A Beginner’s Guide to the “Fuck Bernie” Meme and Why It Still Matters
As a liberal, my facebook feed is a strange place these days. There’s plenty of anti-Trump sentiment, sure. And, being somewhere in the definition of a “millennial,” many of my peers post about Bernie Sanders in a positive light. Many people I know, like, and respect still hold Bernie Sanders in high esteem. And that’s fine. During the 2016 primary, I wound up in some of those talked-about “secret” pro-Hillary facebook groups (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/16/fashion/closet-hillary-clinton-supporters-facebook-secret-groups.html). And while the discussions there are similarly anti-Trump, the impression of Senator Sanders there is decidedly negative. “Fuck Bernie” is a common saying — as a meme, as a sign off, or simply as a greeting.
If I weren’t a member of these groups, it would be easy to miss this negative take on Bernie Sanders. Which leads many of my peers to claim that he is universally liked. He is not. I write this not to try to dissuade anyone from liking him, but rather to show that not everyone loves him. To explain further why very progressive, very reasonable people do not like him…
While the notion of Bernie being liked isn’t, in and of itself, harmful, some of the mechanisms behind why that notion exists are worrisome. And if we fail to acknowledge and examine them, they threaten to continue to negatively affect our world and our lives in the future.
It’s All Connected and It Is Still Worth Examining
I have little desire to relitigate the 2016 primary. But many of the reasons I grew to dislike and then despise Bernie Sanders, and the reasons many of his supporters remain unaware of or in denial of that negative sentiment towards him, are directly connected to continuing issues that have consequences beyond a single election.
Whatever you think of Hillary Rodham Clinton, her supporters can’t help but know that not everyone is a fan. In an age where social media and the internet has accelerated the effect of groupthink, this is significant. As humans, we tend to assume everyone agrees with us until given direct evidence to the contrary. In pre-internet days, the consolidation of news sources meant the average person was more likely to come into contact with opposing views. But now media and news are divided by niche. Algorithms and self-selection don’t just influence the “who” we interact with, they also influence what data we see and how that information is presented.
This matters because of the very nature of groupthink. The less someone is exposed to differing viewpoints, the more extreme their views tend to drift. If you’re often confronted with a directly contradicting viewpoint, you may get angry, exhausted, and exasperated, but you’re a lot less likely to dismiss the contradicting viewpoint as completely invalid. This is why the notion of Bernie Sanders as a universally liked figure is so troubling to me:
- Because in order to reach that conclusion, there is an entire population of people you have to ignore. And there are demographic realities about that population that have wider historical and political significance. It’s a group that has, historically, been ignored.
- If you hold the notion that Senator Sanders is universally liked, you can avoid confronting the reasons so many of us take issue with him — which are often directly connected to the demographic issues mentioned above.
More directly — demographically speaking, women (especially older women) and people of color did not connect with Bernie Sanders. I saw plenty of assumptions that it was because we didn’t think he was “electable” or because we were fooled or because we were paid money (still waiting on a check if that’s the case). Enough people truly believed that Hillary Clinton was better suited to be president that she overwhelmingly won the primary. And even if she hadn’t, I wonder if we would have seen the same “here’s how to win over Clinton supporters” handwringing as we saw “how do we win over Sanders supporters” that happened in the wake of the primary. Actually, I suppose I don’t need to wonder since that happened in 2008. And while it was a consideration, it was nowhere near the hold-the-party-hostage-until-our-demands-are-met situation that happened last summer and fall.
The assumption that Bernie is universally liked necessitates the dismissal of the concerns of people who don’t like him. These people often fall into certain demographic categories — some combination of people of color, female, or LGBTQ. So the assumption that Bernie is universally liked is reliant upon ignoring (usually not with purposefully malicious intent) female, POC, and LGBTQ voices. And one of the recurring problems with Bernie that many of these people tried to voice was that he ignored the concerns of women, POC and LGBTQ.
Are we going to continue to condescendingly assume that those voices, those concerns, are somehow uninformed or misguided? Or will we attempt to listen, consider those concerns, try to understand where they’re coming from, and maybe even agree with some of them?
Why “Fuck Bernie”?
I didn’t start out disliking Senator Sanders. I entertained the idea of supporting him and voting for him. I decided, for many reasons, not to support him in the primary. (I wrote all about it here: https://medium.com/@DanaKyleMusic/why-i-m-with-her-this-time-around-4008a9ff5038)
But deciding not to support someone in a primary is certainly not equal to disliking them and is a long way from despising them. In 2016, I found myself enthusiastically supporting a candidate that I had previously voted against in the 2008 primary. When policies and values are pretty close, that is not a very unusual turn of events. And I may have been able to view the 2016 primary losing candidate similarly to how I viewed the 2008 primary losing candidate, if it weren’t for his actions after the primary, after the election, his refusal to take any responsibility for his own actions, his hypocrisy, and his passive acceptance of the double standards that judge him favorably.
If you’re highly in favor of Senator Sanders, this particular view of him might be completely new to you. People have written about it in much greater detail and I encourage you to read these analyses (see a little below where I link to many resources). For me, it came down to the fact that he framed differences in approaches and relatively minor policy disagreements as fundamental character flaws. He leveraged negative impressions of ambitious women and continues to dismiss the concerns of those who don’t check the same demographic boxes that he does (just see his tweet about being ashamed that the white working class is being ignored,).
I don’t think he intends to fan the flames of stereotypes — about people of color nor about women. But racism and misogyny, unfortunately, don’t require intention. Plenty of racist and misogynistic acts have been done inadvertently or unintentionally. That lack of ill-intent doesn’t make the results any less angering, devastating, or life-altering for the people affected by them (just ask the DREAMers).
Here’s an absolutely amazing twitter thread with links that back up and expand upon what I’ve written above. If you click on only one link from this article, click on this one:
Many People Dislike Bernie Sanders and Have Already Explained Why
Here are more links to many others who have gone into more detail about some of these points:
Bernie’s hypocrisy and embrace of double standards:
“And this is where I find Sanders to be the most hypocritical, dangerous, and downright hateful: he knows Clinton is a liberal, and a very liberal liberal at that. He knows she’s to his left on guns and women and LBGT and a range of issues. He knows her leadership on equality issues and the range of progressive achievements she had and helped secure, and he knows that she has developed a full range of progressive solutions in many more areas than he has and to a much more detailed and targeted degree than he himself has. He likely knows she’d be more effective than him in office, and I do not doubt that he knows she is a good person. But he pretends otherwise and smears her and all his congressional colleagues as shills. If he would have just stuck to the issues and spread his message in a positive way, we would not have this bitter, festering hatred of Hillary that he is stoking and exploiting, which could really have negative consequences in the general, both at the presidential level and downticket.”
“He’s the one who convinced these folks that Clinton was in the pocket of Wall Street. She gave a speech to Goldman Sachs! He’s the one who convinced them she was a tool of wealthy elites. She’s raising money from rich people! He’s the one who convinced them she was a corporate shill. She supported the TPP! He’s the one who, when he finally endorsed her, did it so grudgingly that he sounded like a guy being held hostage. He’s the one who did next to nothing to get his supporters to stop booing her from the convention floor. He’s the one who promised he’d campaign his heart out to defeat Donald Trump, but has done hardly anything since — despite finding plenty of time to campaign against Debbie Wasserman Schultz and set up an anti-TPP movement.”
His Endorsement of HRC Was Half-Hearted (and his supporters knew it)
In 2008, Hillary fought as hard as she could in the primary…and when she lost she threw her full support behind Barack Obama. She campaigned for him. She didn’t shrug and give a knowing smile when people asked if she’d rather be on the ticket. She didn’t go off and promote her book during the campaign. She knew what was at stake and she got on board. Granted, as a democrat, she had a vested interest in democratic unity. But had Obama lost in 2008, I have no doubt that she would’ve been running in a primary in 2012. Perhaps her support was, in fact, about values and policy and not about personal ambition.
Either way, the margin between Trump and Clinton in 2016 (like that of Bush and Gore in 2000 — as in, we knew this was a possibility from recent history) was small enough that 3rd party voters and Sanders-turned-Trump voters did, in fact, make all the difference. (And I haven’t heard anyone take responsibility for that)
This Rift is Still a Problem Because the Underlying Issues Haven’t Been Addressed
People aren’t bringing this up in an attempt to sabotage the anti-Trump effort. They’re bringing it up because the underlying issues continue to be a problem. I suppose this is why some Bernie supporters continue to push the narrative that the primary was “rigged,” despite evidence to the contrary. If you truly believe it was a problem, it makes sense that it could well be a problem next time around. So I do understand why those convinced that there was foul play aren’t going to put aside that belief simply for the sake of “unity.” Unity takes listening, understanding and often compromise. One of the reasons I initially began to warm up to Hillary was because in 2008, she pretty clearly listened, tried to understand, and was willing to compromise for the greater good. Unity will always be elusive as long as he and his supporters refuse to acknowledge that some of the criticism of him and his tactics are valid. Considering the number of articles and statements starting with “while she’s not a perfect candidate, I like her because…,” it would seem that many HRC supporters, while not willing to entertain each and every criticism, are at least open to the idea that no one’s perfect and criticism can at times be constructive.
“White men can make a president from a treasonous sexual predator who dreams of being a half-wit, and we ask what they want and need. But POC, women, urban voters who are responsible for 2/3 of the American economy? We should shut up and go home. No one wants us here.”
“I don’t WANT to talk about this fucking misogyny and sexism everyday. I wish I didn’t have to…but it’s oppressive.”
“But Sanders can’t help himself I guess. When you get lots of love from the media, that’s what you stick to. His endorsement is the kiss of death (none of the winners were endorsed by him) and his PAC that he started Our Revolution is more focused on scoring cheap political points then winning elections (they have won one seat, the NY seat which while listed on the candidate’s website, she barely mentioned when campaigning.)”
“When Sanders repeatedly declared that “identity politics” were a problem, he exposed a dangerous weakness in progressive political thought that remains unaddressed. We live intersectional lives, and these issues must be addressed intersectionally. To separate class from gender, race, sexuality, and ability in fighting for economic justice is to create a fiction that economic injustice is only driven by one kind social injustice — the kind that able-bodied cishet white men experience. It’s a dangerous fiction that at its heart reinforces patriarchal white supremacy, and it’s becoming all the more dangerous as we fight against an administration and its attendant political movement that wants nothing more than to roll back as many social justice gains as possible.”
Why So Angry?
Sanders vs Clinton during the primary and in it’s ongoing form wasn’t just about policy differences. I wish it were. Then we’d be more likely to have a President Clinton in the white house. The issues that Clinton supporters had and have with Sanders and some of his supporters is the dismissal and minimization of our very existence. That’s where the anger comes from.
Many Clinton supporters didn’t just face standard “you’re wrong” (and more colorful language) responses. They faced accusations that they were not real, were bots (That accusation went both ways, to be fair…although in the case of Hillary supporters, I see that mostly in the context of “the particularly obnoxious/threatening BernieBro you encountered was probably a bot”. It’s an assumption that most Sanders supporters are real and are perfectly well-meaning people — a very valid assumption — and that the worst vitriol is what’s faked. When the “you’re a bot” insult has been leveled at me, it was to negate the validity of anything I might say.), they faced accusations that they had sold their opinions and their vote to the highest bidder, and they faced accusations that they were morally lacking for supporting their chosen candidate. Those are much deeper accusations than simple policy disagreements. And are very good excuses for why one would ignore any criticism of Bernie Sanders.
One of the reasons (besides Hillary’s own efforts) why it was easier to unite the party in the 2008 general election than the 2016 general election is that the difference between candidates there was framed as differences in policy, method, priority, and experience. None of those were failings of character nor morality. None of those questioned the very existence of the person’s supporters (This is why the “the primary was rigged” accusation infuriates so many people who voted for Hillary. Are primaries perfect? No. Of course not. But did millions and millions of people vote for Hillary? Yes. Yes, we did. We exist. And we have lives and problems and concerns.)
When the primary began, it was easy to see Bernie vs. Hillary as a comparison of different policies and strategies. Different priorities can certainly be concerning, but not anger-inducing. But the dismissal of one’s existence? The implication that one is morally compromised? That right there will make you angry.
“We’ve *been* listening. Women. People of color. Generally, it’s a survival tactic for us to listen; to know where the danger may come from; to try to understand those who may one day do us harm. Not to mention that we’ve been conditioned to believe that the concerns of “real America” are more important than our own. And when someone makes a well-informed, well-articulated case, I have changed my mind. But I am not obligated to change my mind to suit other peoples’ ignorance and misinformation.”
Where Do We Go From Here?
Personally, I would love to never see or hear from Senator Bernie Sanders again. Not because I don’t agree with many of his policy views, but because he continues to walk right into his blind spot almost every time he makes an appearance (see his condescending assertion that Hillary Clinton should join “us” in fighting for healthcare — a fight she has been fighting for decades, thank you very much.).
However, I don’t think he should step out of the limelight simply because I, personally, would like him to. He has too great a platform. Many people look up to him and are inspired by him. And who am I to want to take that away from them? Not to mention I do believe he serves a valuable political role.
In an ideal world, Senator Sanders would set an example for his supporters by engaging in some introspection. Listen to and address some of the criticism against him. Own up to his priorities. It’s perfectly fine that people have different priorities. It would be great if Sanders would embrace that he has a blind spot for the experiences of women and people of color — which is understandable given that he is neither of those things. It would be great if Sanders would at least attempt to listen to people’s concerns who don’t happen to be his supporters.
I’m pretty sure Senator Sanders isn’t going to change his ways now. One of his big selling points is his consistency, after all.
I would love it if his supporters would try to consider what Hillary supporters have been dealing with. Not just with this election, but as wider demographics. I am perfectly aware that there are reasons to criticize Secretary Hillary Clinton. She is human. I am perfectly aware that there are many reasons to look up to and admire Senator Sanders. I agree with him on many economic issues. And there are reasons to prioritize certain policies and certain issues. That’s reasonable and human. There’s an argument to be made for asking for exactly what you want (like a $15 minimum wage) and there’s an argument to be made for incremental change that acknowledges where we are and some of the difficulties we’ll encounter trying to get to a better place (such as with healthcare).
I just wish that Sanders supporters would give me the same benefit of the doubt (no, #NotAllSandersSupporters. But…that’s little comfort when you are bombarded by the ones who call you an “unfuckable bitch” for daring to assert that misogyny exists.) — that I’m a well-meaning person who actually exists and, while having differing priorities from them, pretty much mostly agrees with the direction the country should be going in.
But if a certain subset of the “progressive” movement (though, how progressive can they be if they’re ignoring women and minorities?) continues to try to silence my voice, don’t worry, I can multitask. I can (and will) fight against the direction Trump is trying to take the country in while simultaneously asserting my existence and my voice to those who would try to deny it, whether they come from the left or right.
The democratic party is a coalition party. It’s not perfect. It’s not homogenous. Which means there is and there should be room for differing opinions, differing priorities, and differing tactics. We should listen to each other, consider, and continue to disagree if it calls for it. But the anger won’t dissipate (and shouldn’t) if a very vocal swath of self-proclaimed progressives continue to assume that a large portion of us are morally bankrupt or don’t exist or aren’t worthy of having our priorities and concerns considered.
I merely ask for people to listen, consider and not dismiss my very existence. Changing minds? That would be incredibly rare icing on the cake.
