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

[George II]

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

By Curt Devine, Drew Griffin and Scott Bronstein, CNN

Updated 5:45 PM ET, Fri February 7, 2020

(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."