Should We Blame Bernie for His Trolls?
There's a disturbing pattern of misogyny from his supporters.
Last night, the Daily Beast published a story headlined “Bernie Staffer Mocked Warren’s Looks, Pete’s Sexuality on Private Twitter Account.”
The details are pretty much what you’d expect:
During the most recent presidential primary debate in Las Vegas, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) suggested that critiques of some of his most antagonistic online supporters are largely unfounded and unfair, proposing that some of the worst offenders might actually be Russian trolls on a mission to sow disunity in the field.
But the private Twitter account of a newly promoted campaign staffer indicates that despite his condemnation of online harassment, at least some of the Vermont senator’s most toxic support is coming from inside the house.
Using the account @perma_ben, Ben Mora, a regional field director for Sanders’ campaign based in Michigan, has attacked other Democrats in the field—as well as their family members, surrogates, journalists, and politically active celebrities—in deeply personal terms, mocking their physical appearance, gender, and sexuality, among other things.
Those interested in reading Mora’s juvenile smears are welcome to follow the link to the report. They are fairly standard online trolling, although I’m unfamiliar with at least one trope deployed against Warren. Apparently, there’s a reason for that:
For users familiar with the patois of Gay Lefty Twitter, many of Mora’s tweets come across as fairly run-of-the-mill gay shitposts: tweets dragging the Queer Eye guys as neoliberals, mocking would-be #activist gays for shirtless photos on Instagram, or creating a meme wherein Mora’s followers share how their iPhone suggests completing the sentence “Elizabeth Warren lied about…” (Mora’s answer: “lied about being fat.”)
So, basically, we’re dealing with some juvenile “shitposting” within a subcultural niche. And this was not only not on an official Sanders account but on a “private” one presumably viewable only to those with Mora’s permission.
The Sanders campaign has reacted as one might expect:
After this story was published, Mike Casca, the Sanders campaign’s communications director, told The Daily Beast that “we are running a multiracial, multigenerational campaign for justice where disgusting behavior and ugly personal attacks by our staff will not be tolerated.”
Mora, the Sanders campaign confirmed, has been fired.
I am not, as regular readers may have surmised, a Sanders supporter. But this is the sort of thing I tend not to hold against campaigns. If one employs a large staff of young enthusiasts, this sort of thing is inevitable.
But there’s an argument to be made that Sanders has somehow attracted this type of behavior in his supporters. Whether it’s the simple coincidence that his main challenger in the 2016 cycle was a woman or some other reason, he developed an online following that directed misogynistic insults at Hillary Clinton and her supporters, especially other women.
These “Bernie Bros,” as they became known, have continued this style of attack against Sanders’ female opponents in this cycle, Warren and Klobuchar. (Probably Kamala Harris as well but I don’t know for sure.) And where there’s misogyny, there’s usually homophobia, so the attacks on Buttigieg aren’t surprising.
This issue came up during the Nevada debates and Sanders and Buttigieg made valid points:
SANDERS: We have over 10.6 million people on Twitter, and 99.9 percent of them are decent human beings, are working people, are people who believe in justice, compassion, and love. And if there are a few people who make ugly remarks, who attack trade union leaders, I disown those people. They are not part of our movement.
But let me also say what I hope my friends up here will agree with is that if you look at the wild west of the internet, talk to some of the African-American women on my campaign. Talk to Senator Nina Turner. Talk to others and find the vicious, racist, sexist attacks that are coming their way, as well.
So I would hope that all of us understand that we should do everything we possibly can to end the viciousness and ugliness on the internet. Our campaign is about issues. It’s about fighting for the working families and the middle class. It is not about vicious attacks on other people.
[…]
BUTTIGIEG: Senator, when you say that you disown these attacks and you didn’t personally direct them, I believe you.
SANDERS: Well, thank you.
BUTTIGIEG: But at a — but at a certain point, you got to ask yourself, why did this pattern arise? Why is it especially the case among your supporters that this happens?
SANDERS: I don’t think it is especially the case, by the way.
BUTTIGIEG: That’s just not true. Look, people know the way your supporters treat them.
SANDERS: Well, Pete, if you want to talk to some of the women on my campaign, what you will see is the most ugly, sexist, racist attacks that are — I wouldn’t even describe them here, they’re so disgusting.
And let me say something else about this, not being too paranoid. All of us remember 2016, and what we remember is efforts by Russians and others to try to interfere in our election and divide us up. I’m not saying that’s happening, but it would not shock me.
saw some of those tweets regarding the Culinary Workers Union. I have a 30-year 100 percent pro-union voting record. Do you think I would support or anybody who supports me would be attacking union leaders? It’s not thinkable.
BUTTIGIEG: But leadership is about what you draw out of people. It’s what — it’s about how you inspire people to act.
(APPLAUSE)
And right now, we’re in this toxic political environment. Leadership isn’t just about policy. I think at least in broad terms, we’re largely pulling in the same direction on policy, but leadership is also about how you motivate people to treat other people.
I think you have to accept some responsibility and ask yourself what it is about your campaign in particular that seems to be motivating this behavior more than others, because in order to turn the page on the Trump era, we’re going to need a president, not just a candidate who can win, but a president who can move us forward.
There has been a loosely related debate renewed on Twitter and elsewhere recently about the long-running Comedy Central show “South Park” and its influence on a generation of trolls.* The show is frequently brilliant but its style of humor is the opposite of “woke.” It is often incredibly juvenile and quintessentially male in its outlook.**
Whether “South Park” spawned or is merely an exemplar of the sort of trollish behavior we’re seeing among Sanders supporters is immaterial. The show originated at about the time the broadband Internet became widespread and we’ve seen this behavior online, whether on BBSes and message boards or blogs and Twitter—not to mention the darker spaces of Reddit and 4Chan—for a long time now.
Sanders clearly draws a disproportionate amount of this behavior. Is it simply because he appeals to a younger demographic? Because his message and demeanor are angrier than the others? I don’t really know. (And, it’s worth noting, Donald Trump attracted the very same kind of conduct, with some weird anti-Semitism thrown in, in the last cycle and likely will again this go-round.)
Like Buttigieg, I believe Sanders when he decries it. But the fact that he inspires it is nonetheless troubling.
UPDATE: Cheryl Rofer responded on Twitter:
To which I responded,
While I was driving in, this drew some helpful insights.
That fleshes out considerably what was for me more an inkling than an idea.
____________________
*See Dana Schwarz’ WaPo op-ed for a discussion of the current controversy, Katharine Timpf for an excellent rejoinder, and Robert Hamer and Sean O’Neal for representative earlier iterations.
**That doesn’t mean the show doesn’t attract plenty of female fans. See Timpf, above. And my late wife was a huge fan of the show.
So Sanders vs. Trump will be an odious toxic stew on both sides…
Sanders is of the left without being (as far as left-wing politics go) very woke.
He’s also an white heterosexual male (which does matter to some people) and his main opponent in 2016 was a woman.
Indeed. Which is why Sanders can be reasonably asked to do more than e.g. Buttigieg to police and call out misogyny among his supporters.
Frequently, when Sanders has been called on the behavior of Bernie Bros, he has been soft in his condemnation. The typical line is this type of trolling is bad, whoever’s campaign supporters are behind it. So yes Bernie can receive some blame.
Sanders is the perpetual college student. He’s been there for years without ever seeming to accomplish a single thing or achieve the goals that were the point of the institution. He gets by spouting BS without any real plan or facts to back it up – just what sounds good to get him a pass and let him keep doing what he wants. He refuses to be part of an official organization but *demands* to be a position of power for it just because of who he is and how special his opinions are. He’s got a mean, entitled streak that shows up whenever anyone points out his flaws or that he’s really not what he says he is. Hypocritical but dismisses it as “big picture thinking” when challenged and that you just “don’t get it” because there’s something wrong with you, not him. He’s a “rebel” that’s been part of the Institution for decades but can still scam you into thinking he’ll finally do what he’s always said he’ll do.
Now why would that be attractive to an all-male, mostly-white entitled asshole toxic youth culture, hmmm?
@An Interested Party:
Every election is an odious mix. Candidates who bring in the fringes magnify it. Neither side has a monopoly on toxic fuckery.
That guy should be fired. And the campaign should also forcibly shave his mustache on the way out.
As for “does he deserve blame for the BernieBros”? Yes, because he’s failed to shed himself of them.
Look, you can’t really control who likes your brand. People like what they like and can attribute their own meanings. That’s not actually his fault. Occasionally a toxic group will latch onto a brand – justified or not – and call it their own, smearing the reputation of the brand in the process. Now, if you don’t mean to be that kind of toxic on purpose, you usually do something to try and shake off the image. You denounce them in public, you talk sh^t about them when they praise you, you try and change elements that might be attractive to them. You certainly don’t go “meh” and move on with your life if you are not OK with them being attached to your name.
Bernie keeps going “meh”. I’ve never seen him really take them to task and he’s known for 4+ years these toxic folks have been running around under his banner. At best, he goes “what are you gonna do”? and expects everyone to just put up with them so he can win and they can get their bragging rights. Bernie wants to WIN and doesn’t care who gets him there or who he steps over to do it. BernieBros are serving as a good mirror for how he himself will respond – if he doesn’t get the nomination, he’ll rage and give us Trump like last time. That they feel free to be hateful trolls when he’s in the lead shows what they’re gonna be if he goes down. He’s got an internet army ready to wreak vengeance on his behalf….. and he seems to be OK with that.
I found Buttigieg’s comment about what a leader draws out in people a very interesting one, because it encapsulates in a short comment what I’ve observed for years–the personality of the leader matters. It matters a great deal, because the vibe the leader sends out tends to get amplified back.
I’ve always been more drawn to the nerdy, thoughtful, and intellectual types of leaders. Yelling revolutionaries do nothing for me; I actually find them rather repelling.
Is Sanders responsible for the actions of each of his supporters? No, clearly not. These are adults who should know how to comport themselves. That said, Buttigieg has put his finger on something important. Sanders’ entire raison d’être is an angry, pushy, “we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore” movement. You can’t disassociate that from what it will bring out in people.
@Jen:
Sanders could take a moment to be mad as hell about the actions of the BernieBros.
When his followers were replying to all of Warren’s tweets with snakes, for instance, he could have said “What the hell is wrong with you people? Elizabeth is my friend, and my colleague and a good person. If you want to be immature little shits attacking someone, go be immature little shits attacking Trump.”
I’m reminded of John McCain telling the crazy woman that Barack Obama was not a secret Muslim planning Sharia law, he was a good man who just disagreed on politics. Sanders has done nothing like that.
And McCain should have said that to Palin.
@Kurtz: The mustache serves as a warning…
It’s the problem of supernumerary males. There are no longer any uniquely male roles – we have far more than enough males to ensure that procreation can go on apace, and the males we used to keep busy with fighting wars and colonizing people who didn’t want to be colonized, are no longer required. Insofar as we see ourselves as males, as something distinct from females, we find ourselves living longer but with less purpose. A surplus of aimless males is never a good thing.
I’ve been worried about this for better than 30 years. It was obvious long ago that males would lose their unique positions as hewers of wood, drawers of water and smiters of enemies. The number of jobs for men only has shrunk dramatically, and now the very concept of maleness is challenged by a generation that finds the whole rigid dichotomy, boys do this and girls do that, silly. We’re still leaning into empowering women, but it’s not women who are in trouble in modern civilization. It’s men falling behind in education, men falling into addiction, men committing suicide.
It’s a problem of civilization and it’s something we need to adapt to. It’s all well and good to knock down the patriarchy but solving that issue leaves you with large segments of the male half the human race feeling lost and useless. That is dangerous.
@Michael Reynolds: They can feel more useful by taking up jobs like nursing, child care, and other jobs that need doing.
Back in the early days of second-wave feminism, we recognized that male roles would have to change too. But the difficulties in removing the barriers to women were enormous enough that they took up all our energy. Now we’ve come to that part about changing male roles. After only 50 years, more if you want to go back to first-wave feminists, who recognized this too.
@KM:
That is probably the best summation of Sanders I’ve ever read.
@Cheryl Rofer:
For a million years humans wandered around in small bands, essentially the same size as platoons, 40-50 people. Ten thousand years ago, give or take, we started figuring out agriculture, which put and end to that platoon life, and which required control of land, which meant militarization. Men went from hunting wildebeest and fending off hyenas to doing heavy labor and killing people who wanted our corn.
The leap from wildebeest hunting, to corn field defending to caring for children is pretty big, and happening pretty fast. And given that we are having fewer and fewer children, it’s not applicable in the real world. Clearly men need to adapt, but just as clearly that’s not going to be easy and may not be successful in the end. Men seem to have a need to follow and fall in line – hence the competing cults of personality around Trump and Bernie.
I didn’t have a solution decades ago when I started thinking about this, and still don’t have one. But this is dangerous and destabilizing. It’s a big pile of dynamite waiting for a spark.
@Michael Reynolds: I don’t accept the evolutionary psychology arguments. Humans have had to be cooperative to survive, and the reason humans form pair bonds seems to be that the young need nurturing for a relatively long time.
We’ve been moving away from brute force as a necessity in everyday life for hundreds, probably thousands of years.
One of the great things about humans is that we can make choices. Men have been societally protected from hard choices for too long. Time for them to step up.
@Cheryl Rofer:
I’m sure a good, stern lecture will accomplish that.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/bernie-sanders-staffer-mocked-elizabeth-warrens-looks-pete-buttigiegs-sexuality-on-private-twitter-account
Male privilege is powerful
@An Interested Party:
Yet, I am sure that there are “very fine people on both sides”, sadly, that will completely loose all sense of rationality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9NMt42il4Q
@EddieInCA:
My word, Ben sounds a lot like Donald Trump with the misogynistic insults, doesn’t he?
So I posted a comment, then edited it, and the edit (I changed the word “that” to “you”) somehow fell into the spam filter.
@Gustopher:
But then he would have been lying. It is pretty obvious that Bernie dislikes everyone else in politics and considers them corrupt compromisers. Bernie likes college age people or a bit older, people who will sit still and listen as he repeats his stale talking points over and over and over again. People who don’t have the experience to recognize someone who is all talk and theory and no accomplishments.
@KM:
Well said. I said this back in 2016 when a bunch of racist and Pepe-meme Nazi wannabees began backing Trump. Such people are the barnacles of the political world, latching onto whatever campaign their diseased minds fixate on. For a time, they liked Ron Paul. Then they glommed onto Trump.
The problem was not that they glommed onto Trump. That happens. The problem was that he never disowned them. Quite the contrary, in fact. He was more than happy to put Breitbart people in his orbit who actively stimulated the so-called “alt right”.
Bernie’s followers aren’t nearly in that class, of course. But what matters is how he responds to their trolling. And for my money, he has not responded well.
eh, bother. Resigning myself now to the inevitable that the US activist Left is going to drive a USA version of Corbyn. And Sanders is indeed the very USA Corbyn taking into account the political structural differences.
Bloody activists, never learn anything ever.
@Kurtz:
Yes, as we say in Arabic, Beni Adam, Beni Adam. Soviet New Man thinking gets you, well, Putin.
@Kurtz: Gotta agree, the mustache is really cheesy looking. One of those “just spread some cream on it and the cat will lick it off” type.
@Cheryl Rofer: yeah, very much EvoPsych is trash, biologists say.
@just nutha ignint cracker:
Perhaps someone told him the ‘stache made him look like a young Clark Gable.
@CSK: Well and good, but a very likely choice for November is between orange misogyny and blue misogyny.
@Teve: @Cheryl Rofer:
Right, because of all the tens of millions of animal species on this planet, just one behaves in ways that have nothing to do with its biology. Just us. Because we’re special.
@Cheryl Rofer: There was a recent interview in Vox with a researcher who had studied the empowerment of girls for a long time, and recently turned to studying boys. She had some interesting observations: boys today are almost universally accepting of girls as their equals in education, careers, and most other arenas. But when it comes to romantic and sexual relationships, she said boys are stuck in the 1950s. She had a funny line about how boys talk about sex with terms more appropriate to a construction site than an intimate moment with another person: “I nailed her, I banged her, I hit that, I tapped that.” She attributes this to the pressure they get from other males to be sexually aggressive. (Some have also blamed the easy accessibility of porn in the Internet age). Yet, she adds that privately a lot of boys admit that they don’t want to be like this, that they’d prefer to have more caring relationships with girls. But again, it’s that pressure from other boys that makes them feel like they can’t.
@just nutha ignint cracker:
Yeah, swell choice, right? In an addendum to this story, Sanders supporters are harassing Scott Bixby, the DB reporter, on Twitter.
@Guarneri: Huh? And you were really on a roll, too. You’d said thoughtful, somewhat intelligent things the last 2 or 3 times you’d commented. Now this brain fart. Sad. Pathetic. Low Energy Little Guarneri.
@Michael Reynolds:
But we are special, are we not? To my knowledge, we’re the only self-aware animal species on the planet. Other than the dolphins. And, of course, the mice.
I’m not disagreeing with the original problem you state, it is a problem. Nor that somehow biology may impact in some way, but I don’t think it’s the determining factor.
Most people think of competitiveness as a male trait. Having several women in my family play competitive sports to a college level, I can say pretty confidently it’s not. What’s different is how they’re taught to express it. Let me give you an example. I let my kid play grade school parks & rec flag football. The coach called an extra practice for those interested, so of course I took him to it. The coach sent a follow-up email thanking “those young studs” who came to the extra practice, and how their effort was going to lead to victory. It went on and on. All I could think was “Young studs? Dude, they’re 8-year-olds, and this is just flag football.” We teach so much of this. We could teach something else.
In what universe am I expected to join this movement of activists who call out white racism in our society and are fully committed to eradicating racial inequality but turn a blinde eye to their mysogonist and homophobic attacks on political rivals ? I have received some blistering attacks for keeping an open mind about Buttigieg and close friend who is also AA and is a committed Buttigieg supporter is constantly required to defend his decision to angry Bernie Bros.
@Monala: Overclocked Chimps remain Chimps in the end. the thin veneer is merely a veneer.
@Guarneri:
If you mean that Ben Mora is a bad boy, he’s not. He’s just a low-rent schmuck.
@Michael Reynolds: We’re special because we can craft bullshit stories about cavemen, and use them to justify our modern poor behavior. It’s not that humans weren’t shaped by their environment, it’s that humans barely know how they were shaped by their environment.
We don’t know shit about cavemen, at least compared to the amount of shit people say we know about cavemen.
@Michael Reynolds: No we are definitely shaped by our evolution in all kinds of ways. It’s just that evo psych has been an excuse for a lot of dumb assholes to make all kinds of claims that are beneficial to dumb assholes. See Jordan Peterson, for instance.
Most of the biologists that I know will tell you straight up that of course we are influenced by evolution in countless ways. But it has also been used by racists, and sexists, and assholes of lots of flavors, to the extent that very many actual practicing biologists will tell you that the whole field of evo psych is largely full of crap. Just-so stories, as Rudyard Kipling said.
Evo psych will be a real field someday, but right now it’s in that pre-science crap stage, like alchemy was before chemistry.
@Teve: At least we got a lot of neat glassware out of alchemy and the concept of the double-boiler. Dunno what evo-psych will ever amount to, except as “just-so” stories to bolster excuses to act like louts.
@Michael Reynolds: I would argue that there are also a large number of women who feel lost in their newfound “equality”. Sure, did we unshackle the cream of the crop to realize their dreams? Of course.. and rightfully so. But what about the bottom 60%? They have an extremely hard time finding a place in society given it’s no longer fulfilling to simply be a homemaker and they have to compete with more talented men and women.
People wonder why there is so much discontent in people under 40? We’ve redefined hierarchies and conferred status on roles centered on ability to earn.
Alot of people are going to be left out of that model. Humans are fundamentally pack animals and require dominant and submissive roles within their pack. A minority of humans can adapt to anything. The majority can not…and will have emotional and mental challenges as results.
@Cheryl Rofer: Not nearly as powerful as white female privilege…
What I find interesting about evo pysch is how it conveniently ignores that humans act very different from most other species to end up with sexist 50’s stereotypes without questioning why that is. In most species, MALES have to be the pretty ones and go out of their way to have the best coloration, fur and figure. That have be attractive to keep their mates, not the other way around. In most predatory species, FEMALES are the hunters of the pack with males existing to fight threats…. which inevitable turn out to be other males wanting that job. Lionesses take down the prey before going back to tend the cubs, the lion takes a nap most of the day. Evo pysch wants to pretend the opposite is the true and natural way of being but never gets around to explaining WHY our males are different other then they just *are*. Just special snowflakes, I guess….
Cave-women hunted mammoths and other prey. Considering forcing males to stay around to tend to their young is a relatively recent social invention in the last 100,000 years, what do you think your ancestresses did to feed themselves and their kids? In fact, giving males the excursive social role of hunter so they’d have something to actually do with their lives rather then be underfoot is probably the smartest thing our female progenitors ever did. Kinda like how they give the panicky guy in the birth scene the job of boiling water to make him go away – here, go be useful we’ve got this. But make no mistake, it’s not biology but socialization. If you want to keep a group of men around, you need to give them a task to keep them busy and the stupidity at a minimum. It doesn’t have to be unique, it just has to be satisfying in some way.
Let us not forget that it was a Bernie Bro. that tried to assassinate Rep. Scalise on the ball field.
Nor, if your statement is any indication, as powerful as black male privilege…nah, it’s probably just you…
If that is the game you want to play, don’t forget to mention the Trumpist who murdered all those people at the Walmart in El Paso…
So there there is Black male privilege now? Please enlighten me to where it is so I can secure it for my people.
@Jim Brown 32: As I amended, it’s probably just you…
I don’t think anyone will have to worry how mean Trump will be
If we cannot bend our culturally accepted roles over time, even if it takes many lifetimes we are doomed to wallow in quiet derision and general discontent by half of the populace. It will eventually fail.
No sound society can dismiss burbling discontent that has high, sustained buy-in, poking up repeatedly. It must adapt or be overwhelmed by neighbors better at coping with change.
Gender roles are key. It is half of your population.
Humans are inherently adaptable. It is what made us successful. Arguing we cannot adapt, argues against deep history. We were bred to be flexible.
@Teve:
There might be something to evolutionary psychology.
It is not so bereft of potential insight we should not investigate, but the claims are to date intuited rather than proven.
That is less than science.
That is bias. What feels true must be true.
Also, evo psych gets hijacked a lot by people with an agenda.