Maine progressive Senate candidate Graham Platner questioned whether the mass-killing of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century “was in fact genocide” in a now-deleted 2016 Reddit comment.
The revelation of the post, first by the Washington Free Beacon on Friday, came amid national scrutiny into Platner’s past comments on social media. In other posts, Platner mocked an American soldier shot four times during a Taliban firefight as a “fat a**” who “didn’t deserve to live” and recalled his experience masturbating in a public toilet while deployed to Afghanistan.
In the 2016 post, Platner wrote that Turkey “fully admits the incident happened” and that “the issue” is whether it was a genocide or a “mass killing/displacement during wartime.” “I’m no fan of Turkey,” Platner said. “But it’s important to get the facts straight.”
Yet Turkey’s attitude toward the event is more ambiguous than the oyster farmer and self-styled populist made it out to be. Ankara’s official view, as outlined by the Turkish Foreign Ministry, is that the Armenian view of history “selects the Armenian suffering, embellishes it in several ways and presents it as a genocide—a crime defined in international law—perpetrated by Turks against Armenians.”
“Without belittling the tragic consequences for any group, Türkiye objects to the one-sided presentation of this tragedy as a genocide by one group against another,” the ministry stated.
The Turkish position often centers on the claim that the number of dead is exaggerated and that Armenians conspired with foreign powers during World War I. Yet Turkish historian Taner Akçam argues that surviving Ottoman archives “openly show the genocidal intent of the Ottoman authorities.”
“This is an opportunity for Graham to codify his view on the Armenian genocide,” Aram Hamparian, the executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America, told the Washington Examiner. “There are about 4,000 Armenians in Maine who would be very interested in what he has to say.”
In an October 2025 tweet, Platner wrote that “the genocide in Gaza is the moral test of our time.” That statement, he added, is “rooted in a belief in universal human rights, in the belief that every life has dignity.”
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In a Monday CNN interview, Massachusetts Rep. Jake Auchincloss refused to endorse his fellow New England Democrat over revelations that Platner previously had a tattoo of the Nazi Death’s Head, the symbol of Hitler’s SS, on his chest. “I find that tattoo and his commentary about it to be personally disqualifying,” Auchincloss said. “I hope Maine voters agree with me.”
The Cook Political Report rates Platner’s race against Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), the five-term Republican incumbent, as a toss-up.
The Washington Examiner has reached out to the Platner campaign for comment.