Dear honest people who've experienced or heard/read about "toxic" #BernieBros & in good faith think they're unique to Sanders or over-represented by his base. All candidates have abusive fans but they're not documented by media. Sanders is the only 1 to condemn his but (1/?)
Warren, Biden, Pete all have toxic supporters refused to condemn or even acknowledge. The media won't cover them. A journalist who spoke to me while writing a piece on #BernieBro narrative never ran it. But others have documented the hate here photos.app.goo.gl/do57mNb2ZJbotu… (2/?)
And I asked for some examples here . Just this weekend, Biden critics blamed him for the neo-Nazi showing up with a swastika at his rally. What's really scary is that it's not just online randos doing this but "important people," like Tom Watson (3/?) 
who co-founded Hillary Men & is part of Neera Tanden's twitter army of online hate and toxicity. Note that Tom, who claims to be a voice of reason, civility and wokeness, not only compared Sanders to a Nazi in 2016 but he once again, this year, the day after the swastika (4/?)
was unfurled at the Sanders event,Tom tweeted that Sanders, first serious Jewish candidate for president, who lost families in the Holocaust, was "gunning for the white nationalist vote." Here's another classy tweet from Tom who talks about Bernie Bros all the time, mocking (5/?)
his health. Other recent examples of absolutely disgusting toxicity from supporters of other candidates are Kamala and Pete supporters mocking @scottdesno
a father who shared the heart breaking story of his son's suicide (6/?)
a father who shared the heart breaking story of his son's suicide (6/?)
Here's a Warren supporter attacking a cancer survivor. I don't consider Warren responsible for every single toxic person onlline but she's said again and again that politicians are responsible for their supporters. In which case she certainly needed to speak out against (7/?)
comments made by a celebrity surrogate Ashlee Marie Preston, who said homophobic and racist things. Preston made a video for Warren and Warren's silence about her past comments are inconsistent with what she demanding of Bernie and claiming to be committed to. (8/?)
to her credit Preston apologized. And people can of course evolve. The point is Warren is holding herself to a double standard. There's not way she didn't know about this because it was covered by the media. She didn't say anything, though. Here are some more lovely recent (9/?)
examples of Biden supporters threatening & smearing Ilhan Omar with the racist right wing talking point that she married her brother. I really like this nuanced take on Omar & other squad members though. (10/?)
Check out some more toxicity here , which includes hits like
(whoops, that should have been 11/?)
But what makes Sanders' unique is that the people who attack him in the most vile ways are signal boosted or even friends w/ powerful people in politics & media who attack Sanders' bros. For instance, here's a photo of now-banned Mr. Dane with Hillary & a letter she wrote (12/?)
him thanking him for his support, which includes tweets like these (13/?)
Here are people like Donna Brazile, Clinton advisor Philippe Reines, National Field Director for the Democratic National Committee Adam Parkhomenko praising him, Joy Ann Reid telling him to DM her about coming on his show. (14/?)
and Neera wishing him "happy birthday my friend." (15/?)
It also looks like MrDane worked for people who were very invested in defeating Bernie Sanders. (16/?)
Also, Mr Dane drives around in a "f*ck Bernie" truck, wears a "f*ck Bernie" (17/?)
Here's another "friend" of Neera Tanden, with whom shse's pictured below, who has been banned from twitter, understandably, for saying "bernie woulda choked on my d*ck" how he wants bernie to "suffer": @smartflexin (18/?)
Neera considers Smartflexin, or Jeremy, a treasure & friend and is grateful for his praise. (We don't know what he said, bc he's no longer on twitter, but it looks like it was nice, judging from her response). Interesting thatTanden, actually calls her group an #army (19/?)
given that she & the foot soldiers she leads constantly accuse Sanders of controlling an online army. As anyone who has ever got into anything with her or her self-described army, she has quite the squad. It certainly seems coordinated when her supporters swarm her critics (20/?)
Here's EclecticBrotha, another "friend" of Neera Tanden who, like Jeremy and Mr Weeks really likes telling people to suck on his own or Sanders' d. He also encourages people to get f*cked by other people's d*cks. h/t @erinwalsh10 for some of these. (21/?)
Eclectic has also called a young girl with Downs Syndrome a "slut" (22/?)
In full disclosure, I've had my own run-ins with him during which he encouraged me to go f*ck myself with Cenk Uygar's d*ck. So, it's especially moving to see how much he & neera adore each other (23/?)
I especially appreciate the heart eyed and kiss blowing emojis they send each other and how much he appreciates her feistiness and how much she appreciates his "cold fury." He also has her back. But (24/?)
they can also talk about politics together seriously or jokingly and they definitely enjoy mocking people together. (25/?)
Someone else who gets along with Eclectic and can both joke and talk about shop with him is Joy Ann Reid. (26/?)
Like Tanden, Watson & Clinton, Reid frequently calls online toxic behavior which she somehow only seems among Sanders supporters. So her chumminess with Eclectic and MrDane is some what curious. Speaking of Watson he also likes to joke around w/ eclectic (27/?)
Watson, in addition to comparing Sanders to Nazis and having a strange habit of blocking people he spends a lot of time criticizing, especially Black women like @briebriejoy @ninaturner @DrDooleyMD, Watson, who really paints himself as a white male ally isn't so sensitive (28?)
when it comes to using "lynching" analogies. In fact, in 2008, he chose a strange headline for a blog post he wrote criticizing Obama for not doing enough against the "media's lynching" of Hillary Clinton. (29/?)
Several readers criticized Watson's word choice, given that Barack Obama was facing an unprecedented number of death threats, racism, & needed extra security. But Watson doubled down, defending his word choice, before finally changing the headline & shutting down comments. (30/?)
Watson's attack on Obama are close to his attacks on Sanders. They're smears, insinuations and slimy: in this piece, for instance, he asks (31/?)
"What kind of progressive American leader wd stand silent, supporting w/ the cold reserve of ambition the disgracefully sexist, blatantly anti-feminist attack on a well-respected wmn of same party, a political foe perhaps, but a national Dem leader? Barack Obama - so far" (32/?)
While he had to delete other tweets for being toxic and comparing Sanders to a Nazi, he deleted a tweet he wrote about Obama because it reveals how he has recycled the same smears against Obama in 2008 into smears against Sanders in 2016 & 2020. See, for instance (33/?)
I'm focusing on Watson's dishonesty and hypocrisy to demonstrate how weaponized and disingenuous the Bernie Bro narrative is and has been since the beginning. At least Watson has the awareness to delete his toxic tweets. But Adam Parkhomenko does not. Here are some of his (34/?)
As you will see, he really hates Sanders and Susan Sarandon but loves his cryogenic chamber set up (35/?)
Then there is Philipe Reines, who calls Juanita Broaddrick, whose politics you may hate, but who has credibly accused Bill Clinton of rape for decades now "full of shit." He also lied that Kenneth Starr determined she wasn't credible. He determined her rape allegation (36/?)
fell outside of the purview of the impeachment bc it wasn't related to obstruction of justice. So much for #believeWomen. Also, even if you're going to not believe women, even if you can't conceal your hypocrisy & double standards, you could probably do a better job of (37/?)
concealing your contempt. It's a bad look and it looks pretty misogynist. (ask Adam about how to self-righteously respond to the women who accuse you of that. He has some zingers as you can see above. cc: @nataliesurely) (38/?)
forgot to add that Joy Ann Reid is also a Jeremy fan.
We know that the Clinton campaign started pushing this narrative from the beginning. As @Olivianuzzi tweeted, in 2016, "Maybe I would buy into "bernie bros" more if I hadn't been pitched a story about bernie bros by Hillary's camp." And she still maintains this. Unlike me (39/?)
Nuzzi is not a shameless Bernie stan. There's no incentive for her to say this stuff. But @ggreenwald, @CarlBeijer and I have documented, the original flurry of Bernie Bro stories was based on 3 incidents, 2 of which didn't even qualify as Bros. pastemagazine.com/politics/berni… (40/?)
Back to the media/politico/online personalities feedback loop: there's Hoarse Whisperer, who, though he tried to hide behind a hoarse avi, we now know is a white man, has called Sanders press secretary, Briahna Joy Gray, a Black woman, "white adjacent bro-fodder" (41/?)
which is a call back to something toxic troll/Hoarse friend Eclectic Brotha said about Briahna, who goes by Brie.Toxic trolls like Hoarse, Eclectic & Sally Albright, who ran a sock puppet army which probably coordinates a lot of these trolls, mockingly call her Brie Brie. (42/?)
I haven't even gotten into Sally Albright, but she's a friend of Sean Spicer, worked for Newt Gingrich, RT's antisemitic things about Bernie & elders of Zion, compares Nina Turner to Omarosa curated a list of #onlineResistance that includes some of (43/?) huffpost.com/entry/democrat…
the most toxic people who pretend to be victims of the online "harassment" they engage in. Back to Hoarse. He has some interesting things to say about women in politics like AOC and in his life. (44/?)
Brian Williams, the journalist who hosts an @msnbc show despite lying several times about having been shot at in a helicopter while covering the war in Iraq, decided that a tweet from hoarse was newsworthy and read it out loud and displayed it on screen. The tweet said (45/?)
"Okay, since this is trending, here's #MyBernieStory. The year was 2016 and Bernie was already long eliminated from contention. An actual Democrat would have stopped torpedoing the nominee and worked to defeat Trump but Bernie had books to sell. The end." (46/?)
WIlliams read this tweet during a segment in which he suggested Sanders was engaging in conspiracy theory by saying that Jeff Bezos owning WaPo maybe had something to do with their negative coverage. Williams said of the Hoarse tweet, "that kind of nicely sums up how some (47/?)
Democrats feel about Bernie when they hear him using a Trump talking point." So, to be clear, Brian Williams used the sleazy Fox News "some say" trick to suggest that it's Trumpian to point out the conflicts of interest or bias of certain outlets or channels. Guess Chomsky (48/?)
is Trumpian. What's incredible is that Williams had to cherrypick through all of the moving and positive stories people were tweeting out with the #MyBernieStory. But manages to find a tweet that was hijacking the hashtag. The tweet also had nothing to do with what was (49/?)
being discussed. If WIlliams were smarter he should have found an obnoxious anti-Sanders tweet that at least targeted him for his comments on WaPo. But this was just a desperate injection of an anti Sanders tweet into an unrelated criticism. Apparently Hoarse is popular (50/?)
And one who is payed by Exxon, Aetna, AT&T. Then, true to form, Hoarse, who, remember, had himself spread photos of a journalist's parents accused Briahna Joy Gray, who had nothing to do with this, of getting him "doxxed." Hoarse was the real victim (52/?)
Hoarse also attacked Nina Turner and Susan Sarandon in order to defend Neera Tanden, writing, "Fuck off. Tanden's comment was true of Sarandon and of you. Be less of a self-indulgent jerkoff." Tanden, of course, said nothing to condemn this language. But this pales in (53/?)
comparison to what male ally, Sanders critic, & then Daily Kos editor Armando Llorens said to Turner: "You’re the stupidest person in politics. It’s fucking amazing how stupid you are. Bernie is finished... stupid ass Bernie is paying you to fuck him." Llorens was (54/?)
ultimately fired but it wasn't immediate, which is noteworthy. Then there's Candice Aiston who the @nytimes actually cited as a victim of "targeting" by Bernie Bros in a piece called "Bernie Sanders and His Internet Army." Here are some of the things Aiston has tweeted (55/?)
(56/?)
Remember how hoarse pretended that Brie, a woman he mocked regularly, had him "doxxed"? Well, Candice help spread the rumor too, not surprisingly. Another 1 of Candice's achievements was openly reveling over the fact that a man accused of rape was a Sanders supporter (57/?)
When Aiston got pushback for weaponizing a woman's rape, she claimed that she hadn't "used a rape survivor's story for politics." Here's what the survivor said. (58/?)
In a totally unrelated story, AIston has described a male supporter (not the one accused of rape) of being "rapey." (59/?)
So those are just some of the examples of the people who claim to take racism, sexism, identity politics, toxicity, trolling, bullying, either engaging in it or caping for people who do. Then there's the more acceptable toxicity like Chris Matthews comparing Sanders win (60/?)
in Nevada to the Nazi invasion of France or saying people will be executed in Central Park if Bernie wins; then there's Chuck Todd comparing Sanders supporters to digital Brown shirts, which is really rich bc he's accusing Bernie supporters of being uncivil & disrespectful (61/?)
And then there's Joy Ann Reid tweeting things like this about Sanders while complaining about Sanders' supporters. (62/?)
Coming back to 1 of the loudest and most powerful online voices, Neera Tanden made it clear she doesn't care about online toxicity unless it's politically convenient. Here she demands that Sanders condemn a toxic supporter while she refuses to condemn or even acknowledge (63/?)
the antisemitic, homophobic or racist comments made by Clinton supporters. This is from 2016. She dismissed & downplays the tweet calling Lee Fang a Chinese spy, and didn't even acknowledge the tweet saying of Sanders, "look at this dumb shit, you Jew Nazi pig faggot (64/?)
First Neera said journalist Lee Fang couldn't come up with a toxic Clinton supporter. Then when he showed a (now-deleted but visible to Neera & everyone else at the time) tweet calling him a Chinese spy she tweeted it was "not the same thing" as an ex. she had of a Bernie (65/?)
as a Bernie supporter. So she shifted the goal posts from "I asked you to show me an example of a tweet Hillary Clinton should condemn, and you can't because there aren't any," to "Ok, you found a bad example and I'm happy to condemn it but it's not as bad as my ex." While (66/?)
it's nice that she's happy to condemn a toxic tweet, she refuses to engage in the original question which is why she calls on Sanders to condemn his supporters but not on Hillary to condemn hers. The point is Tanden refuses to ask Clinton to do what she demands of Sanders, (67/?)
which is condemn any and all of her supporters, or anyone who claims to be her supporter, and engages in toxic online behavior. Interestingly, Tanden says she'll denounce the racism of anyone "who claims to be a supporter," but she never says the people who tweet mean (68/?)
things claim to be Sanders' supporters. They just are Sanders supporters. Here are some antisemitic tweets from Clinton supporters that were posted as examples of her problematic supporters in the thread which Tanden ignored. And of course, if Tanden were really committed (67/?)
to doing her part to make the internet less toxic, she'd condemn the abusive tweets engaged in by her own friends. But she never has and she never will. Neera, if you're reading this, please condemn the following tweets from people you call "a treasure" and your friends. (68/?)
don't remember if I included this but Joy was open to having Mr Dane on the show and they're mutual fans.
