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Magdi Jacobs Profile picture
Magdi Jacobs
@magi_jay
I write about politics, culture, & science for https://t.co/Gti12sLy1c. Bylines in @PostOpinions, @ForeignPolicy, @Slate, @damemagazine, @Alternet. She/her
Jul 2 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Per @NBCNews, the legal group "Reckoning Action" is working with "multiple women who have had past personal relationships with [Graham] Platner." The group is providing both pro bono legal counsel to these women, as well as assistance navigating the press. Image Here's how to read between the lines. This is a "process piece." There are allegations out against Graham Platner. Ones you haven't heard about yet. At least some of these allegations have gone to the press, but have not been published yet. The women have legal representation. Image
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Jun 30 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I've always been on the "Let's try to get where Norway is" side of the economic spectrum. I just abandoned specific "movements" when I realized they didn't want real change and also disrespected Black people. Cause I'll always be a Civil Rights voter first. Me in 2016: Image I'm not peeved about it but it shows a real lack of acumen on the "Democratic socialist" side of things that they just continue to act like there aren't a ton of people who are sympathetic or even enthusiastic about their economic policy but don't like all the "social agitation."
Jun 22 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
My view of this man has changed significantly in the past few months. I was taught that when people feel harmed, you address that harm. You listen. You try to understand. Mamdani is very smart. He knows exactly what he is doing. This is gaslighting. I don't like criticizing Mamdani. I know many ppl who like him & I respect those ppl a great deal. I think we see a different person. I don't want to fight with my friends. But I do have to say what I believe to be the truth: I think he is fomenting anti-semitism & he knows it.
Jun 9 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Literally none of the things we have done to debase ourselves post-2024 needed to happen. We could have just taken a rest and watched Trump blow up the GOP then presented ourselves as the alternative. We lost by 1.5 percentage points for Christ's sake. Just endless "The Democratic party brand is nationally toxic how can we make that worse?"
Jun 6 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Something I think a lot of white Democrats don't get about Southern Black voters is that they're not just "pragmatic;" they're hyper-vigilant. Anyone who lives in an environment where they could be harmed develops hyper-vigilance. It's one reason they don't fall for snake-oil. I worked in the Nashville school district. Even Black children are hyper-vigilant around white people in the South (which is heart-breaking). They have to be. B/c in the schools, there are white people who are neutral, white people who are helpful, & white people who are harmful.
Jun 5 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
It's not a mistake when a man harms multiple women. When men harm women without seeking some kind of intervention, they want to harm women. Look, a lot of us can imagine human darkness, right? Your worst moment. Maybe you wanted to hurt another person. Imagine taking that person's arm so hard it bruised them. What would you feel? I think most of us would feel something. Like, "Shit. I just hurt a person."
Jun 1 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I thought about the claim that I am "obsessed" with Graham Platner last night. Am I obsessed with Graham Platner? The truth is: I'm not. I think he's boring. But I think I am "obsessed"--or at least hyper-focussed--w/ how little others care about things that I think should matter I don't like pathological lying. I don't like being gaslit about pathological lying. Honesty should matter. I also think Nazi tattoos should still matter. I think it's important to consider a person's character. If they're a serial cheater, blame rape victims, & like violence.
Jun 1 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I keep seeing people say that Graham Platner's ex-campaign manager is on a "revenge tour." What evidence is there of that? She quit her own job, cited ethical concerns at the time, & then stayed silent for months. Is telling the truth about a problematic person "revenge?" Platner didn't fire her. She quit. Because of the Totenkopf & other reasons. Then she stayed silent for a long time. Then she confirmed some things to journalists. If she's on a "revenge tour" what's the revenge in response to?
May 31 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Have you ever threatened a smear campaign in your life? Have you ever told a person, "If you tell the truth, I will destroy you?" I would like to think we can collectively agree that people who do this are bad people. Image We're all guilty of something. Of lying at some point. Or encouraging someone else to lie. Maybe you're even guilty of subtly pressuring someone to lie. "It would hurt me if you told the truth about this." But a smear campaign? "I will destroy you." Not many people do that.
May 26 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
People should start asking why. This is a very important Senate race. When Mills first dropped out, there were tepid endorsements. That's ceased. Did people in DC & Maine debrief the Mills campaign or otherwise find out new information about Platner. Their silence is deafening. Control of the Senate goes through this race. The GOP is about to pummel Platner. They've invested a huge amount. And, yet, Democrats seem to be fairly quiet on their own fundraising/support for the man. Why?
May 16 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Maybe Graham Platner defies easy characterization because he is a pathological liar. Image "I've never been close to money. . .I don't think anything I've ever done has been outside the realm of what people do when they struggle." Platner vacationed at his grandfather's chateau in CT, went to $20k/yr East Coast private schools, & went back-backing in EU for 6 months. Image
May 11 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
"Israel trained dogs to rape Palestinians" is

-False
-Grotesque
-Yes, "blood libel"
-Will reduce the salience of actual mistreatment Palestinians or anyone else might face in any military/state custody

The "maximally evil Israel" lies protect no one; hurt many

Tell the truth Image The entire Israel/Palestine conversation is just drenched in maximalist characterizations & lies, thus removing accountability from *everyone*. Israelis are dehumanized as monsters. The malfeasant far-right gov't denies the extremist lies & then the actual truth never gets told.
May 5 • 7 tweets • 6 min read
"Did Platner know it was a Totenkopf? And, if yes, did he therefore lie in 2025 when he said he had no idea?"

Most surely: Yes & yes.

Apparently there was a whole thing re: Marine Scout/Snipers ("SS") getting SS (Nazi Tattoos). This story broke in 2012. It was a military scandal.

Then, in June, 2020, Platner got in a long debate on reddit about Marines and SS insignia, related to the previous scandal. This is all publicly accessible.

Others on the same reddit thread, including at least one self-identified Marine, argued whether or not SS insignia is bad and/or, within the Marine Corps, signals Nazi ideology. The Marine who argued YES, it does signal Naziism, wrote:

"The US Marine Corps DOES NOT TOLERATE NAZI SYMBOLISM... The Commandant of the Marine Corps gave orders to stop it, issued an apology, and ordered an investigation."

Separately, Platner, who had a Totenkopf on his chest, argued the opposite, while invoking Black Marines.

Specifically, a user named SP4CEM4N_SPIFF wrote "I remember this being exposed nearly a decade ago. It's like people claiming the confederate flag isn't about hate," to which Platner replied: "I will be sure to inform the black guys I know with bolts that they're Nazis now and not USMC Scout/Snipers."

Here, Platner is directly making the connection between SS tattoos & their intentional use by U.S. Marines (which was previously a scandal), while also doing kind of a "Black person human shield" thing. Note, again, others in the thread are really disgusted by the use of SS insignia & support the military taking strict action.

The original thread was about Zachary Sanns, a former Marine who was arrested for impersonating a federal officer at a Las Vegas BLM protest while armed and bearing SS tattoos.

Platner was not Scout/Snipers. He was a machine-gun operator. With a Totenkopf. And he recently told everyone, including those in the Democratic Party who support him, that he had no idea what the symbol meant.

I think the most galling thing, for me, to read, is that Platner argues with the guy who says "it's like saying the Confederate Flag isn't about hate."

It's galling because the guy with the confederate flag comment is right. It's also galling because now we know, for sure, in 2026, that Platner has been through this whole conversation--does your Nazi tattoo mean you're a Nazi?--before. And he's acting completely ignorant of it.

2012 Marine Scout Sniper SS scandal (CNN): cnn.com/2012/02/10/us/…

Zachary Sanns - the man the Reddit thread was about (Las Vegas Review-Journal): reviewjournal.com/crime/armed-ma…

Full Reddit thread archive: api.pullpush.io/reddit/search/…

Platner's "black guys" comment:

api.pullpush.io/reddit/search/…

SP4CEM4N_SPIFF's comment - what Platner directly replied to:

api.pullpush.io/reddit/search/…

HughGedic- self-identified Marine arguing SS insignia is Nazi symbolism:

api.pullpush.io/reddit/search/…

Platner's second comment ("was never a STA guy"):

api.pullpush.io/reddit/search/…

Original Reddit submission (the post itself):

api.pullpush.io/reddit/search/…Image
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Image This comment in the thread is, I think, quite relevant. Image
Apr 9 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The "should Democrats embrace Hasan Piker" question has been well-answered by now, but this new pathetic twist is that GOP media was all pre-emptively keyed up to respond to us "embracing Hasan Piker," which we outright refused to do. Looks like we did good, fellow Dems. Now take this lesson and move on from the human tinker toy and focus your sites on the corpse-desecrating-rape-denying-Nazi-tattoo-wielding little psychopath from Maine. It's gonna be the same thing. You know it will be.
Apr 8 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I asked "Claude" to fact-check 2 claims for me: 1) That the Michigan Synagogue attacker was inspired by Hezbollah & 2) That the attacker aimed to murder Jewish children. The ChatBot answered #1 correctly; #2 incorrectly. I queried it & asked it to describe its errors. Please read Image
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Image I experiment with AI all the time. I ask it to fact-check, but often find myself having to correct it. It is based on statistical frequencies in input. If input contains flawed majority frames, that's what the AI spits out. This has real consequences, esp. for knowledge-building.
Mar 31 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I had a court victory today. My abusive ex was concealing income from his ex-wife, the bio mom of my stepchildren, whom he abused as well. I gave her a detailed account of his income, from my time w/ him. Today she obtained more child support for her children, my stepchildren. Few people ever seem to understand just how much you can love children who are not biologically your own. I would have done--and would do--anything for my stepchildren. There was a point at which I realized I could not do anything to legally protect them. But their bio mom could.
Mar 29 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I really want strategists to start thinking about how THEY feel when the topic of Israel/Palestine comes up. I'm not talking about frothy antisemites. I'm talking about Normies. You're at Happy Hour w/ friends from work. Someone says, "Let's talk about ISRAEL." How do you feel? Personally, I would think "Oh fuck. I'm about to lose some friends." I can't even talk about Israel/Palestine WITH MY PARENTS and I think we're almost 95% in agreement. Not an issue I would want to push to the forefront of my electoral politics.
Mar 27 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
The lesson that every Dem needs to take from this--as well as the previous ~10 years of politics--is: Don't depend on the online Far-Left for political support. No matter how much you cater to them, if you say *one* thing that diverges from "The Party," they will sabotage you. Image And it's not just that they will sabotage you for the slightest thought-crime, they will never, ever reward you, unless you are a cult-leader, when you do what they ostensibly like. When Biden took on student loans, it ONLY generated bad headlines. Because it wasn't "good enough"
Mar 19 • 12 tweets • 5 min read
Platner's sincerely asking Maine to not judge him for the worst thing that he ever posted on the worst day of his life. Why was it the worst day of his life and why did he respond to this horrible day by saying women should wear kevlar panties to not get raped? Image
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Image Per Platner's own account, he wrote his rape comments on the worst day of his life. He doesn't want us to judge him for that day. Why was it the worst day and why did he respond to having such a bad day specifically by talking about what women should do to not get raped? Image
Mar 18 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
If we look at the electorate broadly--not the extremes--the clear picture is that voters do not want to hear about I/P anymore. Even if they tend to be vaguely anti-Israel, they don't want to hear about it. They find it confusing, depressing, & disconnected from their lives. Americans have *never* liked hearing about foreign policy, for the record. Post-9/11 was a unique era and, I'll add, a time when what Americans heard about foreign policy was a bunch of bullshit w/ a subtext of jingoism.
Mar 17 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
spaniards always take issue when i talk about antisemitism in spain. i respect different personal experiences, but you will never be able to convince me that antisemitism is not a problem in a country where my own fiancé's grandmother told me, "you look less like a jew today." i'm not even jewish, for the record. i insisted that despite my last name--'jacobs'--my father's family, as far as i knew--were protestants. what did these "fact" get me? people made jokes about my 'dirty blood'. a jew disguised as a protestant! the worst!