SOME Sanders supporters are conspiracy theorists or cult-of-personality types.
Twitter is a strange place. People say it's real life when the fights that happen there help their cause, and people say it's just an online fantasy-land when the fights that happen there hurt their cause. Sanders has a pretty strong Twitter army, and I like to think I belong to it. Other candidates have their own online armies. Michael Bloomberg bought his. Nobody can match Trump's. At least some of the fights on Twitter involve bots, and at least a few of those bots are planted by foreign governments, to include Russia.
Among the supporters of various campaigns for the Democratic nomination for president, it's pretty weird sometimes how little they interact, how little they see each other's content, and what they fight about when they do interact.
Plenty of this is normal and healthy, some of this straight-up doesn't matter, and some of this is regrettable but not worth fighting.
Then there are interactions like the following one:
Marty "Vote for Bernie" MacMarty (@martymacmarty) is a Sanders supporter and Twitter user who posted an attack against the Senior Advisor for the Sanders campaign @WaywardWinifred, because she had tweeted the following: "I like Elizabeth Warren. She's a nice lady. We once held hands. It was cool."
MacMarty's attack read: "It worries me that Bernie is surrounded by all these disloyal snakes."
Now, can someone tell me what part of Poe's law this falls under? Is this satire or sincerity? Whatever it is, it's bizarre. And stupid. And pointless. And strategically useless.
The next step is to read the comments section, and see how people (usually all Sanders supporters, since Twitter is largely, though not exclusively, an echo chamber) react. There, you will see stuff like this -- about one of Sanders' paid employees:
Samuel Finkelstein is a Sanders supporter on Twitter with over 27,000 followers. And he's excellent. He posts tons of useful, insightful things every day to build support for the Sanders campaign. He's also a conspiracy theorist.
On February 24, he retweeted a post by "@housetrotter" that "in 2001 the cia sent envelopes full of anthrax to two sitting us senators".
If you look at @housetrotter's profile, it turns out he's a 9/11 truther.
When Samuel Finkelstein was alerted that he's retweeting truthers to spread claims that the CIA sends poison to Democratic Senators via U.S. mail, his response was that "This isn’t even a controversial conspiracy theory, mainstream outlets covered it". Wow! Didn't know that mainstream outlets openly reported on the CIA trying to overthrow the U.S. government.
When accused by his OWN SUPPORTERS of intellectual laziness and told that his hard work could have counterproductive results:
Among the supporters of various campaigns for the Democratic nomination for president, it's pretty weird sometimes how little they interact, how little they see each other's content, and what they fight about when they do interact.
Plenty of this is normal and healthy, some of this straight-up doesn't matter, and some of this is regrettable but not worth fighting.
Then there are interactions like the following one:
Marty "Vote for Bernie" MacMarty (@martymacmarty) is a Sanders supporter and Twitter user who posted an attack against the Senior Advisor for the Sanders campaign @WaywardWinifred, because she had tweeted the following: "I like Elizabeth Warren. She's a nice lady. We once held hands. It was cool."
MacMarty's attack read: "It worries me that Bernie is surrounded by all these disloyal snakes."
Now, can someone tell me what part of Poe's law this falls under? Is this satire or sincerity? Whatever it is, it's bizarre. And stupid. And pointless. And strategically useless.
The next step is to read the comments section, and see how people (usually all Sanders supporters, since Twitter is largely, though not exclusively, an echo chamber) react. There, you will see stuff like this -- about one of Sanders' paid employees:
and this:
and this:
Let me summarize. A Sanders campaign operative said the most banally complimentary things about Senator Warren, Sanders' closest ideological ally in the race. Even if some Sanders supporters have very good reasons to criticize Warren and be skeptical of some of her stances and strategies, the above statement is literally about nothing more than an anecdote that Warren is, quote, a nice lady whom it was cool to meet once.
And there are Sanders supporters for whom this makes one of Sanders' own campaign operatives: useless, a snake, disloyal, a "huckster fraud" (in all caps), an undercover agent for some unspecified client, and in need of purging in order to win a national campaign against Trump.
All I can say is: with allies like these, Sanders doesn't even need enemies.
Exhibit B:
On February 24, he retweeted a post by "@housetrotter" that "in 2001 the cia sent envelopes full of anthrax to two sitting us senators".
If you look at @housetrotter's profile, it turns out he's a 9/11 truther.
When Samuel Finkelstein was alerted that he's retweeting truthers to spread claims that the CIA sends poison to Democratic Senators via U.S. mail, his response was that "This isn’t even a controversial conspiracy theory, mainstream outlets covered it". Wow! Didn't know that mainstream outlets openly reported on the CIA trying to overthrow the U.S. government.
When accused by his OWN SUPPORTERS of intellectual laziness and told that his hard work could have counterproductive results:
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