This is fantastic. Any doubt now, Berniebots, that the calls and texts were your peeps?
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Jon Ralston ?@RalstonReports 2h2 hours ago
Jon Ralston Retweeted Riley Snyder
This is fantastic. Any doubt now, Berniebots, that the calls and texts were your peeps?
I imagine more of these stories will drip out. This man--Ethan wants his privacy but had no morals when he left a threatening message. His story is unbelievable. I just shake my head!!
TWEET:
Sick! We Called Up Bernie Fans Who Threatened NV Dem State Chair & Asked Them to Explain Themselves http://theslot.jezebel.com/we-called-up-bernie-fans-who-threatened-nevada-dem-stat-1777177985?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_facebook&utm_source=gawker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow #ImwithHer
We Called Up Bernie Fans Who Threatened Nevada Dem State Chair and Asked Them to Explain Themselves
http://theslot.jezebel.com/we-called-up-bernie-fans-who-threatened-nevada-dem-stat-1777177985?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_facebook&utm_source=gawker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow
Anna Merlan
Today 11:15amFiled to: nevada
Thanks to some extremely zealous Bernie Sanders supporters, the Nevada State Democratic Convention this past weekend was a particularly epic disaster, devolving into yelling, graffiti, chair-throwing and many, many threats and insults phoned in to Democratic State Party Chairwoman Roberta Lange. Yesterday, we called some of the threat-makers back, to get some insight into why they thought that was a good plan.
.............“We know where you live, where you work, where you eat,” another text to Lange read. “Where your kids go to school/grandkids. We have everything on you. We are your neighbors, friends, family, etc.”
The person who sent that one is a 26-year-old named Ethan with a Wisconsin area code, although he assured me the number was fake (and, I assume, the name was as well).
“Do you know what the concept of Anonymous is?” he asked me, immediately.
I said that I did. Ethan explained he’d been undertaking an Anonymous-esque action, but also, that he was trying to play a threatening character deliberately, to send a message.
“She is very much a top person,” Ethan said, referring to Lange. “The establishment and people like her have been on the internet themselves writing posts that try to incite hate. Try to incite frustration. They pay off trolls to start problems and stuff like that.” (For example, a pro-Hillary PAC spent $1 million to hire people to “correct” Facebook and Reddit commenters.)
Ethan’s purpose was to represent angry people, he told me, not to express his own views.
“I created a character, a scary—kind of a Jason kind of character,” he explained. “Looking at what the establishment is afraid of, a scary Joker-like character who’s like the boogeyman under their bed.”
I told him I thought anyone would probably be alarmed by those texts; that I, as someone who voted Sanders, found them alarming and wrong-headed and a generally bad response to a convention that didn’t break Sanders’ way.
“I understand where you’re coming from,” he replied. “But people are getting frustrated and I only have $300 to my name. I have no ability to get anymore help than I can. I’ve been working and breaking my back over this,” he said, meaning supporting Sanders.
Ethan has “bad disabilities,” he explained, one of which makes it impossible for him to work. “I heard people tell me I’m lazy, I’m useless. I can’t even go to college.”
In the midst of all that, he said, “my intent was to give her back what she and the establishment have been doing for the last few days.”
I told Ethan that to me he sounded frustrated and disaffected and a little lonely. I asked if maybe Lange had come to stand in for a whole bunch of things that weren’t working well, personally and politically.
“It’s not that,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re in Nevada or in Washington. If you’re working for the government, you need to understand that people are frustrated.” The threats, he said, were “a warning.”
“If you don’t listen to the people, this is going to happen,” he said. “People get so frustrated. They’ll find out where some of these people live and it’ll be a huge bloody revolt. You need to listen before it turns into that.”
“Who are you talking to?” and older woman’s voice shouted worriedly from the background.
“Please don’t tell anyone my name,” Ethan said, as we hung up. “I like my privacy.”........
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