Maine Dem Graham Platner Belonged To Socialist Group Linked To ICE Attack, Tesla Bombings

Democrat Senate candidate Graham Platner was a member of a radical Left group whose members have been linked to a slew of attacks, including an assault on an ICE facility that was designated a terrorist attack this month as part of a crackdown on Antifa.

Maine’s Democrat Senate primary was upended after CNN reported that Platner had called himself a “communist” in posts on the Reddit forum r/SocialistRA, where he wrote that if people “expect to fight fascism without a good semi-automatic rifle, they ought to do some reading of history.”

The forum name refers to the Socialist Rifle Association, a group whose members have been repeatedly linked to violent political crimes.

On July 4, a group of militants allegedly swarmed law enforcement at an ICE facility in Alvarado, Texas and “opened fire at the unarmed DHS correctional officers.” One of them, Benjamin Hanil Song, is charged with shooting a police officer in the neck. Song was a member of the Socialist Rifle Association’s Dallas-Fort Worth chapter, a fellow group member told KERA.

Last week, the Department of Justice charged two suspects in that attack, Cameron Arnold and Zachary Evetts, with providing material support to terrorists, calling their crew an “Antifa Cell.” It was the first use of the terrorism statute against domestic extremists since Trump ordered a crackdown on far-left political violence. Arnold, like the founders of the Socialist Rifle Association, is transgender and goes by the name Autumn Hill.

Membership in the Socialist Rifle Association isn’t required for users to post on the Reddit forum. But a New England publication, the Robinson Report, revealed that Platner explicitly described his membership in the group.

“Check out the Maine SRA chapter, we’re quite active,” he wrote in April 2020. In August 2020, he said “my local SRA chapter” does “lots of range days, firearms education classes, and developing mutual aid networks in our community.”

Images of the Maine chapter training include a man in a pink tutu shooting a gun, and one who — though the group blurred the faces of its members — has facial hair matching Platner’s, Robinson reported.

Platner, who would face off against Republican Senator Susan Collins in the general election and has been endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), said he made the comments after a difficult time period serving in the military.

“When I got back from Afghanistan in 2011, I stayed in the Army for another year. I got out in 2012. Some of the worst comments I made, the things that I’m — I think are least defensible, that I wouldn’t even try to defend, come from that time,” he said.

The Daily Wire has chronicled Socialist Rifle Association members charged with crimes of political violence.

In October 2021, Daniel Alan Baker of Florida was sentenced to 44 months in prison for threats. After the pro-Trump Capitol protest on January 6, 2021, Baker offered “cash rewards for information leading to the verified identification of an and every individual in this video. Don’t worry, I wont ne [sic] going to the cops. We have decided to handle this ourselves.” Baker told prosecutors that he was a member of the Socialist Rifle Association, and said, “I believe that the philosophy of an anarchism leads to socialism. And I believe that the government should provide for everyone’s housing, healthcare, food. I even believe that the government should distribute weapons to people who are loyal citizens.”

On January 20, 2025, the day Donald Trump was sworn in as president, Adam Matthew Lansky allegedly threw Molotov cocktails at a Tesla dealership in Salem, Oregon. He returned to the same dealership a month later and shot it up using a semi-automatic rifle with a suppressor, according to court documents. “Lansky is a competitive shooter and a former member of the Socialist Rifle Association. He is skilled and well-practiced in the use of firearms and combat scenarios. The [improvised incendiary devices] used by Lansky were all manufactured by him,” prosecutors said.

On March 18, 2025, in Las Vegas, Paul Hyon Kim set on fire and shot up five Teslas, leaving a Molotov cocktail inside one, charging documents said. Tesla had, of course, been treated as a political symbol by the left because of Elon Musk’s support for Donald Trump. The court papers said, “Kim has an Instagram page where he follows the Socialist Rifle Association’s page. In a post from October 2018, on the Reno Socialist Rifle Association’s Instagram page, is a picture of a subject that appears to be Paul Kim training with firearms.”

A survey of Socialist Rifle Association members found that it was 30% anarchist, 30% Marxist-Leninist or Maoist, 30% Democratic Socialist, and 10% other.

The Socialist Rifle Association was incorporated in Kansas in 2019 by Alexander Tackett, who later began identifying as a woman named Alex Norma Tackett. A website for a queer bookstore he owned said, “Lilith [it/she] & Alex Tackett [she/it] are a trans lesbian couple living in Wichita with their six-year-old son.”

The group’s co-founder was Faye Ecklar, who explained that “I believe firearms ownership is necessary because as a transgender socialist, half the country wants me dead, and the other half is happy to watch. Plus, the means of production won’t seize themselves.”

Platner has faced a wave of negative publicity since his old Reddit posts resurfaced, much of which centers around the Democrat’s Nazi chest tattoo.