The concoction of the “Bernie Bro” narrative by pro-Clinton journalists has been a potent political tactic — and a journalistic disgrace. It’s intended to imply two equally false claims: (1) a refusal to march enthusiastically behind the Wall Street-enriched, multiple-war-advocating, despot-embracing Hillary Clinton is explainable not by ideology or political conviction, but largely if not exclusively by sexism: demonstrated by the fact that men, not women, support Sanders (his supporters are “bros”); and (2) Sanders supporters are uniquely abusive and misogynistic in their online behavior. Needless to say, a crucial tactical prong of this innuendo is that any attempt to refute it is itself proof of insensitivity to sexism if not sexism itself (as the accusatory reactions to this article will instantly illustrate). It’s become such an all-purpose, handy pro-Clinton smear that even consummate, actual “bros” for whom the term was originally coined — straight guys who act with entitlement and aggression, such as Paul Krugman — are now reflexively (and unironically) applying it to anyone who speaks ill of Hillary Clinton, even when they know nothing else about the people they’re smearing, including their gender, age, or sexual orientation. Thus, a male policy analyst who criticized Sanders’ health care plan “is getting the Bernie Bro treatment,” sneered Krugman. Unfortunately for the New York Times Bro, that analyst, Charles Gaba, said in response that he’s “really not comfortable with [Krugman’s] referring to die-hard Bernie Sanders supporters as ‘Bernie Bros'” because it “implies that only college-age men support Sen. Sanders, which obviously isn’t the case.” It is indeed “obviously not the case.” There are literally millions of women who support Sanders over Clinton. A new Iowa poll yesterday shows Sanders with a 15-point lead over Clinton among women under 45, while one-third of Iowa women over 45 support him. A USA Today/Rock the Vote poll from two weeks ago found Sanders nationally “with a 19-point lead over front-runner Hillary Clinton, 50 percent to 31 percent, among Democratic and independent women ages 18 to 34.” One has to be willing to belittle the views and erase the existence of a huge number of American women to wield this “Bernie Bro” smear.

But truth doesn’t matter here — at all. Instead, the goal is to inherently delegitimize all critics of Hillary Clinton by accusing them of, or at least associating them with, sexism, thus distracting attention away from Clinton’s policy views, funding, and political history and directing it toward the online behavior of anonymous, random, isolated people on the internet claiming to be Sanders supporters. It’s an effective weapon when wielded by Clinton operatives. But, given its blatant falsity, it has zero place in anything purporting to be “journalism.”

To see the blatant disregard for facts in which this narrative is grounded, let’s quickly look at two of the most widely cited examples of online “Bernie Bro” misogyny from this week’s deluge of articles on the topic, smartly dissected by columnist Carl Beijar (“How many smears on Sanders supporters can we debunk in one week?”). A much-cheered Mashable article — headlined “The bros who love Bernie Sanders have become a sexist mob” — purported to describe the “Bernie Bro” phenomenon as Sanders supporters who are “often young, white, and predominantly male” and whose messages are “oftentimes derogatory and misogynistic.” It cited a grand total of two examples, both from random, unknown internet users. Here was one of those examples, left in response to a Facebook post from New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen about a Clinton rally she attended:

There are two small problems with this example. First, it’s written by a woman, not a man. Second, it’s not remotely sexist. If anything is sexist, it’s the branding of Carol Jean Simpson as a “bro” because she supports Sanders rather than Clinton. And while I’m sure it’s terribly unpleasant for a former governor and two-term U.S. Senator such as Jeanne Shaheen to have her favorite presidential candidate described as a “lying shitbag” and be told that she lost a supporter as a result, there’s nothing particularly inappropriate, or at least not unusual, about this kind of rhetoric being used in online debates over politics — unless you think the most powerful U.S. politicians are entitled to the reverence that London elites accord British monarchy. Then there’s the most widely cited example, used by that Mashable article as well as one from the BBC titled “Bernie Sanders supporters get a bad reputation online.” This example originated with the New Yorker TV critic (and Clinton supporter) Emily Nussbaum, who claimed that she was called a “psycho” by the “Feel the Bern crew” after she praised Clinton. Nussbaum’s claim was then repeatedly cited by pro-Clinton media figures when repeating the “Bernie Bro” theme. The problem with this example? The person who called her a “psycho” is a right-wing Tea Party supporter writing under a fake Twitter account of a GOP congressman — not remotely a Sanders supporter. As Beijar put it:

What this illustrates is that Clinton media operatives are campaigning for their candidate under the guise of journalism and social issue activism. I don’t personally have a problem with that: I see nothing wrong with journalists being vehemently devoted to a political candidate. But it’s important to know what it is. As is true for most campaign operatives, they have thrown all concern about truth and facts into the garbage can in exchange for saying anything that they perceive will help the Clinton campaign win. Have pro-Clinton journalists and pundits been subjected to some vile, abusive, and misogynistic rhetoric from random, anonymous internet supporters of Sanders who are angry over their Clinton support? Of course they have. Does that reflect in any way on the Sanders campaign or which candidate should win the Democratic primary? Of course it does not. The reason pro-Clinton journalists are targeted with vile abuse online has nothing specifically to do with the Sanders campaign or its supporters. It has everything to do with the internet. There are literally no polarizing views one can advocate online — including criticizing Democratic Party leaders such as Clinton or Barack Obama — that will not subject one to a torrent of intense anger and vile abuse. It’s not remotely unique to supporting Hillary Clinton: Ask Megyn Kelly about that, or the Sanders-supporting Susan Sarandon and Cornel West, or anyone with a Twitter account or blog. I’ve seen online TV and film critics get hauled before vicious internet mobs for expressing unpopular views about a TV program or a movie. And while people in some minority groups are, just like in offline life, lavished with special, noxious forms of online abuse — people of color, LGBTs, women, Muslims — that has been true in basically every online realm long before Bernie Sanders announced that he would rudely attempt to impede Hillary Clinton’s coronation. There are countless articles documenting the extra-vitriolic abuse directed at women and minorities for many years before “the Sanders campaign” existed.

Pretending that abusive or misogynistic behavior is unique to Sanders supporters is a blatant, manipulative scam, as anyone who ever used the internet before 2015 knows. Do pro-Clinton journalists really believe that Sanders-supporting women, or LGBTs, or people of color, are exempt from this online abuse from Clinton supporters, that this only happens to people who support Clinton? (In 2008, Krugman used the same tactic on behalf of the Clinton campaign by claiming that Obama supporters were particularly venomous and cult-like.)

Just as neocons have long sought to exploit “anti-Semitism” accusations as a means of deterring and delegitimizing criticisms of Israel (thus weakening and trivializing the ability to combat that very real menace), Clinton media supporters are cynically exploiting serious and disturbing phenomena and weaponizing them as tools for the Clinton campaign. Online abuse in general, and toward specific groups, is a very real and serious problem; it is not a tool to be used to advance the political empowerment of Hillary Clinton by smearing Sanders supporters as particularly guilty of it. Clinton-supporting journalists this week made much out of the fact that the Sanders campaign felt compelled to issue a statement asking its supporters to comport themselves respectfully online, as though this proved that Sanders supporters really are uniquely abusive. That’s absurd. What that actually proved is that pro-Clinton journalists at large media outlets vastly outnumber pro-Sanders journalists — that’s what it means to say that she’s the “establishment candidate” — and have collectively used their platform to spin this harmful narrative, forcing the Sanders campaign to try to defuse it. To put it simply: if you really think that Sanders supporters are particularly abusive online, that says a great deal about which candidate you want to win, and nothing about Sanders supporters. If you spend your time praising Clinton and/or criticizing Sanders, of course you personally will experience more anger and vitriol from Sanders supporters than Clinton supporters. Conversely, if you spend your time praising Sanders, you will experience far more anger and vitriol from Clinton supporters. If you spend your time criticizing Trump, you’ll think no faction is more abusive than Trump supporters. If you’re an Obama critic, you’ll conclude that his army of devoted worshippers is uniquely toxic. And if you opine that the original Star Trek series is overrated, you’ll be able to write a column about the supreme dark side of nerds, armed with numerous horrifying examples. Welcome to my inbox and Twitter feed:

God bless Ed Snowden. Watching CITIZEN FOUR docu. (Too bad he chose HOMO Glenn Greenwald reporter tho.)#HATEtheSTATE #NSA pukes. #Statism — Vin DiCator (@VINDICATORofYah) January 15, 2016

Unfollowed Glenn Greenwald the homo, hope the Justice Department arrest him. — gazarin (@ahmedgazarin) May 7, 2015

Glenn Greenwald to keynote terror-linked CAIR's annual banquet http://t.co/Vzr7JNvNBR 'Homo Hanging' to be the evenings 'entertainment'? — David (@cupsdaddy) October 6, 2013

Guardian Whines: Glenn Greenwald's homo sex prtnr David Miranda (irony) detained under UK Patriot-type act for 9 hrs http://t.co/NIa6HcTM1G — favete linguis (@Socialism_Never) August 18, 2013

Who's going to walk Greenwald's dogs and water his lawn and estate grounds in Gavea, Brazil now??? #laffaireGreenwald — Jeff Gauvin (@JeffersonObama) August 19, 2013

I got all of that — and so much more like it — without having to praise Hillary Clinton! How could that happen? We’ve been hearing that it’s Sanders supporters who uniquely spew this kind of ugliness at Clinton-supporting media figures. Hillary Clinton is the establishment candidate. Therefore, she has far more supporters with loud, influential media platforms than her insurgent, socialist challenger. Therefore, the people with the loudest media platforms experience lots of anger and abuse from Sanders supporters and none from Clinton supporters; why would devoted media cheerleaders of the Clinton campaign experience abuse from Clinton supporters? They wouldn’t, and they don’t. Therefore, venerating their self-centered experience as some generalized trend, they announce that Sanders supporters are uniquely abusive: because that’s what they, as die-hard Clinton media supporters, personally experience. This “Bernie Bro” narrative says a great deal about which candidate is supported by the most established journalists and says nothing unique about the character of the Sanders campaign or his supporters. As I documented last week, it is hard to overstate how identical is the script being used by American media elites against Sanders when compared to the one used by the British media elite last year to demonize Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters. This exact media theme was constantly used against Corbyn: that his supporters were uniquely abusive, vitriolic, and misogynistic. That’s because the British media almost unanimously hated Corbyn and monomaniacally devoted themselves to his defeat: So of course they never experienced abuse from supporters of his opponents but only from supporters of Corbyn. And from that personal experience, they also claimed that Corbyn supporters were uniquely misbehaved, and then turned it into such a media narrative that the Corbyn campaign finally was forced to ask for better behavior from his supporters:

Just as happened with Corbyn, the pro-Clinton establishment media first created this narrative about the Sanders campaign, then seized on its being forced to respond to it — the narrative they created — as vindication that they were right all along. As the media critic Adam Johnson put it this week: