Jonathan, I would humbly suggest to you that responsibility for one’s actions is at the heart of what constitutes a Bernie Bro. But you da mod.
In my limited experience, BBs are generally well-meaning; they like the idea of being on the right side of history, but have some really regressive opinions about marginalized groups. They tend to buy into the idea that ‘history begins today’ and don’t want to waste time on ‘identity politics.’ they buy into an economic theory of progress- all boats shall rise, etc. and see everything else as a distraction.
That civil right issues might be the primary concern of groups under existential threat doesn’t register with them. In that way, they are remarkably like Libertarians, though their economic theory of rights skews collectivist rather than individualist.
But, when thwarted, they resort to the same type of tactics as you see in the new conservative moment or alt-right: civility is extended toward equals, and it becomes clear that they don’t see women, or sexual/ racial/ religious minorities as equals. When that mask slips, they get called on it, which I think is fair.
Could someone provide examples of this situation? Because I haven’t ever seen it!
A number of the epithets used against her by the least civil Trump and Sanders supporters were, shall we say, gender-specific, as you may recall.
I can obviously remember Trump supporters doing that and continuing to do it, but I cannot say I’ve ever seen or read of Sanders supporters doing it. Also, there’s quite a wide gap between using a gender-specific insult to describe someone you hate, and literally not “see[ing] women, or sexual/ racial/ religious minorities as equals.” “Bernie Bro” itself is a gender-specific insult, though a mild one.
I find it ironic that the post you use to rest your case came from a thread whose sole purpose was to attack Hillary. Yes some Clinton supporters still bring up Bernie but they are dwarfed by the number of Sanders supporters who still bring up Hillary.
As to the OP, I don’t think I’ve personally ever used this phrase, but my definition would be those Sanders supporters whose attention was so parochial that they concentrated almost solely on 10% of major issues in which Clinton and Sanders disagreed while ignoring the 90% agreement they shared. Such that even when it became clear that Clinton was going to represent the party in November, they still attacked her even though such attacks improved the likelihood that Sanders polar opposite would be elected.
Note this includes those people who “held their noses” and voted for her in the general election if they spent most of their time from July though October trying to bring her down.
That’s right: stop using gender-specific insults, Bernie Bros!
Too late to add:
It didn’t have to be this way. I remember the first debate in which it was clear that while different candidates had different approaches, they were all united against the true enemy, namely the Republicans. Recall Sanders claiming “'American people sick and tired of hearing about <Clinton’s> damn emails” to raucous applause. At this point I was happy. I liked Sanders, but thought that Clinton would probably have a somewhat better chance of getting things done. Still I approved of his being in the race, and hoped that his presence would push Clinton slightly to the left. If Sanders had won the primary I would have happily turned to supporting him without missing a beat.
But at some point, it wasn’t sufficient to support Sanders for his more progressive agenda, Clinton had to be transformed into a corrupt, evil, corporate whore whose victories in the popular vote must be due to cheating, rather than the possibility that more Democrats actually might prefer a moderate. You had staunch progressives, who under most circumstances would never have anything to do with the right, suddenly latching onto an promoting the fruits of a 25 year rightwing smear campaign. I’m not sure why this shift occurred, whether it was due to Russian Trolls, a shift in Sander’s campaign strategy once he realized he had built a large following that brought him close but not enough to pull it off without going negative, or just a natural consequence of dyed in the wool supporters becoming rabid, but it (along with a bazillion other things) contributed to the world we now find ourselves in.
Meh. That caught on because it’s alliterative. It would be derogatory no matter what term were used. A genderless term that started with B would be better, sure, but the language is limited that way.
The term isn’t intended to belittle people for their gender, but for their thinking. That is the opposite of the usage of gender-specific epithets against another candidate *because *of her gender, and for that matter the practice was and is hardly limited to males.
This seems to me to not be true, all the descriptions of what it means to be a Bernie Bro seem to be rooted in the original meaning of “Bro” - i.e. a young, immature, obnoxious-acting male.
While I saw this happen, I saw the vast majority of my far-left friends agree to support Clinton once she won the nomination. This includes, for example, my friend who lost a friend in the Honduran coup, a coup that Clinton helped to legitimize as Secretary of State. Even he, who had some real personal reasons to oppose her, recognized how much worse Trump was than her.
I know there was a group of #NeverHillaries, but IME that group was pretty small. But they get outsized focus from folks who seem to me to want an excuse to delegitimize the leftist wing of the Democratic party. And that’s not cool.
Maybe it was because she was actually cheating. Just a thought…
I have the feeling that the #NeverHillaries were never, ever Hillary’s to begin with and never would be.
Sanders had some cross party-line appeal and drew in people from the right. When Sanders was out of the race they went back to the republican candidate. They were never in a million years going to vote for Hillary.
Three out of four is enough.
What groups are/were under existential threat?
While I can’t deny that there are people out there who supported Bernie from a position of economic/“racial” privilege without thinking about the perspectives of minorities, it has to be said that Bernie was the only candidate in the entire election that I can actually remember discussing the private-prison industry and the need for vast and sweeping reform of the criminal justice system which is making life hell for thousands of minorities and economically disadvantaged people in this country.
Off the top of my head? I’d say that African Americans view the rolling back of voting rights and civil right protections and existential threat. Likewise, (younger) women with regard to reproductive rights. LGBT+ folks see both of those issues bundled with a constant threat of physical violence. That’s not getting into subgroups like non-European immigrants, Muslims (and anyone mistaken for one, as I constantly am), etc.
We can discuss to what degree you agree that any of these are truly ‘existential’ threats, but I do promise you that ‘but her e-mails’ is not a sufficient rebuttal. Sanders downplayed the civil rights aspect of his candidacy, and given that minorities know that the best protections they have are from 1) the tone set by the president and 2)his or her appointment of Federal and Supreme Court judges, it’s not shocking that they preferred Hillary.
I’ll be blunt. White populism seldom does brown people any favors. What we are seeing from the White House now? That’s white populism, too.
This thread was occasioned by my support for Alexandria Ocasio-Córtez in another thread. Mention of Bernie was inherent to her résumé. She is new news and worthy of note and comment. I said I didn’t want to rehash the past but to look to the future, and the future looks like Alexandria O.C.
Otherwise, look over my posting history, I hadn’t given Mr. Sanders a moment’s thought in like a year and a half.
Edit: OK, I recall one discussion a few months ago where I allowed how I once liked Bernie but was turned off of him by his over-enthusiastic insurgents.
…as with any wikipedia link there are many citations provided at the bottom of the page that should provide more than enough examples for you. If you weren’t targeted by the bro’s then it isn’t surprising you are struggling to find examples: thats how things work these days. Our social/media feeds are highly personally curated by algorithms that show you just what you want to see. From my experiences the bro’s were an order of magnitude worse than the Trumpers online, as Alessan alludes to earlier their behaviour more closely aligned with the gaters than the typical Trump bot.
:eek::eek:
That’s difficult to conceive of!