The Bernie Bros Are A Problem And The Sanders Campaign Is Trying To Stop Them

[wyldwolf]

Bernie Sanders’ campaign is trying to rein in his unruly online men. Live by the Redditors, die by the Redditors.

FAIRFIELD, Iowa — The internet is home to the best of the Bernie Sanders campaign — the grassroots, youth-powered, bottom-up energy of social media fueled Sanders’s challenge to Hillary Clinton.
But the social web has also shown off the worst of Sanders supporters. Writing in her endorsement of Clinton this week, progressive writer Joan Walsh complained of harassment from online supporters of Sanders that the Vermont senator’s campaign aides have been aware of for months. Walsh called them “the Berniebot keyboard warriors,” but they’re more commonly referred to as the Bernie Bros.

In fact, top Sanders campaign aides have quietly reached out to senior officials in the Clinton campaign and women like Walsh personally to apologize for Bro behavior. Online, aides are pushing their digital community to police itself and keep the Bros quiet. And some volunteer members of Sanders’s digital army are scrambling into action, reporting offenders and moderating bro-y posts.
Still, the Bros break through, and there’s real worry in corners of Sanders-world about it.
On Thursday, the BBC catalogued social media attacks on black pundits and women who opine on Bernie. Mashable posted a ton of screenshots of Bro attacks Friday morning.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/evanmcsan/the-bernie-bros#.ruk5d0Mqo

[Hoyt]

1. Reminds me of the Swiftboaters from 2004.

[JonLeibowitz]

3. Yes, in that they are using supposed supporters to cast aspersions on his campaign. Fully agree.

[JudyM]

10. Yeah, could be. Certainly harassment isn't in line with his message or his ethic.

[Ed Suspicious]

29. Like the black-masked guus from Occupy.

Professional shit stirrers to give conservative dems something to write about.

[pandr32]

2. The attacks are shameful

And it is encouraging to see that the Sanders campaign is acknowledging that it is a real problem.

[JonLeibowitz]

4. Agreed. Would you please join me in asking Hillary to do the same?

https://twitter.com/GerardDiTrolio/status/693167535890534400

[jfern]

5. Meanwhile Hillary does nothing about all her batshit crazy supporters

Including David Brock, who runs her SuperPAC that she coordinates with. No one is running a campaign against her supporters. But Hillary has nothing else to attack Bernie with, so she attacks his supporters.

[Punkingal]

8. Bingo...she needs to distance herself from Brock. But she won't.

[workinclasszero]

6. Live by the Redditors, die by the Redditors.

[cherokeeprogressive]

16. Call me stupid, but I have absolutely no idea what that means.

[workinclasszero]

18. Reddit?

Big internets site. Lots of trolling goes on there.

Or the gif?

[cherokeeprogressive]

23. I've seen the word... never been to the website.

Is a "redditor" an editor there or something?

[Agnosticsherbet]

7. Sanders is incapable of controling the his campaign... nt

[jfern]

14. Hillary controls her David Brock to be a total fucking slimeball

[bvar22]

24. Wow. Sanders can't control the Internet.

Guess what?
Neither can Hillary, and her supporters on that site are no better.

[frylock]

31. Sanders is incapable of controling the his interwebs... nt

[DanTex]

9. Kudos to Bernie and his campaign for taking notice and taking action.

Hopefully people will listen.

[beam me up scottie]

11. Bernie supporters post about Bernie and Hillary.

Hillary supporters post about Bernie and Bernie supporters.

It's like they don't have a candidate at all.

[FloridaBlues]

12. Took them long enough to address it. Too many groups, unions and politicians got nailed by them

Some pretty nasty onslaught has been done.

[Doctor_J]

13. snark. like Bernie in charge of what every one of his supporters posts. poor Hillary

Oh wait. She has Clarence Thomas pal David Brock on her campaign

[TIME TO PANIC]

15. Ah, those misogynistic Bernie Bros are at it again.

Last edited Sun Jan 31, 2016, 01:04 AM - Edit history (1)

You know Trump wishes he could appeal to that crowd.

[madfloridian]

17. 3rd campaign in which supporters are belittled, 2 of them Hillary campaigns.

They called us Deaniacs crazy and our candidate they said was worse than crazy. We were ridiculed and lectured constantly.

They treated us like children in 08, calling us a cult or worse....Hillary even used a little racism and sexism against Obama.

Now we are Berniebros or Sandernistas. And we are lectured by both campaigns as disruptive children.

Bernie has given us his lecture, now it is time for Hillary to reign her supporters in a little.

We may be crazy, but our enthusiasm more than makes up for that.

[arcane1]

28. She can't win on policy, so denigration is the best she can do n/t

[Bluenorthwest]

20. That's the Double Standard for Bernie thing again. Things said by people on the actual 08

Obama campaign included "Hillary is a monster who will say anything to get elected" said by a woman who now holds high position as a result of those efforts. His supporters were relentless toward LGBT, his surrogates included invective spewing anti gay hate preachers and 'ex gays' who actually attacked LGBT at official Obama events.
Hillary and Bill were constantly saying things that seemed really condescending at best and very racist at worst about Obama. People on DU posted photos of lynchings and said Hillary's campaign was like a lynch mob. DU Hillary supporters are often on time outs or PPR'd for being incredibly nasty.

But Bernie's supporters are too harsh? 'She's like a lynch mob' is not harsh? 'She's a monster' is not harsh?

I don't get it.

[JI7]

25. and Obama lost the LGBT vote to Hillary and did not do as well compared to 2004 in the GE

(in 2012 he got it back to 04 level) and Clinton of course lost the black vote.

so they there were consequences for it.

[Bluenorthwest]

27. Consequences were he became President, she became Sec of State

The 'Monster Shouter' is I think Ambassador to the UN. Cushy stuffs, these consequences.

[JI7]

30. and Sanders will be Senator if he loses and Hillary will continue to do well if she loses

[arely staircase]

21. This place is swarming with them. nt

[nichomachus]

22. If only Hillary had acted to swiftly to rein in the PUMAs nt

[Bluenorthwest]

26. Joan Walsh Recycled or Joan Then and Now. Let's see what she said about Obama 08 :

"We saw the face of the angry white female backlash against Obama over the weekend, and it was hard not to turn away. On Friday, Geraldine Ferraro complained in a Boston Globe Op-Ed that she's been demonized for saying that Obama's presidential run benefited from his being black, and called her treatment "reverse racism." On Saturday, Harriet Christian replaced Ferraro as the overwrought voice of white female resentment. There she was at the Democratic National Committee meeting, screaming at reporters that Democrats were about to nominate "an inadequate black male who would not have been running had it not been a white woman that was running for president."

Beyond Christian's deplorable reference to Obama as an "inadequate black male" was a wail worth hearing. She also said, "I'm proud to be an older American woman!" I can feel her pain. Reading the sexist attacks on Clinton and her white female supporters, as well as on female journalists and bloggers who've occasionally tried to defend her or critique Obama, has been, well, consciousness-raising. Prejudice against older women, apparently, is one of the last non-taboo biases. I've been stunned by the extent to which trashing Clinton supporters as washed up old white women is acceptable."
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2008/06/the-damage-done/5117/

And here's a link to her Hillary endorsement which contains very similar criticism for Bernie and his supporters this time around. Every cycle she finds this exact same set of faults in the candidate she does not like. Template punditry.
http://www.thenation.com/article/why-im-supporting-hillary-clinton-with-joy-and-without-apologies/

One last Joan 2008 quote:
"“I was struck when I got to Iowa and New Hampshire in January by how our media colleagues were just swooning over Barack Obama. That is not too strong a word. They were swooning. I was at a speech, I remember it, I will write about it some day, in Manchester, and every, the biggest names in our business were there, and they were, they could repeat some of his speech lines to one another. It was like a Bruce Springsteen concert where the fans sing along. And, you know, I respected it to some extent. He’s a towering political figure. Of our generation, he’s probably the best politician, he’s inspiring. And, reporters, white reporters, black reporters, reporters of every race, we want to get beyond racism in America. So, he was, he was inspiring, I understood it, they’re humans, they responded. The downside though is that they hate, hate Hillary Clinton, most of them. Hate is not too strong a word.”

It's just sort of amazing to me that people don't try new stuff. She's phoning it in.

[Number23]

32. The cynic in me is wondering where all of this media scrunity was when the Trolls were attacking

BLM over the summer. Don't get me wrong, I am ecstatic that Joan Walsh's piece has highlighted this bullying, brain dead and infantile behavior, but black folks caught it worse and first.

While there definitely was quite a bit of scrutiny then, particularly after a black Twitter user was so tired of being harassed by pro-Sanders Trolls that he created the #berniesoblack hash tag, but I don't remember the coverage being anywhere near this comprehensive nor this INTERNATIONAL. Even BBC has covered it. And I am completely unaware of the Sanders campaign doing anything about it either.

[frylock]

33. Second verse, same as the first!

Enjoy your weekend! Two more days before shit gets real!

[R B Garr]

34. Great points. They are decidedly undemocratic in

their internet practices and trying to shut people up. No wonder the Sanders campaign is worried.