Bernt Offerings
Trigger warning: images of graphic, hateful, and offensive language. 2016 -2020 #politics
Opinions and reactions based on my perception of the behavior in the content and sources below:
By the end of Obama's presidency, and before I had gotten a load of the fully malign, hostile foreign state promoted, authoritarian, fascist and racist monolith that was Trump's 2016 campaign I wasn’t paying as much attention to politics as I was in probably 2000 to 2008 when George W. Bush was in office and as malign as Trump but much quieter in hindsight than we thought he actually was at the time. I had grown complacent. I actually promoted Bernie for a bit when I only knew he plainly said he was a Democrat who wanted to give everyone healthcare and Raise wages. When he lost the primary, I turned out and proudly voted for Hillary in the 2016 general like anyone who favors civil rights vs hate groups would.
In the aftermath of the 2016 presidential primary and even leading up to Trump’s win both the extreme “horseshoe” ends were entertaining conspiracy theories that the primary had been stolen from one while the general was sure to be stolen from the other.
From the Republicans this was no surprise, by 2012 they had disillusioned much of their own base. It was reported in the Atlantic at the time that nearly half of Republicans polled no longer believed we had fair elections. The horseshoe ends were already entertaining all sorts of conspiracy theories a la propagandists like O’keefe and Greenwald that were designed to cause distrust in our elections.
The viciousness of the regressive populists toward the progressive liberal Democratic left has always been an obstacle that the majority of the coalition have tried to find road after road around in order to fend off would-be dictators. Considering that DSA has stated in public that they do not support NATO and stated to their collective organization that they wouldn’t support Biden in the 2020 election allowing them to keep running for our nomination is a very strange choice.
When you’re proposing destroying the only mechanism that gives the people any voice at all to make change and progress you are losing. A guillotine and gallows revolution doesn’t have a point in a democracy and neither does a Civil War. We have free and fair election days where, if you’re policy informed, you can proverbially kick actual nazis in their make-believe balls.
Bernie knows that and it’s why he runs as a Democrat in his district, spiking the freely given nomination to the ground after each time as a symbol to his followers that it just isn’t good enough for him.
Bernie’s supporters in many cases also spread rigged election lies, which is a big part of this story.
Here I examine *some* of what transpired since the pattern emerged:
(Trigger warning beyond this line)
“Bernie Sanders took a more vicious approach to other Democrats and Hillary Clinton in particular than he did Trump or his base, do to the Democratic "party’s rebuke of Mr. Sanders- for not clearly condemning a melee at the Nevada Democratic convention"
“Advisers to Mr. Sanders said on Wednesday that he was newly resolved to remain in the race, seeing an aggressive campaign as his only chance to pressure Democrats into making fundamental changes to how presidential primaries and debates are held in the future. They said he also held out hope of capitalizing on any late stumbles by Mrs. Clinton or any damage to her candidacy, whether by scandal or by the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump.”
Bernie’s campaign manager, a working partner of Paul Manafort, ran Bernie’s campaign like a tandem violent rhetoric bicycle.
The Daily Beast wrote:
“Supporters of Bernie Sanders have been threatening the chairman of the Nevada Democratic Party with violence after delegates for the candidate were deemed ineligible at the state’s convention over the weekend. “It’s been vile,” Chairwoman Roberta Lange said of the threats. “It’s been threatening messages, threatening my family, threatening my life, threatening my grandchild.” She alleges that one voicemail said she should be “hung in public execution.”"
Bernie Sanders accused Clinton of "Money Laundering". Though his website took it down after people generally noticed. Here is an archive link, it’s very Trumpian.
Rachel Maddow caught him lying about newspaper endorsements at his rally, and he doubled down on the lie. He likes to twist and exploit things for his own gain. Here he exploited HIV activists by misrepresenting the contention among some of their community in a meeting he invited them to:
He told millions of American voters like myself and possibly you, the reader, he had endorsements that weren’t true.
He wasn't going to appoint Garland to supreme court, instead opting for someone who would not get the necessary votes while facing a GOP led congress that year, which was a fact of life.
His campaign illegally recieved and archived Hillary Clinton campaign data and then sued the DNC for saying it wasn't proper.
We were eventually notified by Time that the breach was far more serious that we originally heard.
His wife stoked the Hillary FBI story , and then told people to vote with their hearts on election day instead of endorsing one or the other..
As Bernie generously spent exactly one endorsement on Hillary prior to the general campaign his wife also Tweeted the a video where Bernie says not to listen to him and his fans “baked” it like a “q drop”:
“Bernie Sanders’ supporters noticed an interesting tweet that Bernie’s wife, Jane Sanders, shared on Friday. Ever since Bernie endorsed Hillary Clinton, his supporters have been sharing a video interview where he said, during the primary, that his supporters may not listen to him if he ever told them who to vote for. Jane just retweeted that same video on Friday, in a tweet that had the headline “Bernie Sanders: The Movement Should Not Listen to Me.” Now his supporters are wondering if it was just a nostalgic tweet or if she was trying to send a message.”
But then we didn’t have to wonder because he Tweeted this:
The whole time his campaign had sent out lie mailers to their supporters… Just. Like. Trump.
His campaign was supported by hostile foreign states, because they believed boosting Bernie would help Trump win.
he hired manafort's PR guy, lied to the American public about reporting the Russian push for his campaign to the Clinton campaign, And they had taken polling data. Bernie supporters would deny that there was foreign election interference in 2016 or 2018 even though he blamed bad behavior on what he thought may be hostile Russian bots or trolls in 2020. In 2016 live on vermont radio he told another tale though.
Whether he participated or not, whether or not he was the candidate they intended to win (he wasn't. His campaign was used to divide the votes on the left), Russia had backed his campaign and he knew it. Another reason why the influence camps around him program in terminology like “blue anon” (which was coined by far right influencers to hide the context of why Mueller was investigating Donald Trump) are tripping over their dicks trying to hide the ways they also participated, wittingly or not.
Mueller Indicts Russians for Interfering in 2016 Election (businessinsider.com)
In earlier articles we’ve taken a look together at why we know there was hostile foreign interference. In some cases, hostile states paid political influencers to run campaigns and even organizers for in-person events and do lobbying work on their behalf. Lobbying is half of our first amendment but not a part that the states these people and groups acted as an agent or asset of would let you keep if you lived under their rule and by their desired policy. In fact, most of the leaders that his fans were soft on describing appeared to be authoritarians of one form of another from Putin to Assad to Castro.
Both extremes of the “horseshoe" partook despite the hostile interference obviously being wholly beneficial to the right.
Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov charged with Russian influence campaign - The Washington Post
Bernie’s consultants became wrapped up in the Mueller case themselves:
“after Yanukovych was forced from power and fled to Russia in 2014, Manafort again recruited Devine to help him build a new Ukrainian political party.
“My rate for something like this would be $10,000/day, including travel days,” Devine wrote in a 2014 email to Manafort’s deputy, Rick Gates. “So if you want me to leave the US on Monday 6/16 and return on Friday 6/20 that would be 5 days at $10G/day for $50,000.00. You would need to make the travel arrangements, and transfer the $50G before the trip.”
Devine ended up making the trip, emails included in the documents filed by Manafort’s lawyers show. Less than five months later, Devine signed on to work on Sanders’ presidential campaign.
In 2020, Bernie told us some of his online supporters were hostile Russian attackers. I believe him and I sympathize with his inability to tell them apart.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/bernie-some-of-my-angriest-online-bros-may-be-russian-bots
*Some maybe but not all of them, not all the people that were cultivated and spreading the same nonsense.
The ODNI report from early 2021 has this to say:
Even Donald Trump himself appears to have found the Bernie campaign useful to furthering his disinformation that somehow our elections aren’t fair, the same rhetoric that sadly led to terrorists to storm our capitol in 2020 to try and force him in as the nominee.
I don’t think all of these people that supported Bernie Sanders identified as Russian nationals or Republicans or even white supremacists and cults like the ones that supported Tulsi. Some are provocateurs, but that doesn’t account for the vast majority of people that behave this way.
here is the "activist" and Bernie supporter that cornered a then pregnant Chelsea Clinton at a vigil for shooting victims while Trump was in office, she became a sensation with many of his other supporters for doing so.
She was so proud that she boasted that it was her on her social media account.
Her social media account:
As you can clearly see the combative, rude, hateful behavior isn’t just compelled by a few Russian trolls.
This is not to mention the several attempts by Bernard sponsors and supporters alike to jacket the antifascist candidate, Joe Biden, a warm and caring human according to the accounts of those who’ve met him, as a wild wolf among sheep. Also that they sent openly gay Indiana mayor and 2020 primary candidate, Pete Buttegeig, homophobic memes when he upset their caucus hopes in Iowa. (I am not sharing the images they were comfortable with sending him but I do have that if anyone is still suspending disbelief for the hammersickle brigade)
Bernie also said he would take on the Democrats. While running yet again for our nomination…
His fans were busy attacking President Biden's wife, Dr. Jill Biden for having a doctorate and using the title.
Meanwhile in Bernerdia:
At some point Jane shared known disinformation agents with Bernie's supporters. (and some I don’t know, and John Cusack, possibly because of his board co-membership with fast Eddie Snowden. I do remember John Cusack corrected and chastized people like Jimmy Dore in public for trying to discredit the Mueller report in July of 2018 on Twitter, fwiw.)
His fans tried to get people to stop voting for Democrats…. or it’s a Russian op. Bernie apparently could not tell the difference between his supporters and the literal foreign ops, why should we bother trying to separate the two?
The “aggressive prog" and “TYT” follower crowd, for some reason, was sure Bernie had some secret app in Iowa 2020 that was keeping him down, staged by the DNC which was the second round of “rigged election” lies. “Rigging” they based on a misreading of a book, which was later clarified by it’s author
From a non-hipster perspective this whole bluster appears to be a push to infiltrate our vote and divide us.
Bernie’s supporters were frequently lied to that he had been in Selma protesting, or that he was a “freedom rider” while Trump’s supporters were being flagrantly indoctrinated and escalated from their inherently usual kitchen table slurs to full blown Naziism
They also decided that Bernie who had never really written any civil rights legislation and backed “more prisons” in his own words in an interview in the 1990s was somehow more important to the civil rights movement than our nation’s first black president who has a broader list of accomplishments both in our legislative and executive branches than Bernie would get around to in 30 years.
There is clearly a culture here which shares some of its worst virtues with hate normalization ops (like Richard Spencer’s bowtie) embedded in the flashy, merchandise and rhetoric heavy, over compensatory shock-talk.
Matt Gaetz a super far right white supremacist who is currently embroiled in a ghost progressive candidate (among other things) scandal in Florida found his favorite member of the coalition of write-ins. Yang favors her also.
The sum total of encouraging the Trump like divisive behavior is what we all witness in the January 6th committee videos and the behavior itself is why it was brilliant to end hearing evidence after the GOP phone calls were admitted in the second impeachment. Because the mirror of the alt right that the other extreme is doing gets lumped in with everyone trying to GOTV against obvious fascism. People talking about destroying government and cop cars and dressing up like a gang from the warriors for street violence while FOX films it and uses it to generate more credibility for the rhetoric of fascists would have gotten a LOT of play at any point after that. The insurrectionists had worked overtime since October 2020 to convince people that anti fascists would attack in DC that upcoming January 6th. Some of them still tried to play it off as their version of the story the last couple years.
If you are truly fighting for the better lives of everyone you can, the revolution schtick will never achieve that here. Fascists will just fill a vacuum that way.
The core rhetoric of 1776/revolution talk causes mass violence, despair, the lack of a historic understanding of civics or any real coherent plan to advance policy that we, so many who can’t afford their mistakes, will pay for. The both-sideing in conversations of Democrats and Republicans, by DSA pundits, is unreasonable and so is the lack of solidarity to the polls.
This is the culture we face every primary
That there is any portion of their cult, a compliant base of people willing to take to the streets to attack our conventions and our rallies on the left, but not an effort to get politicians with actual dependable legislation and the avenue to change things to the polls is a strong indicator that this movement is endangering not only itself but all those well intended souls who may be seeking for true activism and policy change.
Antigovernment cults are old and distort history to make their points fit. History that hate-groups and other revisionists will happily group together to rewrite into their caste system of intrinsic difference, and they will GOTV. They won’t write in third parties. The fascists know who they are voting for in the general, they understand what majority means. It’s important that everyone who doesn’t want that understand what the difference in policies are and if the Supreme Court hasn’t taught you anything I’m not sure what will.
Show us where the Bernie Sanders supporters hurt you on the doll, Fart Guy.
I ain't reading all that, bro.