Twitter isn't real life — so why pretend that "Bernie Bros" are a problem?
Deconstructing a pervasive media narrative.
(Photo via Wikimedia Commons)
It’s a message pushed by media and political elites whenever the discourse on Twitter turns against their favor — that the website isn’t reflective of real life. This is true; the vast majority of the U.S. population likely has no idea what happens on the site. You wouldn’t get that idea from the tenor of political reporting, however. Because all journalists are on Twitter nowadays, countless barrels of ink have been spilled over stories that more or less boil down to “someone said something dumb on the website again.”
Often the focal point of these stories is our President. And there’s a compelling argument that his tweets are newsworthy — it’s the id of the most powerful man in the world, after all. Too many other times, however, it’s something with no effect on reality. One such example is the concept of the “Bernie Bro” — a rabid supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign, often typecast as white, male and affluent, not afraid to trample upon women and minorities if it means getting the Vermont socialist elected.
Never mind that polls show Sanders with higher support among both black and women than the majority of the field, let alone than in his 2016 campaign. Bernie Bros are still an issue that political reporters find salient in this campaign, and today I’ll be looking at a Daily Beast article that attempts to articulate the issue. Let’s begin.
Sen. Bernie Sanders has called their behavior “disgusting.” Would-be supporters of the Vermont independent have cited them as the reason they can’t endorse him. His campaign has even privately apologized to rivals for online pile-ons that crossed the line into open harassment.
And still, the Bernie Bro army marches on.
For argument’s sake, let’s assume that the phenomenon that author Scott Bixby describes here is real — that Sanders’s vast legion of online support has grown toxic to his electoral chances.
The internet has been perhaps the Sanders campaign’s most useful tool for organizing the candidate’s most fervent fans, whose ride-or-die loyalty to Sanders has long outlasted his first campaign for president.
But like Star Wars, Rick and Morty, and Taylor Swift before him, Sanders is grappling with how to channel the best parts of that support—the engine behind his massive rally crowds and commensurate fundraising numbers, and as he is sequestered on Capitol Hill for the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump—while discouraging a toxic wedge of fandom that threatens to distract from his campaign and turn off potential supporters.
The first line of that second paragraph is remarkably telling, and I want to hone in on it as we continue. When Rick and Morty fans get angry over McDonald’s not having any szechuan sauce, we think it’s stupid because they’re getting so worked up over something that isn’t real. They saw it on a TV show once; it has no bearing on their material conditions. When Bernie Sanders supporters get mad, it’s by definition something that is real, whether it’s healthcare, foreign policy, debt or the economy — and is so often it’s something that is the difference between life or death.
Moreover, what evidence do we have that Bernie Bros “threaten[s] to distract from his campaign and turn off potential supporters?” Journalism is writing what’s happened, not speculating the twists and turns of the next episode. A person who can afford to base their vote on the demeanor of people on Twitter is one either lying to themselves, or one whose life is so privileged that it truly makes no difference, to them, who is in power. For that latter group — which I suspect includes D.C. journos such as those who work for the Daily Beast — I suppose such a “fan theory” could seem logical. Otherwise, it reads as wishcasting.
The intensity of the largely social-media-driven attacks by Sanders’ fans has risen sharply in recent weeks, as polling in early states has tightened among the top tier of Democratic candidates and just as Sanders himself has pointedly avoided engaging with even the most direct attacks on his candidacy.
Electorically speaking, Bixby is right. Whether or not the “Bernie Bro” phenomenon exists, it doesn’t appear to have hurt Sanders’s polling. I suppose that means the premise of his article is wrong, but he powers through.
When Sen. Elizabeth Warren accused Sanders of telling her in a private meeting that he didn’t believe that a woman could defeat President Donald Trump in 2020, the Massachusetts senator’s Twitter feed was deluged with a plague of snake emojis even as Sanders called for a de-escalation in hostilities. After former presidential nominee Hillary Clinton doubled down on comments in an upcoming documentary that “nobody” in Congress likes Sanders, the number of tweets calling her a “bitch” skyrocketed to new highs, according to an analysis by The Daily Beast.
The idea that anyone’s vote is going to be swayed by people spamming an emoji, on a U.S. Senator’s feed on a website less popular than Reddit, eBay and Bing, is absurd. And if that were the case, perhaps that person didn’t have strong political beliefs to begin with. Maybe they were treating politics as entertainment, and got mad at a different sect of the fanbase.
I did the same analysis of Twitter that the Beast did — that is to say, I searched “Hillary Clinton” and “bitch.” A fair amount of these tweets were from people who were decidedly not “bros.” Could it be internalized misogyny? Sure. It could also be that Hillary Clinton is one of the most visible politicians of our time — one who voted for the Iraq War and Wall Street bailouts, among the 21st century’s greatest catalysts for human misery — and those affected by her folly lashing out as she attempts to reclaim her presence on the political stage, independent of her gender.
“It’s not only him, it’s the culture around him,” Clinton told The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s his leadership team. It’s his prominent supporters. It’s his online Bernie Bros and their relentless attacks on lots of his competitors, particularly the women. And I really hope people are paying attention to that because it should be worrisome that he has permitted this culture—not only permitted, [he] seems to really be very much supporting it.”
In journalism school, we are taught to consider the credibility of our sources: whether or not they’re being genuine, or are an authority on the subject. That said, I am not being facetious at all when I ask my readers to strongly consider Hillary Clinton’s credibility on this particular subject. Hell, later in The Hollywood Reporter story, interviewer Lacey Rose asks Clinton on her association with Harvey Weinstein, to which Clinton replies, “How could we have known?” How could you have, indeed.
Sanders has gone so far as to rescind his highly influential endorsement for politicians whose online behavior has stepped out of bounds, as he did in December, when past misogynistic remarks made by longtime backer and congressional candidate Cenk Uygur resurfaced (although the decision only came after Uygur, hoping to head off the blowback, declared that he would un-accept the endorsement).
The notion of tying a politician to the behavior of their supporters is nothing new. Indeed, many people who have said horrific, sexist things in the past — like Uygur, or more recently, Joe Rogan — are in Bernie’s camp now. But the fact that Sanders has managed to attract the socially conservative or reactionary despite running an unabashedly socially progressive campaign should be an encouraging sign to liberals that a path to de-radicalization is possible. It’s certainly, on paper, a more viable electoral strategy than compromising excessively with the hopes of wooing the socially liberal and fiscally conservative sect of the electorate — which Clinton tried and failed to do in 2016.
The “Bernie Bro” question has plagued Sanders’ campaign since he last ran for president in 2016, when top campaign officials felt obligated to reach out to rival campaigns to apologize for the behavior of some of Sanders’ more rabid fans. Sanders’ condemnation of his most aggressive online supporters has been unequivocal for years—he called their behavior “disgusting” in a 2017 interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper—and his response to Clinton’s remarks on Tuesday morning were so conciliatory that Republicans dragged him for being a wimp.
Republican operatives attacking a Democrat — which is what is taking place in this tweet that Bixby linked to in the actual Beast article — isn’t newsworthy. It’s literally their job.
No representatives for any rival presidential campaigns would discuss the issue of “Bernie Bro” hostility on the record—at least in part, one official working for another Democratic presidential hopeful said, because they didn’t want to be on the receiving end of an online Walk of Atonement.
“Remember Cersei’s walk of shame?” the official texted The Daily Beast, using a Game of Thrones reference by way of explanation. “That’s what my mentions would look like.”
To me, this does not read as a good faith argument, and here’s why. Let’s say that a leading Democratic contender for the presidency did indeed have a sexist pack of Twitter trolls that threatened to torpedo the party in November — never mind the fact that enough voters didn’t seem to care about the famously jovial rallies of Donald Trump in 2016. It would be your moral imperative to speak out, with the burden of seeing a few poop emojis a small price to pay for American democracy.
And yet, you don’t have to, because news outlets will give you all the anonymity you want to say smarmy quotes. Because, sadly, it is all just a parlor game for them sometimes, too.
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Politics and Prozac is a biweekly newsletter about elections and their consequences. The author, Arya Hodjat, is a senior studying journalism and political science at the University of Maryland. You can reach him at aryahodjat11@gmail.com, or on Twitter @arya_kidding_me. Until next time, take care.