I got older and became a communist.”
Graham Platner, the Maine Democrat running for Senate as a rugged, independent-minded “oyster man,” just had his Reddit posts exposed by @KFILE.
He called himself a Communist, who owns guns bc he doesn’t trust “fascists,” called cops “bastards,” and said rural Whites are stupid. pic.twitter.com/gOX17vXK3g
— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) October 16, 2025
Platner also repeatedly slammed law enforcement, affirming that “all” police are bastards and ranting, “F**k these cops” in response to police-involved incidents.
His disdain extended to rural white Americans, whom he labeled as “racist and stupid.”
Platner has raised over $4 million and secured endorsements from many progressive figures, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, who rallied with him on Labor Day.
The Maine Senate race is a key battleground that could tip control of the chamber.
In a statement to Politico, the senate hopeful said, “As I told CNN, I was f-cking around on the internet at a time when I felt lost and very disillusioned with our government who sent me overseas to watch my friends die. I made dumb jokes and picked fights. But of course I’m not a socialist. I’m a small business owner, a Marine Corps veteran, and a retired sh-tposter.”
Platner also posted a video to X addressing the posts, blaming his military service for his unhinged comments.
WATCH:
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) October 17, 2025
Platner is facing Maine’s 77-year-old Governor Janet Mills in the Democrat primary. If she is elected, she would be the oldest freshman senator in history.
The candidate’s comments bear a striking resemblance to the explosive revelations about Virginia Attorney General candidate Jay Jones, another Democrat whose private texts called for gruesome violence against a Republican lawmaker and his children.
These incidents highlight a pattern of left-wing candidates harboring violent fantasies behind moderate facades, raising alarms about their fitness for office in an era already plagued by political assassinations and unrest.