Fear and Loathing in the Democratic Primaries: #Bullying, #Gaslighting, and #Wolfpackjournalism

Sources: Darrell Nance / CC BY-SA Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America / CC BY-SA; AFGE CCBY. An audio podcast version is available on my Squarespace.com blog, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

What follows are some thoughts on the souring political climate within and without the Democratic Party and liberal and progressive circles. As with my previous article on Mike Bloomberg’s corporate raid on the Democratic Party, my worry is about the fate of the progressive and liberal wing of the party and its allied movements and organizations, especially at the hands of resolutely hostile mainstream media organizations.

Whipsaw Politics

The ups and downs of the Democratic primaries have witnessed:

· the spectacle of a panicked party establishment and its allies under pressure from:

— the faltering campaign of preferred candidate Joe Biden

— the surge of Bernie Sanders’s campaign, especially after the Nevada caucuses, that was based on a widening base of diverse support including Latino and union voters and the “army” of “hordes” of Sanders supporters

— nationwide and swing state polls began to show that Biden performed not much better than his rivals against Trump and sometimes worse

— the aggressive candidacy of Mike Bloomberg, initially welcomed by some Democratic elected officials and members of the DNC, but whose vast campaign operations ($500M on advertising alone) and resources threatened to upend the primaries by bypassing some of them, foregoing outside donations, having the DNC bend existing rules to allow him to debate, and calling on Biden, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar to withdraw before the Nevada debate, a high-pressure demand that spectacularly backfired

Then came:

· the evisceration of Mike Bloomberg in the Nevada and South Carolina debates by Elizabeth Warren for his political and business record and public statements regarding women and communities of color

· the rapid consolidation of senior party leader support behind Biden after Biden’s 30-point win in South Carolina following the important endorsement of Congressman Jim Clyburn, and the return of (mostly older) southern Black voters as a force in the Democratic Party

· the suspension of Amy Klobuchar’ and Pete Buttigieg’s campaigns before Super Tuesday and their endorsement of Biden

· Biden’s exceptionally strong performance in Super Tuesday leaving him with a delegate lead over Sanders, and more important, a tremendous political momentum

· the suspension of Bloomberg campaign after his poor performance Super Tuesday and his endorsement of Biden

· Elizabeth Warren’s suspension her progressive campaign after, not before, Super Tuesday. She has yet to endorse any candidate

The Mainstream Media’s Targeting of Political Candidates

Beyond the whipsawing nature of these events, my experience as a longtime student of political intimidation and public bullying in the U.S. and Europe has taught me that this has much to do with the dominant mainstream media discourse. Political and economic establishments and their media allies push back hard when they feel challenged by progressive or liberal candidates’ social or political identity (Geraldine Ferraro, Ralph Nader, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Jill Stein, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren), past record (Vietnam veteran John Kerry’ anti-war activism), or platform (Howard Dean’s anti-war candidacy in 2004, Ralph Nader’s and Jill Stein’s green policies, Bernie Sanders’ economic populism). Each of these candidates experienced disrespectful treatment by the press including in some cases by important segments of the so-called liberal media.

The aggressive methods employed have generally been the same. The focus is on manipulating appearances and using aggressive timing:

· preemptive attacks (the element of surprise is crucial in a media-saturated environment; creating a sensation or buzz is everything)

· extreme content (saying and doing the unthinkable)

· guilt by association (however tenuous)

· stigmatizing one’s identity

· invidious interpretations of ambiguous statements or appearances

· taking statements out of context

· the most effective method is impugning a candidate’s character or motive (as opposed to questioning their record) because it is difficult to disprove in a cynical media environment and dominates the 24/7 news cycle before it can be stopped

· all the above are often done via passive-aggressive rumor-mongering prefaced by such phrases as “I hear but don’t know…”; “Some people say…”; “Anonymous sources claim…”

The point is to put the target in a defensive, reactive position with the ultimate goal of humiliating and dishonoring the target in the eyes of the public and of creating an impression of weakness, or of a potential weakness, one that may not manifest itself now but could at any time. In the current political theater of dominance this can be fatal. The sheer volume of lies and allegations ends up gaslighting the candidate, his or her supporters, and the general public alike leading them to doubt their own perceptions and beliefs. It constructs a wall of “common sense,” a negative frame that forever casts a shadow over the target’s every future statement and action. It reaches a point where no matter what the candidate says or does, she or he is perceived as, to cite past and present examples, “nasty,” “angry,” “rude,” a “screamer,” or even “violent.” The loss of control over one’s public image is irremediable. Such is the transformative power of this kind of verbal and psychological violence.

In this scenario and depending on one’s identity, one is always out of place and all too “present.” Just showing up can be perceived as “aggressive.” So the trap has been set, and, perversely, the potential for verbal or psychological violence has been transferred to the victim from the perpetrator. And as in any classic bullying scenario, should the victim respond and name the aggression for what it is, the bully answers, “Are you being hostile?” and then freely claims victimhood for her or himself.

I have written on this extensively beginning 10 years ago and again in my recent book on public bullying and political intimidation. Even Hillary Clinton, despite her deep ties with economic and political elites, wasn’t spared in 2016 any more than she was when she first entered the White House in January 1993 as an avowed feminist. Devoted as they were to speculative hearsay and cheap cynicism, media reporting focused on the bogus Benghazi affair, her private email server, and her dysfunctional staff. In 2016 cable news organizations spent something less than 100 minutes on substantive discussion of her record and platform. The print media, including the New York Times were scarcely better.

The Politics of Destruction: Wolfpack Journalism

Let’s return to the present where my focus will be primarily on the case of Bernie Sanders.

Why so?

Because Sanders currently has been the object of disrespectful treatment by the media pretty much unmatched by any other candidate by virtue of his triple outsider status: in terms of his platform (anti-establishment economic populist), his record (progressive), and his identity (independent, longtime democratic-socialist and, less openly acknowledged in public discussions, secular Jew, who is also critical of current Israeli policies towards Palestinians)

Until the beginning of the year, mainstream media including CNN and MSNBC had ignored the Sanders campaign much in the way they did in the lead up to and during the primaries in 2016 when media observers termed this non-reporting a media “blackout.” And at those times when they did turn their attention to him, it was almost always negative; the peak was reached by the Washington Post when in 2016 it ran sixteen negative stories in 16 hours according the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). This year with the first primaries he began to come into view but the coverage was uniformly negative. With his 26-point win in Nevada that made him front runner, there was an awkward, almost comical moment when some TV anchors treated him with a modicum of curiosity mixed with respect (it’s America after all: we admire winners) but it lasted perhaps no more than 48 hours.

Even before the grace period was up, panicked pundits and anchors felt free to engage in over the top slandering of Sanders: MSNBC’s Meet the Press anchor Chuck Todd read a rightwing blog posting characterizing Sanders supporters as the “brownshirt brigade,” which earned him a public protest from the Anti-Defamation League; Chris Matthews likened Sanders’ Nevada landslide victory to the Nazi conquest of France in 1940 and insinuated that he would be executed under a Sanders presidency (which, among surely other but unstated reasons, may have cost him his job); and Democratic political consultant James Carville, who had previously termed Sanders a “communist” and his supporters a “cult,” after the Nevada results were in declared,”the happiest person right now is Putin.” These all occurred on liberal MSNBC/NBC newscasts.

Such statements recall the worst days on Hillary Clinton’s first years in the White House (deemed to be the murderer of lawyer White House Vincent Foster who had committed suicide) and attacks not so long ago on Barack Obama by Fox and other Murdoch media as not American and a “socialist” and their claims that the Affordable Care Act had plans to create “death camps.” However, perhaps just as serious has been the relentless piling on in print, cable, and social media against Bernie Sanders and his campaign that has gone beyond legitimate adversarial journalism to create an unremitting negative consensus. This is what former Village Voice columnist Alexander Cockburn used to call “wolfpack journalism.” It has effectively erased Sanders’ exceptionally consistent record on issues that liberals and progressives and their organizations presumably hold dear: civil rights, war and peace, immigration reform, the criminal justice system, women’s issues, LGBTQ issues, healthcare, student debt, global warming, etc. Finally, on cable television, anchors and their guests now feel free to interrupt and talk over Sanders national campaign co-chair Nina Turner, and one Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen even lectured Turner (who is Black) on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s record.

The Case of Elizabeth Warren

It is interesting to note that Elizabeth Warren has a similar progressive record and a strong populist, anti-Wall Street stance as policymaker and now as Senator and candidate. (This is why Sanders and activists associated with Occupy Wall St. had initially asked her to run in 2016; she turned them down.) In her case she has had to face the brunt of the reigning public misogyny hostile towards highly successful professional women, but it would appear that its expression has been more in the ballot box than in mainstream cable TV and print media. She hasn’t had to deal with quite the same level of active hostility from the so-called liberal news outlets as Sanders, though her healthcare and wealth tax proposals were not fairly considered in the press.

Warren has even enjoyed the endorsement of the editorial board of the New York Times and the active support of influential Nobelist economist and op-ed columnist Paul Krugman. This may have to do with her insider credentials as Harvard law professor and former Obama administration official that Sanders clearly does not possess. By contrast, and perhaps in part for these very same reasons, Krugman has felt free to relentlessly mock Sanders’ socialist identity and Medicare for All and anti-free market proposals. Remarkably, he has been joined by New York Times op-ed writers from across the political spectrum (up to three a day): from Michelle Goldberg, Timothy Egan, Roger Cohen, David Leonhardt, and Nicholas D. Kristof to Gail Collins, Maureen Dowd, Tom Friedman, David Brooks, Ross Douthat, and Brett Stephens.

The differential treatment of the two progressive candidates by the mainstream liberal media was also made apparent in the lengthy interviews of Warren and Sanders conducted by MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow on March 4 and 5. There Sanders faced a set of leading questions from a smiling but hostile host narrowly focused on the disappointing results of Super Tuesday primaries that was capped off with a comment and query concerning his age, gender, race, and sexual orientation status. By contrast, Warren was warmly greeted by Maddow and met with genuinely broad and stimulating questions concerning the unique nature and power of her campaign and what its legacy might be together with a long segment devoted to the Bernie Bro phenomenon.

The Destructive Legacy of the Cold War Era

The New York Times op-ed writers’ consensus has been more than matched by the News Department that has published a drumbeat of news articles critical of Sanders and his followers. Rare is the in-depth feature that examines the reasons for his expanding, diverse base, his popularity among African American voters that surpassed Biden’s in nationwide polls prior to the South Carolina primary, his past strength among working-class voters in the crucial upper Midwest, or his proven ability to attract moderate, centrist and even conservative rural voters in a less crowded field during the 2016 primaries. It would appear that the New York Times has a version of internal “wolfpack journalism” all its very own.

The negative reporting reached a high point on March 6 when the New York Times published a front-page article titled, “Soviet Papers Recount Ties with Sanders” and online, “As Bernie Sanders Pushed for Closer Ties, Soviet Union Spotted Opportunity” claiming his bid to form a sister-city relationship as mayor of Burlington, Vermont with Yaroslavl, Russia was a tool of Soviet propaganda. This earned the paper of record a sharp rebuke from Ronald Reagan’s former ambassador to the USSR for distorting history by omitting that this was actually in line with an official policy of the U.S. government and enjoyed its full support.

The days of pretending to keep in check misleading and slanderous reporting when a Public Editor like Margaret Sullivan was present are apparently gone. That position is now defunct. The liberties with which the Times News Department took with the historical record of Sanders’ visit speaks volumes about the current forbidding political environment in which we live. It is hard not to think that such high-handed reporting has been enabled by the revival old Cold War hysteria associated with the U.S.’s rivalry with the communist Soviet Union by the breathless press coverage over the last three years of Trump’s presumed conspiracy with Russian meddling in U.S. elections.

As a child of the Cold War and former participant in 1960s social movements, I’ve watched with apprehension how liberal pundits and Democrats have started wielding once again the same old cudgel that Republicans such as Joe McCarthy routinely applied to Democrats and liberals (for example, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the labor and civil rights movements) in an attempt to dismantle the social and economic achievements of the New Deal. But I have to remind myself that already back in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s the same tactics were also applied by a good number of Democrats against progressives and the anti-Vietnam War and other social movements. Even Robert F. Kennedy, when he served as Attorney General, maintained FBI wiretaps on Dr. King. Perhaps red-baiting Bernie Sanders also shouldn’t have come as a surprise, since the recent media and political frenzy around Russiagate seems to have re-empowered members of the Democratic leadership, journalists, and pundits who are obsessed with national security and take pride in their close relationships with the Pentagon and national intelligence and law enforcement agencies, government entities that have a record of surveilling, discrediting, and disrupting domestic progressive political movements.

The Power of Social Media

Finally, matters are made infinitely worse by online bullying, especially via tweets and anonymous postings whose destructive capacity to provoke and spread fear are quite real. Online aggression is all the more powerful in that while the toxic content is all too easy to interpret, it is another thing all together to measure its amplitude, reliably and quickly identify the perpetrators who hide behind tweeter handles, and make them accountable for their actions. As anxious users, swimming in the gaslit internet, we can always find what we fear and dread in the corners of the web, but how to interpret what we encounter is no simple task. This task is all the more urgent as progressives and liberals grapple with reports from among their own ranks about aggressive “Bernie Bros” who have bullied followers of opponents, Warren supporters who have attacked indigenous critics of Warren’s testing for evidence of indigenous DNA, and followers of Buttigieg who sent abusive emails to Russian-American New Yorker writer Masha Gessen when she voiced mild criticism of their candidate. And then there’s always the threat of manipulation by provocateurs sowing division and divisiveness among the Democratic left to worry about.

Conclusion

Given the unique virulence and scope of public denigration of Bernie Sanders and his campaign, its goal would seem to want to destroy more than Sanders himself but preferably his entire movement, which is more akin to a mass labor movement, and, ultimately, in my view, is deemed to be the real threat by the Democratic Party establishment and its allies. For the deep commitments of Sanders’ followers exceed his single candidacy and are devoted as much to the issues they care about and to responding to the current political emergency as to his person. These millions of followers are something party leaders can’t reliably control, unlike — in their minds at least — other electoral groups they call “firewalls” whose votes they take have come to take for granted.

There is much more that can be said but I’ll close by saying that the current public derogatory treatment of Bernie Sanders by the media and many pundits associated with the Democratic establishment approaches that which Jeremy Corbyn received during the last parliamentary elections in the UK that helped destroy the Labor Party campaign. Following that script, the next turn of the screw may indeed be to accuse Bernie Sanders and his followers of being anti-Semites and Sanders as a self-hating Jew. This is already underway among Likud-identified Jewish organizations and press, and it may be not long before it migrates to the mainstream media and public discourse in the U.S.

An audio podcast version of this article is available on my Squarespace.com blog, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Roddey Reid is Professor Emeritus, UC San Diego (rreid@ucsd.edu) and is author of Confronting Political Intimidation and Public Bullying: A Citizen’s Handbook for the Trump Era and Beyond. He hosts “UnSafe Thoughts,” a Squarespace.com blog on bullying and the fluidity of politics in dangerous times.