A neutral, independent community in which members debate issues related to social justice.
Left-wing "Anti-SJWs", Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders
Though this is not a particularly huge issue now that most Sanders supporters have thrown their lot behind Clinton, there was something interesting that I noticed.
During the primary, Bernie Sanders was, of course, the more revolutionary, left-wing, radical candidate. He called for more sweeping reforms of the criminal justice, economic, and social systems in place. However, on the Internet, he was the favorite of (the left side of) the anti-SJW movement (typically, left-wing anti-SJWs supported Sanders, while the right-wing ones were split between Gary Johnson, Rand Paul, and Trump) - it was Hillary, the more moderate, palatable, establishment-friendly candidate, who was considered the SJW (because she apparently was focusing more on identity politics than economic issues) and therefore a bad candidate.
Of course, Tumblr was heavily pro-Bernie too, but there was a difference in how Reddit and Tumblr supported him - Redditors were more likely to support Bernie or Bust and are more likely to support Jill Stein or Gary Johnson in the present, while Tumblr got behind Hillary as soon as the primary was settled. This ran contrary to my expectations - after all, isn't Tumblr the more pro-social justice place, and therefore more likely to say that Hillary is problematic due to her relatively moderate views? Isn't Reddit more libertarian and thus would support the more economically right-wing but socially liberal candidate?
Of course, I had gotten Reddit completely wrong. Reddit isn't politically libertarian as much as it is culturally libertarian - they don't really have a coherent set of economic views, but they have the belief that nothing should be banned. For some, hatred of Hillary stems from that - they point to Hillary's remarks in 2005 about the harms of violent video games, or the gut feeling that she will usher in a much more militant and radical institutionalized political correctness. Hillary "gives off the vibe" that she wants to be a controlling, strict (grand)mother due to her toughness, while Bernie is the "cool old grandpa" who grew up in the 60s and thus have a live and let live view. Obama is viewed favorably because of the same reasons - he's the young, hip guy who relates to them.
This is also played out when it came to demographics in the actual primary votes - whites, millennials of all demographic groups, and males favored Sanders. I wonder if the narrative among the white working class and millennial left that Hillary's social justice didn't consider economics was the key factor - one of the big stereotypes of "SJWs" is that they don't care about economic issues and identity overrides everything. They liked Bernie because he appealed to those who are on the left for economic reasons - they get all the populism and protectionism of an outsider without the overt bigotry associated with Trump.
What do you think was the reason why, despite their more conservative views, self-proclaimed anti-SJWs didn't support the more conservative candidate and decided to support the farthest left candidate in Bernie Sanders?




I think you're reading Reddit all wrong.
As far as Reddit goes, here's what happened:
Sanders supporters are actually some of the most PRO-Social Justice people in the world. The impression that Sanders supporters are anti-SJW is very very wrong, and is a result, actually, of Drumpf supporters PRETENDING to be Sanders supporters, to try to confuse everyone.
Drumpf supporters were the ones who made up the "Bernie Bro" myth, quite successfully, actually. There were no "Bernie Bros". They didn't exist. Maybe one in a few thousand Bernie "supporters" were ignorant anti-Social Justice people. But most of them were Drumpf supporters posing as Bernie supporters because they knew that Bernie was stronger against Drumpf than Hillary was. They also mainly wanted to bait SRS into boosting the Bernie Bro myth as well.
In any case, the hundreds of thousands of subscribers to /r/SandersForPresident did NOT transfer over to /r/JillStein and they also didn't transfer over to /r/GaryJohnson (or whatever his subreddit is).
What did happen was the leaders of /r/SandersForPresident actively prevented posts encouraging people to look into Stein and Johnson, and shut down the sub when the userbase was getting more and more agitated about the suppression.
They tried to direct us over to /r/Political_Revolution, but even that subreddit has been severely restricted to ONLY supporting mainstream Democratic Party candidates. If you post about a Green Party candidate, or ANYTHING having to do with the Presidential election, your post will be deleted.
/r/Politics is 100% controlled by Clinton supporters. If you post anything other than support for Hillary or hatred for Drumpf, your post will either be deleted or will just be downvoted to hell, and will garner hundreds of snide, sarcastic, nasty comments.
The majority of Sanders supporters have gone silent, because they've been effectively silenced by the massive throngs of Hillary supporters who have gone into overdrive since the convention.
No doubt, the 6 million dollars that has been put into online activity at Correct the Record has helped in that regard.
The OVERWHELMING sentiment on Reddit today is Pro-Clinton or Pro-Trump. There is no longer any real, formidable presence of Sanders/Stein/Johnson voters, because we have been silenced.
There are still a few Bernie subreddits (/r/stillsandersforpres ; /r/WayoftheBern ; /r/AprogressiveParty ; /r/Bernie ; /r/TheRecordCorrected ; /r/Kossacks_for_Sanders) but none of those have many members.
In real life, you're right. But it wasn't the case on Reddit. You make a point that they were mostly Trump trolls, and perhaps there's some truth to that. But my experience as a member of an anti-SJW subreddit tells me that it's a combination - some are Trump trolls, but others are Sanders supporters who support him because he focuses on economic issues as opposed to identity issues, whereas Hillary was all about identity politics. It became difficult to tell - I resorted to checking post histories.
The very reason that Bernie did better in head-to-head polls was because he was not the frontrunner. If he was, then all of his past association with communists, real and imagined, would come out, as would his rape essays, his promise to raise taxes on everyone and not just the wealthy, etc. Hillary's problems were baked into her polls. Bernie's was not, because most people didn't know the bad parts about him.
It wasn't that way during the primary. It's only pro-Clinton for the general because most Sanders supporters hate Trump more than Clinton. During the primary r/politics was mostly pro-Bernie - Hillary was mostly not mentioned at all, or only in a negative way.
Where were those "massive throngs" during the primary? I certainly didn't see them. Back during the primary r/politics was mostly pro-Bernie and occasionally pro-Trump, depending on the time of day. They either were silent or switched to Clinton after the primary in order to stop Trump.
Same here. Most of the time, I found that they also posted in /r/The_Donald or /r/European when that wasn't banned, or /r/SRSsucks.
Imagined.
You mean the one essay where he talks about how traditional gender roles help create troubling dynamics in men's and women's sex lives?
Where he's railing against the patriarchy? Yeah, THAT's damaging, from a Social Justice perspective. Riiiiiight.
He explained time and time again the fact if you coupled the tax increases with the healthcare savings of single-payer, the poor and middle class would be paying LESS in taxes than before.
Bernie's was not, because there weren't any bad parts about him!
Yes, during the primary, Bernie supporters outnumbered both Hillary and Drumpf supporters on /r/Politics. But they didn't all just flip sides after the primary.
Yes, at the time we outnumbered the Hillary supporters. The difference is, today, even the mods are Hillary supporters and are actively engaged in suppressing any third party content from /r/Politics.
Exactly. Where did they come from? They sure as hell aren't all Bernie supporters. Really makes you wonder, doesn't it?
Including that time when he spoke favorably about Castro? Or Daniel Ortega? Or are those imagined too? Let's not forget that the American electorate will not vote for a socialist. During the primaries we didn't know it'll be Trump...so had they put up Rubio they could have made the election into "Rubio the son of poor Cuban immigrants vs. the creepy old socialist who liked the very guy who uprooted Rubio's family" and the GOP would have won.
I'm not saying that it's damaging from a social justice perspective. I'm saying that it's damaging from a general election perspective.
The American electorate tends to support single-payer...until they realize that it'll cost more in taxes. I'm not saying that I oppose single payer, but the support fades once people realize the cost of it and that they would have to pay for it.
I am convinced by his explanation, but the American public will not be.
...to someone to the far left of the political spectrum, which is not even close to a majority. He would have been toast if the GOP nominated Kasich or Rubio. You think the GOP isn't going to play the video of him praising Castro and Ortega ad nauseum, especially if they nominated someone who wasn't as repulsive as Trump or Cruz? The American public didn't believe Obama was a socialist because the GOP had no proof. But with Sanders, they have plenty of ammunition to attack him with. This is an example of an ad they would run - of course, they also went after Clinton by tying her to Sanders, but the main point was that Sanders is proof that the GOP wasn't wrong about the Democrats being evil pinko commie scum after all.
Then why is r/politics "Clinton-dominated" if they didn't start supporting Hillary?
If there was a conspiracy by Clinton to dominate Reddit during the primary, then it must have failed spectacularly. And I don't see how they suddenly would do it for the general if they didn't do it for the primary. I'm inclined to think the simplest explanation is probably the correct one - as Sanders lost the primary, he and his supporters are now for the most part supporting Clinton.
First of all, he wasn't "associated" with the communists. He did have some good things to say about them though.
But I fully agree with him when he says:
Moving on...
12,029,699 did.
Sanders would have mopped the floor with Rubio or Cruz.
Ok, I can see that. Ignorant people might just read the headlines and be influenced.
12 million of us were/are convinced.
What I'm saying is that Bernie made "socialist" not a dirty word anymore. He didn't deny it. He owned it, and explained it. People respected him for that.
That is an AWESOME ad! I WISH they would have run that!
I wish the Democrats WERE pinko commie scum. Sadly, you're not.
Because of this, which I'm sure you're aware of:
Correct the Record, which has received $6.3 million this campaign season and has spent almost $6 million of it, according to OpenSecrets.org, outlined its strategy against “swarms of anonymous attackers” in a press release:
Moving on...
There WASN'T a plan for Reddit from the Clinton campaign during the Primary. The Clinton campaign were completely unaware that Reddit was even a THING during the Primary, because it's made up of old people (who were basically the only ones voting for Clinton, by the way).
That's WHY Sanders dominated Reddit and was able to do as well as he did in the Primary in the first place. Reddit was his HUB. Reddit is where his campaign got organized.
Towards the end of the Primary, the Clinton campaign infiltrated /r/SandersForPresident and the other Progressive and Democrat subs, and took over the place. Silencing Sanders people through regular old downvotes and also through mod action.
I think that's a bit too trusting.
You're cherry-picking the most innocuous part of what he said. He said in the same interview about Castro bringing forth a "revolution of values", "gave healthcare and education" to Cuba, etc. in an approving tone. This is the part that will make the American electorate instantly recoil, especially if there's a competent GOP ad machine, unlike what we've seen with the Trump campaign.
12 million is not a majority.
Who do you think that the American electorate would be more sympathetic to, the young Latino guy who was the son of poor Cuban immigrants fleeing persecution and possible death from Castro and his murderous sidekick Che Guevara, or the old former radical revolutionary who heaped praise on and apologized for the same?
12 million is not a majority.
Not true.
Sanders isn't even a good social democrat. No modern European social democrat would be caught praising Castro and Ortega.
Or maybe it's because Reddit is 80% male and mostly white, and combined with Reddit's youth is the ideal Sanders demographic? Support for Sanders significantly dropped if the voter was female or non-white. Millennials across all demographics still supported Sanders as a majority, but the proportions were less lopsided with the females and the non-whites.
And yet, you don't see Jill Stein getting above a few % in the polls. Why is that? Is it because gasp most Sanders supporters actually have a shred of practicality and have thrown their lot behind Clinton?
Look dude, if you think Bernie didn't have any problems, you're a part of the problem. His economics were shaky at best and regressive at worst, he spoke favorably of Fidel Castro and defended it, he was basically ignorant about black problems, it goes on. He was not a candidate ready for prime time. He was a third-party interloper trying to take over a party that wasn't his, that was never his, and which did not support him or his views.
So you're saying you would have rather had a warmongering, corrupt, game-player than an honest person?
That's a cool analysis of online community politics.
If you spend a lot of time in reddit it's easy to think of the prevailing view there as THE view. But it isn't at all. It's just one very vocal view.
That goes for any community, online or not. You always think the view of the community you're in is the predominant view, when it often isn't. For example, I can say with confidence that the vast, vast majority of my friends are liberal. Doesn't mean that most of the country is liberal. Practically everyone I know favors gay marriage - doesn't mean that the entire country does, and so forth.
I don't have a single friend that likes trump. But clearly there are lots of people that do.