It Could Be Worse: On the Left, There's a Massive F*ckstorm Over the Alleged "BernieBro" Phenomenon

What is the "BernieBro" controversy?

Well, sit down before you hear this: It's lefties claiming other lefties are "harassing" and "abusing" them by employing "sexist tropes" to knock Hillary Clinton.

It is, I mean, overly sensitive feminist women claiming that Hillary Clinton is being mansplained to, or that her supporters are being mansplained to, from male Sanders supporters -- thus, the "Bros."

Breitbart excerpts Glenn Greenwald criticizing this made-up, lunatic new fiction that the SJWs have seized upon to add a frisson of drama and importance to their empty, bubble-headed lives.

There's a Social Justice Warrior circle jerk, of one SJW passing a fictitious claim on to the next, that's even now gotten coverage from the BBC.

One of the alleged "Bernie Bros" complained of turned out to neither be pro-Bernie nor a Bro. Nor a real person. There's an account on Twitter called Rep. Steve Smith. This account is supposedly a southern Republican congressman, and he tweets the sort of nonsense a liberal would think a southern Republican congressman would tweet.

He also doesn't exist. It's fake. It's a joke. There is no "Representative Steve Smith" (though, honestly -- how perfect is that name? It sounds like a real thing, I have to concede).

This left-leaning write (I assume) debunks this story, noting that a "BernieBro" story has been concocted out of whole cloth by a Satanic Quilting Bee of one feminist writer telling the next one about the indignities she's suffered -- all due to a fake account that has nothing to do with Bernie Sanders, nor any actually existing politician.

But they each passed their Captivity Narrative to the next, each citing each other. Tracing the Telephone Game back to its source, this writer finds the story concocted by:

1) Wonkette's Kaili Joy Gray is citing

2) The New Republic's Jamil Smith, who cited

3) Mashable's Emily Cohn, who cited

4) New Yorker TV critic Emily Nussbaum, who credited to a Berniebro a quote from

5) A Republican Congressman's Twitter account, who turns out to not even be a Congressman, but rather

6) A random troll who created a character "based on J.D. 'Boss' Hogg from the classic TV show, 'The Dukes of Hazzard'".

So as bad as our current little bad family reunion is going, it could be worse.

Not much worse, but slightly.

But it's bad enough that the hard left is, get this, now criticizing the GamerGate thugs within it for being authoritarian witches.

I'm a lifelong liberal and I am so fucking sick of these fascist losers. Arthur Chu's piece on The Guardian's "BernieBros" made me want to punch a wall (Not even worth archiving, spare yourselves the pain.). The web's media columnists are almost now entirely internet trolls with freelancing jobs like Chu, Sady Doyle, Elon James, Sarah Jeong, and other members of the anti-GG "intelligentsia."

For all of the left-wing values anti-GG SJW's supposedly preach, you'd think they'd believe in the candidate who wants to fight institutional racism, perpetual war; to end a corrupt political finance system, and put men and women on an equal footing.
But no, the Left has been invaded by these...things.

These self-flagellating hipster fascists who want speech policed, who want private institutions to take over our schools and police departments, who want to get paid to make the world to agree with them...Or else. A bunch of fucking Dolores Umbridges.

These people do not preach Liberal Values. They are authoritarian bullies. GG was just the start and now with the election in full swing they're ready to try to steal their moment in the sun, even if it means sabotaging the Left.

Worst of all, these attacks work. I've already seen one Bernie supporter switch over to Hillary for fear of being seen as sexist. Granted, he's a fucking moron with no principles and is just the type of dude to fall for this shit, but still.
I need to take a walk.

Oh, one more thing. There's apparently a fight on the left about the following proposition:

Is Bernie Sanders a racist, white-priveleged, mansplaining monster for only pushing hardcore socialism rather than, as the Hillary Maenads would prefer, a toxic brew of both hardcore socialism and war-of-all-against-all identity politics?

See, the SJW set doesn't want to talk about socialism; they really just want to talk about how they're Aggrieved. (It doesn't occur to them that socialism is nothing but butthurt economics for the malignantly aggrieved and economically useless.)

They don't like how Bernie Sanders pushes socialism without adequately talking up Black Lives Matter and White Skin Priveledge.

A right-leaning commentator was so distraught by the lunacy of this situation he felt he needed to come in and mansplain how socialism is really just State-Compelled Social Justice Warrioring For Everyone, and so they're really arguing about nothing.

I wouldn't have done that, but I guess no harm done -- they're not going to read him anyway.

posted by Ace at 01:46 PM

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