a picture of Joy Reid, tweeted by Bernie supporters

For almost a year now, a very vocal segment of Bernie Sanders supporters have harassed and stalked black activists, journalists and contributors on Twitter and other social media sites. Behind this campaign was the fact that a lot of black voters didn’t vote for Bernie, which was met with incredible anger by a part of the Bernie left.

Instead of analyzing why POC were critical of Bernie, or why Bernie refused to campaign among POC, they started to harass and intimidate black Twitter users.

The list of victims to this aggressive crowd of Bernie supporters is long by now: Joy Ann Reid, Donna Brazile, Jehmu Greene, Neera Tanden, Kamala Harris, Maxine Waters, Yamiche Alcindor, Zerlina Maxwell, and less known Twitter users: Angry Black Lady (Imani Gandy), T_FisherKing, Mr Dane/ Mr Weeks, Sir James, Ange_Amene, Bravenak and many, many more.

What these people have in common is that

A: they’re POC,

B: they’re at times very critical of Bernie Sanders.

This in itself is enough for ongoing extreme harassment, stalking, threats, intimidation and worse.

On top of this, a number of LGTB activists/ writers have met the same fate: be critical at Bernie Sanders at your own peril.

The worst form is of course that people are doxxed and that employers are contacted with angry demands that the person in question is fired…. Just to name some examples of people who’s employers were contacted by Bernie supporters: Zerlina Maxwell, Joy Ann Reid, Humorless Kev, Carmen Rios.

The harassment of POC and LGTB activists by Bernie Sanders supporters has been documented on Medium in this blogpost:

“When GamerGate became BernieGate”, by Investigator:

https://medium.com/@investigator_21314/when-gamergate-became-berniegate-5ca0053f5caa

I have since then identified the Twitter users responsible for this.

They are a tight group of fanatic Bernie supporters, they identify usually as members of the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America), they all proudly proclaim to have voted for Jill Stein and they have (unfortunately) a large group of Bernie followers who copy their behavior and who add to the harassment.

They also proudly produce, tweet and retweet purely racist pictures of among others Kamala Harris, Joy Ann Reid and other prominent POC.

Here is just one example of a picture created and retweeted by this group:

POC and watermelon, we all know the drill…

Mind you, as far as the Bernie supporters (who massively copy these pictures) are concerned, this is all good fun.

In November 2017, Joy Ann Reid made the mistake of mentioning Jane Sanders in a series of tweets.

She tweeted this:

To which someone replied with: Bernie Sanders.

At which point Reid replied:

Jane Sanders was not having any of this and replied with:

At this point a full out Twitter campaign started by the Bernie Sanders crowd, demanding that MSNBC would fire Joy Ann Reid.

Mind you: not because of any homophobic blog posts but for the sole reason that she had criticized Bernie.

Important Bernie supporters spearheaded this campaign (note how they all include @MSNBC in their tweets to make sure their demand that Joy Reid is fired, reaches MSNBC):

Katie Halper:

https://twitter.com/kthalps/status/909119078912135168

https://twitter.com/kthalps/status/872688131467816961

Nomiki Konst:

https://twitter.com/nomikikonst/status/909094645149388800

GeoffMiami, a Bernie supporter and DNC delegate from Miami Dade:

Note: the above well known Bernie supporter and DNC delegate (who currently works for the Tim Canova campaign) started a ‘boycott MSNBC’ campaign in November to get MSNBC to fire Reid.

At this point, an Internet campaign was started by Bernie supporters under the hashtag #FireJoyReid.

This was obsessively tweeted and retweeted by Bernie Sanders supporters on Twitter.

At no point ever did this crowd sit down and think about who Joy Ann Reid is.

Never did they think: hey wait: this is an important black voice in the media, maybe getting her fired isn’t very progressive.

To be perfectly honest: there is a deeply racist group of Bernie supporters who couldn’t care less about POC representation in the media, or anywhere else: if you criticize the Messiah from Vermont, you have to go, period.

In November Twitter user @Jamie_Maz (part of the Bernie crowd) found old blog posts of Reid in which she ridiculed Charlie Crist.

Point: those posts weren’t homophobic as they are now called. In fact, Crist, who was a homophobic politician pushing extreme anti-gay laws, was outed as gay and attacked/ ridiculed for it by just about anyone I know in the gay community too.

Yet, Reid apologized for the blog posts nonetheless and more specifically apologized to Charlie Crist.

The user @Jamie_Maz who in November went through Joy’s old blog posts through the so called WayBack machine never mentioned other blog posts, never mentioned there was more ‘homophobic’ content.

Now let me be absolutely clear: I do not have any evidence whether or not Joy Ann Reid’s recently surfaced blog posts were altered, added or whether or not they are genuine. That is also not the subject of this article: the subject is the excessive campaign to get Joy Ann Reid fired by the Bernie left.

I saw the same user @Jamie_Maz post the recently ‘found’ blog posts and at first this just led to great enthusiasm among the Bernie crowd on Twitter. The idea that they found something damaging on Joy Ann Reid was absolutely fantastic to this crowd of Bernie supporters: #FireJoyReid!

Let’s be absolutely clear: this campaign isn’t coming from trump supporters, or breitbart or right wing racists, this is coming from the racist Bernie left.

Although I have no evidence one way or the other it would NOT surprise me at all when in the end we find out this Bernie crowd altered the screenshots, because let’s face it: a crowd who contacts people’s employers with anonymous letters (as in the case of Humorless Kev), who starts internet campaigns to get people fired and posts racist pictures would be very willing to do this.

This is what these people tweet and retweet, this is how deep their hatred goes:

The subject of this article is the deeply racist behavior of a significant segment of Bernie Sanders supporters, which has until now not received much media attention.

POC didn’t vote for Bernie in 2016 and according to many, the fact Bernie didn’t win the POC vote even led to his loss. Although most have moved on since then, for a faction of Bernie supporters this has led to great anger and resentment towards POC and more specifically WOC.

Although their stalking harassment of POC on Twitter has been reported on at times, not once ever did Bernie Sanders or anyone associated with him distance himself from this behavior.

I know for a fact some people have contacted Bernie or his campaign or people working for him, with the request to speak out against this, but not once did he do this.

A 5 months long Twitter campaign to get Joy Ann Reid fired for the simple reason that she once or twice criticized Bernie, has never led to a reply/ condemnation by Bernie Sanders or his campaign.

It has never led to a reaction: hey guys, cut it out, Reid is an important WOC voice in the media: focus on trump FFS!

In fact, this modern social media lynching campaign was met with nothing but silence by Bernie or his associates, who KNEW this was going on.

Trying to get a female black journalist fired ONLY because she once or twice criticized Bernie is apparently normal in this crowd.

The unbelievable hatred and the almost hysterical campaign against Reid for 5+ months now or in fact the deep hatred for any POC who is critical of Bernie, is scary, racist and misogynist at the same time.

If you want to see evidence of this campaign, do a twitter search for the #FireJoyReid hashtag: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23FireJoyReid

When Jamie Maz tweeted/ published Reid’s recently found blog posts, a media campaign by Breitbart, Drudge and..the Bernie left followed to make this trend.

So far, with success it seems.

We now witness a carefully orchestrated media campaign by the far left and the far right to get rid of one of the few WOC voices in the media.

Glenn Greenwald, Breitbart, and any Bernie supporter possible are now cooperating.

Let’s be clear: if Joy Reid loses her job, she loses it because of the deep hatred of the Bernie crowd for any POC who speaks out against Sanders.

She will lose her job (and POC will lose an important voice in the media) because racism and targeted harassment campaigns are normal to the Bernie crowd.