I don’t want to be taken out of context here and it’s deep enough in the comment thread that this will get buried but the whole “Croatian tattoo artist” claim from a guy with a sketchy past who claims to have reformed yet has provided no evidence of reform except for words said online gives me really strong Beau of the Fifth Column vibes from back when he went on that podcast to claim that his human trafficking conviction, where he smuggled eastern European women into America to exploit their labour for the hotel industry for a few years before they went back home, was actually a humanitarian mission to rescue Jews from the oppressive government of Turkmenistan (or Tajikistan? I forget exactly but it was a central Asian -stan country that Americans have zero clue about.) It’s just super convenient and it has that whole “I have a girlfriend but you wouldn’t know her because she goes to a different high school in another state” vibe to it.
The people coming out in defence of Platner are doing all the same things that people did when faced with criticisms of Beau as well.
[CW: Human trafficking and sex slavery discussion from here on]
(Sidebar: you can’t convince me that young Eastern European women smuggled into the US to work in the hotel industry while being paid a pittance so small it was illegal even under the dismal minimum wage laws in the US while being charged like hell for accommodation don’t end up in the sex trade. You absolutely cannot. Whether Beau was aware of it, whether he facilitated it directly, that’s a matter for speculation but the hotel industry itself is sketchy and that’s without the elements of human trafficking, exploitative pay and living conditions, and Beau holding passports for ransom. That’s no smoking gun for Beau trafficking women into the sex trade and I’ve never seen any evidence to support this but saying it didn’t happen is about as plausible as the people saying they were on Epstein island but only for a scientific conference.)
I don’t want to be taken out of context here and it’s deep enough in the comment thread that this will get buried but the whole “Croatian tattoo artist” claim from a guy with a sketchy past who claims to have reformed yet has provided no evidence of reform except for words said online gives me really strong Beau of the Fifth Column vibes from back when he went on that podcast to claim that his human trafficking conviction, where he smuggled eastern European women into America to exploit their labour for the hotel industry for a few years before they went back home, was actually a humanitarian mission to rescue Jews from the oppressive government of Turkmenistan (or Tajikistan? I forget exactly but it was a central Asian -stan country that Americans have zero clue about.) It’s just super convenient and it has that whole “I have a girlfriend but you wouldn’t know her because she goes to a different high school in another state” vibe to it.
The people coming out in defence of Platner are doing all the same things that people did when faced with criticisms of Beau as well.
[CW: Human trafficking and sex slavery discussion from here on]
(Sidebar: you can’t convince me that young Eastern European women smuggled into the US to work in the hotel industry while being paid a pittance so small it was illegal even under the dismal minimum wage laws in the US while being charged like hell for accommodation don’t end up in the sex trade. You absolutely cannot. Whether Beau was aware of it, whether he facilitated it directly, that’s a matter for speculation but the hotel industry itself is sketchy and that’s without the elements of human trafficking, exploitative pay and living conditions, and Beau holding passports for ransom. That’s no smoking gun for Beau trafficking women into the sex trade and I’ve never seen any evidence to support this but saying it didn’t happen is about as plausible as the people saying they were on Epstein island but only for a scientific conference.)