When Gamergate became BernieGate…
In the last couple of weeks a large number of Clinton/ Obama supporters have been systematically harassed and intimidated by Bernie Sanders supporters on Twitter.
Anyone that even posts the vaguest critique of Bernie, is targeted by this mob of frat boys.
Their MO is always the same: they first target a certain user. Then they mass harass this user with sometimes up to 40 or 50 Bernie supporters. When the user replies in anger, or says anything wrong (using the word ‘f*ck’ will usually do the trick), they mass report the user, who then gets banned.
Twitter doesn’t in any way act against these tactics, against the targeted harassment or abuse of users, but instead ALWAYS bans the victim.
What happened sporadic in the last months now goes on 24/7 against hundreds of Twitter users who at some point have criticized Bernie Sanders.
Often (9 out of 10 times) the victims of these bully tactics are women, usually they are POC or LGTB.
A few examples: @MrDane1982, a well known Twitter user was attacked for weeks by Bernie supporters. At some point the name calling started, they called him among others a ‘corporatist coon” and used other racial slurs.
When MrDane/ MrWeeks reacted by posting Jay Z lyrics, they mass reported him, claiming those lyrics posed a threat. At which point Twitter reacted by banning MrWeeks for a week.
A few days ago, @AmirAminiMD decided to dox and threaten a Twitter user:
(note: I have a screenshot of the original tweet including the name, but will not add to the doxxing by posting it)
Interesting note: the above user (AmirAminiMD) has been harassing just about any POC he can on Twitter (including Joy Ann Reid whom he called a racist), yet dares to suggest someone attacks him and “other people of color”.
He wasn’t brave enough to let the tweet up and deleted it after an hour or so. By then many people already had seen it of course.
Around the same time, a letter arrived at Kevin’s work with accusations and tweets to show the ‘abusive’ online behavior of Kevin (yes he did use the word f*ck a few times while defending himself against anti gay slurs……).
So, not only did @AmirAminiMD dox Kevin, people went as far as sending a letter to his employer to get him fired.
Welcome to the Revolution, I guess.
The whole story can be read here:
https://twitter.com/HumorlessKev/status/947185356004196352
Another target was Bravenak, a black activist. What happened to her has been described in detail here:
The Bernie supporters make up lies, they fabricate screenshots to make it look as if someone said something in a different thread, they post private info about a user, dox the person in question and send threats against someone’s life.
In Bravenak’s case, they went as far as to go on her Facebook page, grab a picture of Bravenak and her child….Then they used that picture as profile pic to create a fake act. Finally, they sent an invite to follow to Bravenak’s online friends.
I mean, there is literally nothing these people won’t do to intimidate or harass people.
About another user they started posting that the account was hacked, and they asked @Twittersafety to take the account down.
Or they pretended that an account was a ‘sockpuppet’ account and asked Twitter safety to close the account:
https://twitter.com/Wade_Turnbull/status/944830520503836672
Another user had her private info posted online, and yet another user’s employer was contacted.
And then I’m not even talking about the swearing, the racist slurs, and the sexist slurs.
This is GamerGate all over, but by now it’s turned into BernieGate with Bernie’s supporters as perpetrators. We have gangs of young white boys/ men who gang up to harass women/ POC. They are cowards as in that they never act alone. Their goal is to get anyone critical of Bernie banned from Twitter. They are sexist, racist and post incredibly racist meme’s of for example Kamala Harris or Cory Booker. I mean…POC and watermelon, we all know the drill, right?
Or they post incredibly hateful messages about for example Joy Ann Reid:
Their harassment never stops and has for some reason gotten much worse over the Christmas weekend.
The pattern is always the same: a number of 5 or 6 accounts lead the charge:
@AmirAminiMD
@Wade_Turnbull
@Gladstone_Small (a second account of Wade_Turnbull where he pretends to be a poc…)
@satanicunicorn
@GeoffMiami
@BLUpfront
They attack someone and then their followers start to harass the person in question.
If you look at some of the accounts I mentioned above, you will see that every single tweet they make is aimed at harassing a woman/ POC Twitter user. It’s all they do. Which is another problem: they often have up to 4 or 5 accounts.
Even if their secondary account they use to harass people is banned, they lose nothing.
That is…if they are banned. Because up to now after 3 weeks of this ongoing harassment not a single Berner engaged in this is banned. Twitter does not in any way, shape or form act against this excessive harassment of users.
Here is another example:
The exact same people on their multiple accounts going after T_FisherKing:
The tactics are the same: @Wade_Turnbull and in this case some alt accounts of his and some of his buddies go after a known black activist and harass him. Then they decide to dox him and they state that they have sent messages to his employer, to get him fired.
https://twitter.com/T_FisherKing/status/946637285818290176
@Newsresearch5, an alt account with some 10 or so followers (according to most, an alt account of Wade_Turnbull) posted this:
If you look at that account (Newsresearch5) you will see it is only set up to harass T_FisherKing.
Accounts involved in this:
@Wade_turnbull
@Newsresearch5
@Fluffcow69
@BernieEffect
So..what triggered this? There have always been tensions between Bernie and Obama/ Clinton supporters, but the excessive harassment of POC/ LGTB and women by Bernie supporters seems to have been more intense the past two or so weeks.
Imo it all started with this: a racist flyer was posted at Temple Uni, Philadelphia.
Although some tweeted about it, it only got a lot of Twitter attention when Patricia Arquette tweeted about it:
https://twitter.com/PattyArquette/status/942115636553056256
https://twitter.com/PattyArquette/status/942119112452407296
This led to a ton of angry Berners who have since then apparently felt the need to prove they’re not racists by…..harassing and stalking black activists on Twitter.
Although there is no evidence at all that the person who posted these flyers is in fact a Bernie supporter, the sentiment described on the flyers is very real: anger at POC because Bernie supporters realize that POC don’t support Bernie.
Frankly, it feels as if this flyer literally stirred up a hornet’s nest of angry white boys, harassing POC.
If this is really what set off this wave of harassment I do not know. But it is obvious an organized harassment campaign has been going on in the last two or so weeks.
The goal seems to be to drive Clinton/ Obama supporters off Twitter.
Which will no doubt do great harm to the Democrats in 2018, because the accounts in question are also among the most active resistance/ Democratic accounts.
The people doing the harassing seem to consist of 5 or 6 ‘leaders’ and a lot of childish followers who seem to think this is all a big game/ joke. Harassing someone is often proudly tweeted about and cc’d to others, to score some brownie points among the other ‘cool’ kids.
In the meantime I think it’s clear that none of these people are really progressive or leftists. Progressives don’t harass women/ POC, actual progressives care about minorities/ women’s rights.
Important Update: another very important POC voice was removed from Twitter: Sir James, @JKH2’s account was banned.
The pattern is exactly the same as I described above:
Sir James was threatened and harassed. They even went as far as to send him threatening private emails on his private email address.
When he finally reacted, they mass reported him, for…harassment.
And Twitter again responded by banning him and not the actual harassers.
The person behind this (@avalonmarie83) immediately locked her account to avoid any backlash, something which was also done by @Wade_Turnbull immediately after he managed to get Bravenak banned. All this follows the exact same pattern.
This whole process/ campaign is very well organized.
This is the third important Democratic/ black voice that has been removed from Twitter within a week.
Time to wake up Democrats/ DNC, because you’re going to need those voices in the 2018 elections…
