Blackcap Blog

Published at 10:09 on 26 October 2025

He’s the (apparently) left populist candidate running in the Democratic Party primary to become that party’s candidate for U.S. Senate from the state of Maine (to hopefully unseat Susan “Concerned” Collins).

Everything was going relatively well for him until it came out that he has had a Nazi totenkopf tattoo on his chest for approximately the past two decades. Platner responded by claiming he had no idea as to the origin of the symbol and having it covered up soon after the news of it broke.

Many of his erstwhile backers on the activist Left have since expressed skepticism about Platner’s claims and have shifted their support to other candidates. After looking into his background a bit, I share the skepticism. (Moreover, evidence has emerged that he was well aware of its symbolism. But back to my skepticism.)

First, the guy has been at times dabbling in left-wing causes ever since his High School years, when he protested against George W. Bush’s Iraq War, and was voted “most likely to start a revolution” by his peers.

Yet, despite his knowledge of how the ruling class was willing to abuse military power, he chose to enlist in that very same military. He attended college after serving three deployments in Iraq… then rejoined the military, this time as part of the Maryland Army National Guard, and served an additional deployment in Afghanistan. After that stint ended, he topped it all off by serving as a Blackwater mercenary in Afghanistan. Then it was back to private life and dabbling in left-wing causes. Eventually he gets approached by activists who want him to become a Senate candidate.

How likely is it that someone with as much exposure to politics, particularly left-wing politics (of which anti-fascism is part) as Platner has had, would continue to remain ignorant for so long of the totenkopf and its symbolism? Not very likely, in my view.

It is certainly possible that his story of getting it in Croatia by choosing it off the wall of a tattoo parlour is accurate. That country has a disturbing fascist past it has never come to a reckoning with. It is the one-time home of the Ustaše, a fascist regime infamous for its brutality. (The Ustaše concentration camp of Jasenovac was even worse than the Nazi concentration camps.) Franjo Tuđman, president of Croatia from 1990 to 1999, was a Holocaust denier who wrote antisemitic propaganda that tried to blame the crimes of the Ustaše on the Jews.

But I digress. To reiterate, it just beggars the imagination that he was unaware of the symbol’s meaning until only recently, and there is already evidence that he is lying and was well aware of its origin and meaning.

This is not because he’s a committed Nazi, but because he’s not a committed leftist or liberal. He’s an amoral adventurer and maybe by this point a conman, too. He’ll play around with a variety of ideologies and careers without firmly believing in any of them. Wants to have an adventure as an antiwar activist in High School and has it. Wants to have adventures as first a soldier and then a mercenary and has them.

Now, after having the idea floated by him, it is time for an adventure in Senatorial politics. Because of his past adventures in Left causes, running on the left comes natural to him.

That is, until he’s in office, gets a little bored, and it’s time for other adventures. I could easily see him getting frustrated with the Democratic Party (it’s a frustrating organization), resigning from that party and becoming an independent, and drifting firmly into the MAGA orbit. That may seem like a big leap, but is it, really, for someone who went from demonstrating against U.S. imperialism to signing up to fight in the very same imperialist military whose invasion he so recently protested?

The guy could easily become Fetterman 2.0, that is. Or worse. Imagine Fetterman but instead of weak-willed appeasement he enthusiastically starts backing all of Stephen Miller’s worst ideas.

And can we cut the crap about purity tests? Yes, what I am advocating here is in a sense a purity test, in that it sets out some standards and finds Platner wanting in that regard. There’s this thing called balance: it’s wrong to demand perfection of fallible humans, but it is also wrong to say that there ought to be no standards whatsoever.

If the story arc of Platner’s life was from committed young right-winger from a right-wing family, to enthusiastic military volunteer ready to prove his patriotism, to disillusionment at what he saw U.S. imperialism doing, to regret at having what he realized was Nazi symbolism tattooed on his body (followed by having it promptly covered up or removed), to a post-military career as a Left activist, I would be incredibly enthusiastic about his campaign. A lot of what he is saying is absolutely spot-on, and I love that he pulls no punches while saying it. That he made mistakes earlier in his life I would not hold against him, because he learned from those mistakes.

In this case, however, the story arc of his life points to quite a different path, one that raises very real questions about his character.

It’s not as if there is nobody else running in the primary, and the filing deadline has not even passed yet. Choose someone else to run against Collins.

Published at 14:43 on 25 October 2025

This is an important question to ask because it has real bearing for the continued existence of political freedom in the USA. (50501 is the organization behind the two waves of “No Kings” protests in the USA.)

As I have written previously, the answer as to whether or not te USA remains a relatively free country depends largely on whether or not a “none of the above” mass opposition movement, not explicitly linked with either the Democratic Party establishment or the radical Left subculture, emerges. So: does 50501 appear to be such a movement?

The answer: apparently yes. I have not found much at all credibly linking 50501’s top leadership (such as it is, the group seems to be quite informal) to the Democratic Party establishment.

Yes, I am sure one can find examples of Democratic politicians endorsing or appearing at No Kings rallies. So what. That is irrelevant to my claim, which is, to reiterate, about that group’s top leadership, such as it is, who are not Democratic Party bigwigs.

The biggest link seems to be between 50501 and the Bernie Sanders campaigns. Kay Evert from the Atlanta area seems prominent.

Bernie Sanders is not a career Democrat (he is an independent who caucuses with the Democrats), and when he was a member of a political party, it was with first a small socialist party and then another small, generically progressive party, both unique to Vermont.

In fact Democratic Party establishment generally does not like Bernie Sanders very much. It’s why they put their finger on the scale in favour of Hillary Clinton in 2016, and a big part of why career Democratic Party candidates united against Sanders in 2020.

Even the right-wing Influence Watch organization, who I am sure would love to deligitamize 50501 as much as they can, just does not have much on establishment Democrat links to 50501 as of this time.

Perhaps a greater worry is how timid the 50501 actions have been, given what is happening. A healthy democracy would have grassroots movements basically shutting down business as usual in response to something like a Trump regime. Business as usual has been shut down in several European democracies in recent years over scandals far less serious. It is not hard, in fact, to find anarchists griping about this very thing.

50501 would counter that anything more aggressive would probably alienate many Americans. And they are probably correct about this. But this ends up damning the American public for its generally low morals and standards, since, to reiterate, a healthy democracy would have a much stronger political immune response happening.

What it all boils down to, I think, is reason for a little — but only a little — optimism. It is a positive sign that a “none of the above” movement might actually be emerging, but we need a lot more than what we have seen so far, and we need it stat.

Published at 08:37 on 18 October 2025

This is probably the most underreported good news story of the week. Because this.

Published at 16:48 on 8 October 2025

If you want a quick little example of just how badly the Democrats collectively suck, watch the first minute and 10 seconds of this.

Senator Durbin starts out by making feeble complaining noises about a National Guard “deployment.” No, you stupid Dick. It’s an invasion. Trump is ordering troops to invade Chicago. Learn to say it: invasion. That’s what Republicans call it when immigrants (i.e. civilians, not even military personnel on an official mission) cross the US/Mexico border illegally.

By contrast, Pam Bondi acts like she actually wants to fight for what her side wants. She goes on counterattack and does not pull any punches.

The biggest problem with the Democrats is that they seldom behave as if they actually believe in anything. Anything, that is, except bringing metaphorical knives to gun fights. (Butter knives at that, wouldn’t want to accidentally draw blood, now would we?) That, they seemingly believe in with a passion that knows no bounds. And even an ongoing transition to fascist authoritarianism is apparently not enough to prompt a recalibration of their strategies.

What’s even worse is that so few apparently see it. After Durbin bombed so badly, the Democratic Party echo chamber was full of praise for his purported “confrontation” with Bondi. I am not making this up. Feed “Durbin grills Bondi” into your search engine of choice if you don’t believe me. Which all goes to further prove my point about the overall general nature of the Democrats.

Yes, there are exceptions to the rule (I would count Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker among them). The problem is not the exceptions, it is the rule. Until the pathetic, half-hearted Milquetoasts that dominate the party either find a spine or are replaced (or the party itself is replaced), the problem will persist.

And until that happens, the Republicans are merely acting rationally when they act the way they do. If your so-called opposition is too pathetic to actually fight you in a meaningful way, why not mostly ignore their feeble bleatings? Why not kick them around? Why not fully and forcefully advocate for what you want? Only makes sense.

Published at 08:26 on 30 September 2025

This assumes Mamdani wins the NYC mayoral election, but odds are he will, assuming he isn’t killed, jailed, or exiled first (and the latter are not out of the question).

But assume for sake of argument he wins, and is inaugurated. The standard advice is that he was elected mayor, not to any national office, so he should focus on governing NYC (a hard enough job as it is) and stay out of national politics. And, in normal times, that would be solid counsel.

The rub is, it doesn’t matter. I really doubt that Trump will allow Mamdani that luxury. In fact, surprise, surprise, Trump has already announced he’s not planning to.

It is inevitable that there will be a clash between the two. They’re just too different for it to not happen.

Published at 07:43 on 25 September 2025

So we know the suspected shooter’s identity, but he committed suicide before he could be arrested and interrogated. In fact, he committed suicide immediately after shooting the place up. The “anti-ICE message” was literally just “anti-ICE.” Nobody who knew him has, to my knowledge, said much (if anything) about his politics. And, to reiterate, he shot the place up, managing to kill nobody but detainees (no ICE agents were harmed).

Sure looks like a mentally disturbed individual with no political motive to me. There definitely does not seem to be enough evidence to conclude otherwise at this time.

Published at 20:57 on 24 September 2025

“Anti-ICE messages” on the bullet casings, yet they won’t say precisely what they are? After another high-profile killing in which messages were written on bullet casings (this time, with actual evidence)? And the claims come not from investigators on the ground, but politically-appointed high officials?

Yeah, right. It all totally smacks of an attempt to attribute political meaning to something that might not have such meaning, right down to recycling something from a recent politically-motivated killing.

On top of that, only detainees were shot and killed (and not a single ICE agent).

And no perpetrator (and perpetrator’s friends and family) has been identified yet, yet they’re dead sure it was left-wing political terrorism.

Yeah, right. This one sure seems sus as hell.

Published at 09:53 on 22 September 2025

There recently was lot of wishing for Trump’s early demise amongst many on the Left. This wish was expressed via a flurry of speculation as to the current state of Trump’s health.

Those leftists are letting their emotions get in the way of thinking clearly.

If Trump leaves the building, J.D. Vance will almost certainly take his place. As I wrote not long ago, Vance is highly likely to be a more competent overseer of the economy than Trump. Fascism under Vance is thus more likely to stabilize into a longer-lived regime.

The longer Trump stays in power, the more damage his policies will do to the USA. This is as it should be; the price for electing a fascist should be high. Political culture in the USA needs to learn a painful lesson about touching a metaphorical hot stove, and this lesson is likely to come sooner the longer Trump remains in power.

Yes, this is harsh, but as Churchill once observed “The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.”

Published at 07:46 on 21 September 2025

That’s my executive summary of Apple’s new Liquid Glass theme in macOS 26 and iOS 26.

Sure, it was needless make work for Apple’s design department. Sure, it would have probably been better off not to spend all that effort. However, I haven’t run across anything bad overall. I was ready to follow this suggested list of settings tweaks, but quickly realized the default settings were just fine.

The minor changes in the system itself are nothing like the major, revision-to-revision changes in Apple’s mail client. Those were genuinely annoying, and it was hard to turn them all back. There was this persistent trend of using more and more screen real estate to display less and less useful information about each message. At least this is how things were five or six years ago; I have been using Mozilla Thunderbird ever since then.

It is Thunderbird’s lack of frequent, gratuitous design changes which generally makes for a generally better overall user experience. It may look a little dated, but you can see a lot more useful information about the messages in your inbox at a glance. The worst thing about Thunderbird is the message-composition editor, which has always been a little janky when one tries to do anything more than the most basic of HTML formatting, but putting up with that has been a price worth paying for some useful UI stability and density of information presentation.

Published at 09:34 on 20 September 2025

This is, of course, what we know so far, which is constrained by Robinson choosing to exercise his right to remain silent and not answer his interrogators’ questions. As more information becomes available, this is subject to change. I feel compelled to point this out just in case some bad-faith arguer takes it out of its historical context and cites something here at some point in the future when some bit of additional knowledge makes something that follows in need of revision.

No Explicit Statement of Motive

There has not yet been any explicit statement of motive (i.e. manifesto or statement(s) to interrogators) come to light in this thing. The closest we have are private communications between Robinson and his friends and family.

We also might have inscriptions on bullet casings. Both “hey fascist! CATCH!” and “O Bella ciao, Bella ciao, Bella ciao Ciao ciao!” have clear anti-fascist interpretations. The rub is they also appear in video games, and the other two inscriptions Robinson put on bullet casings have no clear political connotations, only online gamer meme ones.

In All Likelihood, However, It Was Political

It’s not that much a stretch to get a political message out of half the inscriptions. It’s not so cut and dried as the Governor of Utah implied, but it’s also a pretty obvious thing to conclude.

So there were five arrow symbols referencing a game move after “hey fascist! CATCH!” That is just as consistent with Robinson being an antifascist with a gamer background as it is with him being merely a gamer with no strong opinion about fascism. (Really, now, I am supposed to find it plausible that no gamer anywhere can have strong political beliefs about anything?)

And, yes, the “bella ciao” inscription refers to a song used in a video game. Well, so what? Lots of video games have been written, and lots of songs have been used in them in total. Ruling out a political meaning behind what is widely acknowledged to be a political folk song just because it happens to be used in a game somewhere strikes me as a weak argument.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly of all, we have Robinson’s own personal circumstances. Somehow he ended up with an MTF transgender roommate and romantic partner. It is likely that this gave Robinson a first hand view of the struggles of transpeople under Trump fascism, and that this inflamed Robinson’s innate sense of fair play.

While it is possible to construct arguments that things are otherwise, it is clear that the vast preponderance of currently-available evidence points to the above being the simplest possible explanation for Robinson doing what he did.

The Advocacy of LGBT Rights Is a Leftist Position

Just consider the first sentence of the Wikipedia definition of left-wing politics: “Left-wing politics is the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy either as a whole, or of certain social hierarchies.”

In response to a social hierarchy that defines cisgendered heterosexuals to be the only morally acceptable sort of individual, and all others to be morally inferior, LGBT rights seeks to achieve greater social equality and opposes this hierarchy that judges people by their sexual and gender orientations. Clearly a left-wing position.

Since Robinson apparently did what he did because he was motivated by a left-wing political belief, it is fair to characterize what he did as apparently left-wing political terrorism.

Robinson Is Probably Not a Leftist

This is not a contradiction of what I just wrote! One can have a left position on an issue, or even multiple left positions on multiple issues, yet also have right-wing positions (or no strong stance) on many other issues.

Having a few left-wing positions does not in and of itself make one a leftist. A leftist is someone with left-wing positions on the vast preponderance of issues.

In his later years in the Senate, Barry Goldwater staked out a left of centre position on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military, i.e. that they should be able to openly serve, just like any other individual; the social hierarchy that had relegated non-straight people as lesser and incapable of serving was invalid, and ought to be changed. Yet Goldwater remained overall a staunch conservative.

Remember, Robinson wasted at least half the slogans he wrote on bullet casings on apolitical stuff. Would a committed leftist do that? Unlikely.

In particular, we have the “If you read This, you are GAY Lmao” inscription. This uses “gay” as something derisive and worthy of ridicule. Not something a committed leftist would likely do. Certainly not something most any leftist group would endorse.

Finally, a committed leftist would probably want to leave some sort of more formal manifesto behind tying together his left-wing beliefs and how they motivated his action.

Robinson Is Definitely Not Trans

Sorry, Trump fascists. He is a cisgendered, straight, White male from a conservative Mormon family, who lived well away from those big, “dangerous” cities you fear so much.

The Most Plausible Theory

As I wrote above: It is likely that living with a transperson gave Robinson a first hand view of the struggles of transpeople under Trump fascism, and that this inflamed Robinson’s innate sense of fair play. In other words, he self-radicalized in response to his personal lived experience. The organized Left had little to do with it directly.

Yes, Robinson’s MAGA family claim he moved to the left. Well, he did! On the one issue of trans rights, that is (and maybe a few others that we don’t know about).

Mental Illness Is Also Plausible

I tend to think so just because of the generally unfocused and discombobulated nature of what few messages Robinson has left us, plus the impulsiveness of his action, and the oversights in his plan (which aided in his prompt identification and capture). Moreover, his reaction when his family realized he was probably the prime suspect and confronted him is rumoured to have been to threaten suicide.

It’s not just me, either. Suicide while incarcerated pending trial is a thing, and those holding him have the same suspicions. They have placed him on suicide watch and dressed him in a special vest reserved for prisoners judged to be at risk of ending their lives.

And again, this does not invalidate a political motive. It is completely possible to have strong, genuine political beliefs and to be struggling with mental health issues.

Organized Left Not Involved

If Robinson was a member of an organized left-wing group, the most likely response to his proposal to shoot Charlie Kirk would have been to point out it’s not a great idea and to talk him out of it. In the (unlikely) event it was decided otherwise, the group would have reviewed his plans, cautioned him to wear a mask, selected better messages to inscribe on the bullet casings, and prepared a manifesto or press release.

At this stage, evidence of co-conspirators would have doubtless emerged.

None of this has happened, and no evidence has emerged that Robinson was anything other than a lone actor radicalized by anything other than his life experiences. Therefore the most reasonable conclusion is he was just that.

“The Left” Is Not Responsible

Sorry, it’s just not. I had no idea of Robinson’s plans before he put them into action, and neither did any other leftist.

Lack of remorse, celebration, or conflicted feelings at hearing news of a dead fascist on the part of some other leftists does not disprove this.

It’s a lot like when Saddam Hussein met his end. I didn’t like the Iraq War, yet given all that Hussein had did, let’s just say that it was incredibly hard to feel very sorry about what happened to him, despite my general opposition to capital punishment.

Criminalizing Left Politics Will Cause More Violence

Aside from the obvious civil liberties aspects, turning this into an excuse to criminalize left politics is precisely the wrong action from a prevention standpoint. This sort of one-off attack seldom accomplishes much in the way of positive social change. There is knowledge of this on the Left. On top of that, many leftists prefer nonviolent tactics. As I pointed out above, the most likely response of a left group, if Robinson was a member and had proposed shooting Kirk, would be to reject the proposal.

Making it harder for those frustrated by the Trump regime’s policies to oppose them in an organized and aboveground fashion is just going to result in more acts of lone-wolf terrorism, not less.

Just look at where Kirk met his demise. It wasn’t in California or New York or any other left-leaning state with a vibrant left activist scene. It was in Utah, one of the most politically conservative states in the Union.

Something Like This Was Inevitable

Because of course it was: we have in the USA an angry, polarized society with lots of guns in private hands. Just take it from there.

Assassinations (more precisely, attempts at same) are one of the easier forms of political action to take. No need for endless organizing to attract people to your cause. No need for endless committees planning actions. Just a lone guy with a gun and a grudge, that’s all it takes.

As Was the Response to It

Because of course it is. MAGA politics is a form of fascism, and the fascist is always looking for excuses to criminalize non-fascist political thought and actions.

As I wrote last spring:

To sum up: If fascists try to take freedom away, some people will attempt to resist it. The resistance will not be 100% coordinated and optimized. Some elements of it might choose tactics you (or I) disagree with and/or regard as unstrategic. The root problem is, however, not the resistance. It is the fascism.

I don’t know what to do about this other than to point it out. To fall for the whole “the Left provoked fascism” garbage is basically the same thing as a battered wife falling for her abusive husband’s lie that she is forcing him to hit her, and that she needs to try to be a better wife.