The 'swarm': How a subset of Sanders supporters use hostile tactics to drown out critics

[William769]

(CNN)When the progressive Working Families Party announced its endorsement of Sen. Elizabeth Warren for president in September, anger reverberated across the SandersForPresident Reddit page for days.

One of the Reddit group's then-300,000 members encouraged fellow supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders to "spy" on the Working Families Party's activities and "organize counter events."

On Twitter, Sanders supporters lobbed hundreds of critical messages at the Working Families Party or its leadership, which included personal attacks that called them "corrupt," "shameless" and "bloodless scumbag hacks." One pro-Sanders account tweeted that "slave masters" had coerced the support of the party's national director, who is African American.


Three days after the endorsement, a WFP spokeswoman tweeted a screenshot of one message that wished she and her colleagues would "all get cancer you are f**king trash." She also said they received private messages saying "eat sh*t and die" and "drop dead dumb c*nts."

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/07/politics/bernie-sanders-social-media-attacks-invs/index.html

I wasn't going to go here this time around, but they left me no choice.

You want to dance? Let's dance.

[efhmc]

1. Am I allowed to use the word hate about a candidate?

[Cha]

2. KR!

[PatrickforO]

3. We don't need the 'swarm' and we don't need tactics like this.

Too dirty. Save this for the Republicans during general election season.

[keithbvadu2]

4. If Bernie cannot lead his own diehard followers...

If Bernie cannot lead his own diehard followers...

[Hortensis]

5. "Sanders online army resembles President Trump's most ardent supporters

in more ways than either side might care to admit."

That's from the NYT opinion piece "Bernie’s Angry Bros" on your subject. It links to a recent NYT article "Bernie Sanders Online Army." Both describe the destructive LW populists (Bros) whom our intelligence services say Russia is plotting to unite with Trump's RW populists MAGAs). THESE people:

“There is so much negative energy; it’s so angry,” says the former four-term Democratic senator from California. “You can be angry about the unfairness in the world. But this becomes a personal, deep-seated anger at anyone who doesn’t say exactly what you want to hear.” ...

Barbara Boxer’s story (she had to be removed from an official event by security when an increasingly dangerous crowd threatened violence against her) is one of the milder ones The Times tells about the Internet trolls whose goals seem to have less to do with building Sanders up than with hounding and humiliating anyone who stands in their man’s way.

“When Mr. Sanders’s supporters swarm someone online, they often find multiple access points to that person’s life, compiling what can amount to investigative dossiers,” The Times reported. “More commonly, there is a barrage of jabs and threats sometimes framed as jokes. If the target is a woman, and it often is, these insults can veer toward her physical appearance.”

I think it's important to go here because we now know it can happen here. So, obviously, does Russia. In 2016 both Trump and Sanders became known for the hostile behaviors, occasionally even violent, of the thugs flocking to them. Trump has many who believe he will call them out to save him from the evil Democrats.

[William769]

6. +1

[DanTex]

8. Really? Citing that NYT article that literally interviewed an anti-Bernie twitter troll to portray

"Bernie Bros" as internet trolls?

Link to tweet

[George II]

10. Did you read the article?

[sheshe2]

12. No they did not.

I already posted it to them in another thread.

[sheshe2]

15. Here. The Tweet Dan sent was the answer to Sanders supporters Doxing

Apparently everyone does it...yet the tweet was supposed to show every candidate does it. They do not.


sheshe2 (61,995 posts)
58. You answered me!!!

Wonderful, however if you read the Times article I don't think says what you thought it did.

Bernie Sanders and His Internet Army

At the start of his 2020 bid, the Vermont senator told his supporters that he condemned bullying. Is it his problem if many don’t seem to listen?

snip

He had been milling about on the Senate floor one day in the summer of 2017 when a colleague, Kamala Harris, stepped toward him. “Do we have a problem?” Ms. Harris asked, according to Democrats familiar with the exchange.

Some prominent Sanders supporters had been flaming Ms. Harris publicly as the preferred choice of the corporate Democratic establishment against which Mr. Sanders had long railed, a view amplified among Sanders-boosting accounts across social media. “Pre-emptive strike,” one person wrote on the popular SandersForPresident Reddit group, where Sanders fans were sharing details of Ms. Harris’s recent fund-raising swing in the Hamptons with former Hillary Clinton donors. “Start the conversation now, end it before 2020.”

snip

Some progressive activists who declined to back Mr. Sanders have begun traveling with private security after incurring online harassment. Several well-known feminist writers said they had received death threats. A state party chairwoman changed her phone number. A Portland lawyer saw her business rating tumble on an online review site after tussling with with Sanders supporters on Twitter.


snip

Some progressive activists who declined to back Mr. Sanders have begun traveling with private security after incurring online harassment. Several well-known feminist writers said they had received death threats. A state party chairwoman changed her phone number. A Portland lawyer saw her business rating tumble on an online review site after tussling with Sanders supporters on Twitter.

Other notable targets have included Ady Barkan, a prominent liberal activist with A.L.S. — whom some Sanders-cheering accounts accused of lacking decision-making faculties due to his illness as he prepared to endorse Senator Elizabeth Warren — and Fred Guttenberg, the father of a shooting victim from the 2018 Parkland massacre, who had criticized Mr. Sanders’s statements about gun violence.


snip

For some perceived Sanders critics, there has been mail sent to home addresses — or the home addresses of relatives. The contents were unremarkable: news articles about the political perils of centrism. The message seemed clear: We know where you live.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/27/us/politics/bernie-sanders-internet-supporters-2020.html

Sorry. You have not proven your point at all. I see no current candidates supporters sending death threats, doxing and stating we know where you live.

I haven't seen that at all.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287486705#post58

[George II]

18. Thank you.

[sheshe2]

21. Fact is the tweet posted was not complimentry to Sanders supporters.

Nor did it show that every other candidates supporters have done the same.

It was the direct opposite.

Death threats. Doxing is following you into your own home, violating your own space. Threatening. I know this as someone, claiming to be from DU did just that to me. Snail mail to my home. I never posted my info on DU. Someone did a lot of work to find it.

[SidDithers]

33. Do you think it would matter if they did?...nt

Sid

[Hortensis]

13. DanTex, Sanders says he lives in a different world, and

I understand that you see things very differently from me also. But my reality is that the NYT article is neither admiring nor dishonest, it's fact-based and alarming, and it reports years of behaviors that may be accelerating.

Btw, coming on the word "centrism" used in a threat by some thug described in this article caused me to remember that centrist is a term you repeatedly misuse in describing Democrats Sanders has voted with 95-99% for years and years. Could hardly forget anyone repeatedly suggesting, by the transitive property of smears, that Sanders is a centrist.

Yet as Mr. Sanders moves to position himself as a standard-bearer for a party he has criticized from the left for decades, the power of his internet army has also alarmed Democrats who are familiar with its underside, experienced in ways large and small.

Some progressive activists who declined to back Mr. Sanders have begun traveling with private security after incurring online harassment. Several well-known feminist writers said they had received death threats. A state party chairwoman changed her phone number. A Portland lawyer saw her business rating tumble on an online review site after tussling with Sanders supporters on Twitter. Other notable targets have included ... “But you have to be very cognizant when you say anything critical of Bernie online. You might have to put your phone down. There’s going to be a blowback, and it could be sexist, racist and vile.” ...

When Mr. Sanders’s supporters swarm someone online, they often find multiple access points to that person’s life, compiling what can amount to investigative dossiers. They will attack all public social media accounts, posting personal insults that might flow in by the hundreds. Some of the missives are direct threats of violence, which can be reported to Twitter or Facebook and taken down. ... For some perceived Sanders critics, there has been mail sent to home addresses — or the home addresses of relatives. The contents were unremarkable: news articles about the political perils of centrism. The message seemed clear: We know where you live. ...

But many political veterans outside the Sanders operation fault the campaign’s handling of the vitriol. Jess Morales Rocketto, a progressive strategist who worked on campaigns for Barack Obama and Mrs. Clinton, said Mr. Sanders had empowered aides and surrogates who “have a tendency to aggressively amplify things that a campaign would normally shut down amongst supporters. There are always people who say things that are problematic. It’s not that that is unique to Bernie’s campaign,” she said. “What’s unique is it is a consistent problem in the universe of Bernie Sanders.” ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/27/us/politics/bernie-sanders-internet-supporters-2020.html

[sheshe2]

16. + 1000

[betsuni]

20. +1

[DanTex]

22. Yes, we do see things differently.

What I see is an article about pro-Bernie trolls that interviewed an anti-Bernie troll as a source, someone who tweeted about Bernie supporters being ugly, dumb, and having small penises. That doesn't give me much confidence in the other people that the NYT is citing in that supposedly fact-based article. I don't think they went out of their way to pick an anti-Bernie troll, I'm sure they didn't know about the trolling. What it exemplifies to me is that people that get interviewed by media organizations routinely have anti-Bernie feelings. It sure doesn't feel like a formula for an even-handed appraisal of the online behavior of supporters of different candidates.

[betsuni]

17. +1

[dustyscamp]

24. I like Bernie, but many of his supporters are scumbags

I mean just look at the replies to this sensible tweet

Link to tweet

?s=20

Link to tweet

?s=20

I don't know for certain though if this is his real base or con trolls trying to stir things up

[Hortensis]

25. Everyone likes the good he says he wants to accomplish.

So much so that all our candidates do too and say it in their own words, but without his signature emphatic, authoritarian-tinged delivery that probably leads some to miss it or imagine they mean it less. And of course they believe in achieving it once again through our current systems, not socialism.

Just one of the huge ways Sanders differs from the others, though, and far less likeable, is in methods. All candidates accidentally draw a number of people who don't reflect their beliefs. The small but growing army of angry, aggressive thugs gathering around Sanders' banner is not accidental.

Sanders is a populist leader whose other messages speak to those who resent the mainstream majorities -- whose vote must rule in a representative democracy, and he promises to use the will of his followers to smash the will of the majority. THAT is what draws this kind to him. There is a complete, direct connection between the methods Sanders plans to smash the will of the mainstream majority (that's us) and the kind who are eager to be part of that.

None of this is secret, just underscrutinized and undiscussed when Sanders wasn't doing well, and of course missed and misunderstood by the nice people who find his messages aimed at them idealistic and inspiring and miss the dog whistles to the lawless.

Vermin Supreme’s Toast: "We’ve got an agenda to fulfill and no rat is getting in our way."

Ol' Vermin's sounding pretty full of himself. Where would Sander get the additional numbers of those he and Vermin would need to overset the majority? Where populist leaders always do: America's only large supply of eager brownshirts, vastly outnumbering the left's, is the hard right. Trump's populists will need a new leader when he finally does go down, and Sanders has been wooing them since 2015.

One last thing to remember regarding what we like: Sanders does not own the ideals he claims. They are intrinsic to the liberal ideals our representative democracy was established and has thrived on and that are currently protected from those who seek to destroy it by the Democratic Party.

[Historic NY]

28. Well 'bot sentinel' isn't lighting up on twitter......

yet , but there is coordination

[Hortensis]

31. Yes, the thugs on line and Gothmog witnessed up close and personal

at the 2016 convention are all too real, and right now we should expect they're growing shockingly in number as Sanders' power rises. There'll be plenty of bots also no doubt.

But mostly they're the "it" we now know could happen here.

[Gothmog]

27. The conduct described in the OP is the same type of conduct I saw at the National Convention

Normally going to a national convention is a once in a life time experience. I have worked really hard inside the party on campaigns and voter protection issues for a very long time to earn this trip. Too bad that sanders and his vetted delegates ruined that experience and did their best to help trump. A candidate has absolute approval rights over their pledged delegates because these delegates can change their votes and these delegates represent the candidate and campaign. I helped vet Clinton delegates and I know that I was vetted. The Clinton campaign told us that we represent her and that our actions would reflect on her and her campaign.

In contrast, sanders sent one very weak text the Sunday night before the convention and then did little or nothing to control his delegates. It was nasty I was there when the sanders delegates booed Congressman John Lewis. I was warned about this stunt 30 minutes before it happened by the Clinton campaign whip. According to my whip, sanders was asked to stop this event and declined. That incident will be used against sanders by Russia to suppress the African American vote just as was done in 2016

Link to tweet

Russia will just run material showing sanders delegates booing John Lewis, Elijah Cummings and others to suppress the vote of African American voters and I feel that this tactic would be very effective

I was at the Texas delegation breakfast when a group of sanders delegates marched in and demanded that we condemn Clinton and change our votes to sanders.

sanders spoke to the Texas delegation the next morning and his speech was again solely about himself. There was a mini-riot due to his delegates the prior morning and the only thing that sanders talked about was himself. sanders did nothing to deal with the fact that his delegates were out of control and did nothing to try to help Hillary Clinton win the general election.

Finally a group of sanders delegates yelled at my daughter and called her the c-Word because she would not try to get me to change my vote. Again sanders was asked to tell his delegates to behave during the convention and sanders refused

The conduct describe in the OP does not surprise me

[Hortensis]

29. You came to see democracy in action, instead protected it from

those who seek to destroy it. Really, what other time would you have chosen?

Their behaviors remind me of accounts of the populist mob behaviors during the leadup to the National Socialist party's populist takeover in 1930s Germany. As their numbers grew, it became dangerous to show any little difference that might attract their attention on the streets.

For me, this summary from Pippa Norris, a leading authority on populism, throws big light on what was happening at that convention and what our party leaders are preparing for at the next:

There are three basic features that any populist movement shares:

* a rejection of representative democracy in favor of direct rule;
* a criticism of the prevailing power structure (i.e., the “elites”); and
* a single charismatic leader who personifies the movement.

She (and other experts) also identifies Sanders as a populist leader. Sanders would be the single charismatic leader of a populist movement created by him (with Repub-Russia assistance) that seeks (again) to overset elections by mainstream majorities (the current power structure) to establish direct rule by him. Starting, of course, by smashing the Democratic Party from within.

Sanders' wacky-sounding editorial board interview with the NYT, promising to create a popular uprising to sweep the congress voters just elected out of his direct-rule way (!) ... STILL sounds delusional. The Repubs and Russia also need to overcome the Democratic Party in order to destroy our democracy, but their assistance to Sanders would stop the day they no longer needed him to finish the job and take over. Most of Sanders' angry populists would swarm to the RW leader as soon as they realized he was the loser.

At least Sanders' rising numbers finally mean rising attention also, and scrutiny is going to make these wannabe brownshirts even angrier. Hopefully their acting out will help enlighten those who don't yet realize they reveal big truths that the rhetoric of the Real Bernie Sanders is currently hiding from them.

[Gothmog]

30. I really agree your analysis

I do not mind being cursed at and told that I was a bad Jew because I was not supporting sanders. I am an adult and a lawyer. Yelling at a lawyer is a waste of time. However cursing at my daughter and calling her the c-word crossed a line with me. I agree with the post above that sanders and trump supporters share a great deal.

I saw some truly nasty behavior from sanders delegates who were supposed to be official representatives of their campaign and candidate. The article in the OP hit home with me

I am glad that sanders is being vetted. I have never taken sanders seriously as a candidate due to his complete lack of legislative accomplishments. I really believe that sanders would be easily defeated by trump.

Thank you could your post. It hit home with me given my first hand experience

[mcar]

7. Kick

[brer cat]

9. K&R

[NCProgressive]

11. KnR

[sheshe2]

14. K&R

Bill!

[Hortensis]

19. To understand these angry thugs, and Trump's, it's important to

understand populism and the kind of people drawn to it. A study reported in Scientific American found that antagonism is a trait strongly seen among populist followers, though not all of course.

Another study confirmed that social conservatism is so common as to be an almost defining element, though varying in degree depending on the type of movement, as in LW (tending mild to moderate) versus RW.

Populists most often are a combination of economically progressive and socially conservative. This mix differentiates them from a lot of conservatives and of course most liberal Democrats.

The second article linked below is about the west's cultural crisis and mostly about Trump, but Sanders is discussed briefly in both. Both leaders use populist passions as fuel for their movements, even though the claimed goals or ideologies are very different. Interestingly, almost any ideology can be the excuse for, or the leader's secret end goal of, movements powered by populist passions.

As Norris emphasizes, there are three basic features that any populist movement shares:

* a rejection of representative democracy in favor of direct rule;
* a criticism of the prevailing power structure (i.e., the “elites”); and
* a single charismatic leader who personifies the movement.

Populism, defined in 170 words
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/30/15078176/donald-trump-bernie-sanders-europe-populism

And that article links to this longer one which also briefly discusses Sanders:

Why Trump's populist appeal is about culture, not the economy
https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/3/27/15037232/trump-populist-appeal-culture-economy

[betsuni]

34. +1

[unitedwethrive]

23. I heard some talking head say that there are fewer lawn signs in NH than usual...

I'm sure it's because people are afraid to piss off another candidates supporters. I know that during the 2016 primary, several of my friends had their Hillary lawn signs stolen the same night that their house was egged or their mail box was smashed, and so lots of others removed them...as well as bumper stickers. Intimidation works. (Not a big problem in the general election since I am in CA.)

[Hortensis]

37. As Sanders' numbers rise, theirs are also. Last year it was

vandalism and thrown chairs, but it's beginning to look like it's going to become worse. As long as Sanders' support grows, we should expect their numbers to grow, and with that their boldness and
aggression.

[Gothmog]

26. The "swarm": How some Sanders loyalists attack online dissent

I have seen this in action at the National Convention and on twitter

Link to tweet

[betsuni]

32. K&R

[SidDithers]

35. We saw it here in 2015, before the TOS change...

Thankfully, most of the worst Sanders fans either got themselves nuked, or chose not to subject themselves to the new “don’t shit on Democrats” rules.

Hi Bill

Sid

[BlueIdaho]

36. Occam's Razor...

The “Swarm” has the support of Sanders.