Why Bernie Sanders Owns the Internet
Admission: I’m a progressive Millennial and I f**king love the Internet.
It’s been a strange and wonderful pleasure to watch a politician like Bernie Sanders dominate the beloved datastream that feeds my brain, connects me with the people I love, and helps spread ideas to others. It’s the first time in my life a candidate of this sort has had a realistic chance of grasping the most powerful office on the planet — and to be honest I find the whole thing rather exciting.
But the question remains, why is the Internet backing Bernie?
Let’s be honest: the Internet as we know it in the West has always tended towards progressiveness. Reddit, Facebook, Twitter; the major channels of our social media ecosystem echo loudly with idealism and liberal values (this is of course not the case within certain online echo chambers). The most convincing reason for this undercurrent is that there are simply more young people regularly using the Internet than any other group.
Until recently this was just an implied reality that made us liberal youngsters feel fuzzily-at-home in the playground of cyberspace. But in 2015, something important changed in the political reality of the USA, and it is a fact we all must recognise:
Millennials are now the largest generational group in the USA.
The fact that Bernie owns the Internet now becomes very significant. It means that the largest generation of potential voters in the country are participating in a majoritively pro-Bernie, pro-change, and pro-democratic socialist conversation. It means that we “idealistic, pie-in-the-sky youngsters” have real power to influence the future president of the United States of America.
But this is not a form of power our generation has had a great deal of experience wielding successfully. The most recent populist movement Millennials founded was Occupy Wall Street, and for all its value plugging the “1%” mantra into our social DNA, it did not result in the solid political or legal outcomes we had hoped for (although some key OWS organisers are working on the Sanders campaign). So, we must learn to use this new power effectively, and fast.
We’re the largest group of Internet users, and we’re pissed.
The modern reality of Millennial life in the West is that we are struggling with economic uncertainty, even poverty. We’re being chewed up by the broken promise of capitalism, all the while being criticised as “lazy” and “entitled” by many Baby Boomers and Gen-Xer’s who caused this mess.
The memes below featuring Steve Jobs’ High School photo say it all for me:
Not only are we faced with economic uncertainty, but the natural environment we’re supposed to leave our kids continues to be devastated by the “business as usual” bullshit that helped create many of these economic problems. There’s a lot to be pissed off about as a Millennial, and this is really only scratching the surface.
We have to understand that radical, inclusive, genuine change is our only hope for a future that’s worth-a-damn. In my view, this is the future that Bernie Sanders is opening a conversation about, and it’s only with our support (in the presidential race and beyond) that this new world can begin to emerge.
So…whats up with Hillary voters?
I have a very simple theory on this — Hillary voters are not regular Internet users. I mean, if you’d really done any clicking around on YouTube, or absorbed the majority of political memes that pop up around the Internet, surely you would have come across something like this video…and it would become clear this is not someone we want governing our country?
Don’t get me wrong, Hillary is a shite-site better than the demagogues we’ve got hungrily swarming around the Republican nomination — and in my opinion we can (and MUST) be ready to throw our lot behind her if Bernie doesn’t get the Democratic nomination — but we have the opportunity here not to compromise…so why should we?
If you feel me, here are some things to do:
- Keep doing what you’re doing. Create and share those memes, videos and GIFs showing what Bernie is about. Anything less than a continued occupation of our cyber-playground is inadequate. You know what to do.
- Do more. Don’t just share those memes and videos on Facebook…write a compelling blog post about your honest feelings, email it to your family and friends who aren’t a part of our bubble — get the other side on board.
- Speak out in public. Be proud of your support and talk about it openly. If you overhear a political conversation at the café, engage and share your opinion! If we keep our feelings locked up online, we’re missing an opportunity to bring more chairs to the table of righteousness.
- Organize. This might just be the most important one. Check out the Sanders event organiser and start a volunteer drive, a voter carpool, or a phonebank (we did this over the weekend and it was super fun — even got a surprise pizza from some other Bernie supporters).
As the largest generational voter segment in the country, it would be a crying shame to miss this rare opportunity to effectively defy the establishment. As such, it becomes almost more important than the above points to make sure our friends vote. We must end this understandable but misguided idea floating around that not voting at all is somehow more radical than voting. Logically, we have to understand that all abstaining will achieve is letting the bastards win while standing on some imaginary moral high-ground.
Let’s step up and pave the road towards the future we want.
Let’s #FeelTheBern.
