When the Left Fails Its Own Moral Test
When Democrats and others on the left excuse antisemitism in their own ranks, they fail the same moral test they demand of others.
I keep thinking about how quickly so many Democrats called on Ralph Northam to resign when that Blackface photo surfaced in 2019. The outcry was immediate and, frankly, appropriate. A man who’d participated in racist mockery didn’t belong leading a diverse state in 2019, full stop.
So explain this to me: how is it that a man with a Nazi tattoo and a history of hateful online posting is still running for the United States Senate as a Democrat—and drawing a crowd of nearly 750 cheering supporters?
Yes, Graham Platner has apologized. Yes, he’s covered the tattoo. But the fact that he didn’t immediately drop out of the race—and that people around him didn’t insist he do so—says something deeply unsettling about the left’s selective outrage. It says we’ve learned all the wrong lessons about accountability.
If that tattoo had been anything else—a Confederate flag, a Proud Boys logo, a swastika spray-painted on a synagogue—the conversation would be over. Yet somehow, because Platner is a veteran, because he’s saying the right things about “evolution” and “grace,” and because he’s backed by Bernie Sanders, we’re supposed to see him as a redemption story. Sorry, no. You don’t “evolve” your way out of wearing a Nazi emblem on your chest. You don’t get to treat antisemitism like a youthful mistake that can be neatly folded into your campaign narrative.
And here’s the part that makes my stomach turn: people on the left—people who pride themselves on standing against hate—are excusing it, including elected officials. The same folks who preach about systemic racism and white supremacy suddenly get quiet when Jews are the target. They talk about “grace,” “context,” and “growth.” Funny how grace seems to flow one way.
It’s the same moral blind spot that let Jeremy Corbyn, a man whose record on antisemitism is beyond defense, phone-bank for a Democratic mayoral candidate in New York last weekend. That should have been a scandal. Instead, it was barely a blip outside of the Jewish community. We’ve reached a point where many progressives can spot dog whistles in a GOP stump speech from fifty miles away—but can’t seem to recognize open antisemitism in their own ranks.
I remember 2020, when millions of people marched for racial justice. It was powerful and necessary. But I also remember how, when Jews tried to talk about antisemitism during the past two years and change, the energy shifted. Suddenly we were told it wasn’t the same. That antisemitism was “complicated.” That we were “weaponizing it.” There’s a word for that: gaslighting.
Platner’s campaign isn’t just about one man’s moral failure. It’s about what the left is willing to overlook when the offender is “one of us.” The fact that his supporters can look at a literal Nazi tattoo and still call him “inspiring” should force a reckoning. If that’s not disqualifying, what is?
There is no progressive future built on selective empathy. If we can’t hold our own accountable for hatred against Jews, we have no credibility when we talk about justice for anyone else. The left cannot claim to be anti-racist while minimizing antisemitism as a minor lapse in judgment.
Writer David Frum put it bluntly: “Republicans are having a big, public argument about the antisemitism that has contaminated their party. Democrats aren’t.” And in a follow-up, he added, “Their antisemites are vile neo-Nazis. Our antisemites bring exciting new energy to our party.”
If Democrats can’t face that truth—if they can’t hold their own accountable with the same urgency they demand of others—then they’ve surrendered the moral ground they claim to stand on. And that surrender carries consequences far beyond one Senate race.
Graham Platner should have ended his campaign the day that tattoo became public. The fact that he didn’t—and that too many Democrats have shrugged—says less about him and more about us.