END TO END BERNERS: The Official Bernie Sanders 2020 Crew thread

non sequitur. i don't think sanders is an antisemite or that trying to smear him as one will be an effective line of attack for his political opponents but his losing family in the holocaust tells u nothing about his feelings about jews or judaism.

really

"Go roll in your own feces and spare me the stench" for January's US politics thread?

I liked that tweet that said 'Not only is Sanders not an anti-semite, but he is a shining example of how to criticize policies of Israel without using anti-semitic tropes.' But Berners should learn from the Corbyn debacle and not fall back on an offended and self-righteous attitude that won't convince anyone. Akm and crüt - I think - criticized the appointment of Sarsour as a surrogate back in september, it can legitimately be seen as a mistake. And Bernie sometimes makes mistakes! Like with Cenk Uygur. Everyone makes me mistakes, to win the nomination, learn from mistakes, don't make them again. Then it won't become a big deal.

honestly can’t imagine caring about whatever made-up smears regarding what the only serious jewish presidential candidate in history’s views on anti-semitism are, but that’s just me. what’s the audience for this stuff other than right-wing trolls?

libs

Should I really engage this with any depth? I feel like it's a big mistake. I'll just say that Bernie has been in the Counterpunch orbit of foreign policy thinkers and that group includes people with lots of questionable quotes and views about Israel and Jews. This may just be a risk of being a cultural leftist who may be a committed anti-imperialist - you're going to have some gross fellow travelers. The extent to which you tolerate or even promote such people may get you negative attention. As I mentioned I don't think Bernie has crossed this rubicon but I don't think this is just some cynical bullshit right-wing troll thing (tho it may be that too).

Like even if you a) it's unfair to be smeared with your associates or b) that Counterpunch ideologies aren't *really* antisemitic, or c) that Sarsour has been unfairly smeared or d) whatever reason you think such a claim is totally bullshit -- I may even agree with you but it's worth understanding what it going on here that it isn't simply evil bad guys making up shit. This has been an issue on the anti-imperial left for many decades and it's not a shock that it should come up *especially* when it aligns with other convenient biases (against Sanders or left-wing socialism or pro-Israel/pro-Zionism/anti-Palestinian sentiment). It's a real target even when the people targeting it are using it because it's convenient.

i feel like i must have missed a bunch of posts with real information on this. cause me personally, i'd find it helpful to have something a bit more specific than "he's been in the orbit of a group, which may overlap with people who have questionable quotes and views," before i go ahead with putting a "target" on anybody. like maybe there is something to worry about, but as written it doesn't even rise to being smeared with your associates, since i don't even know which specific associates we're talking about and what they're supposed to have done or said. so some people he might or might not know have "questionable quotes and views about Israel and Jews" ---- this could mean almost anything depending on the person raising the "questions." if he hasn't "crossed this rubicon" then why even start hand-wringing about it? i know lots of people who haven't crossed lots of rubicons. but yeah sure let me start holding them in suspicion because they might potentially do so.

like.... what exactly are you trying to persuade us of? are we supposed to buy that bernie sanders, what, has a bunch of anti-semitic nut friends? and he just benignly overlooks it? is he supposed to be dumb? or is he supposed to be a monstrous cynic willing to excuse anti-semitism if he encounters it in leftist fellow-travelers? and this is supposed to strike us as not only possible, but so plausible that we should work up a lot of concern over it based on basically zero detail? it seems like sub-sub-sub-Reverend-Wright level controversy-mongering, or sub-swiftboating in terms of stirring up clouds of suspicion around what should be a fairly uncontrovserial part of someone's biography and political formation.

A specific campaign surrogate has been mentioned multiple times that's a lot of writing to ask for information that has been provided I feel like?

it's a lot of writing, to confirm that this is just the same "surrogate" thing we discussed in september in the 2020 primary thread, which then died on the vine because nobody had anything more substantial to offer as far as i read. i did read up on the sarsour stuff and was IIRC hard-pressed to find signs of sanders turning a blind eye to anti-semitism. i'm open to the possibility that i overlooked some really damning detail at that time, or more recently, in which case shame on me.

otherwise, i think details matter because swiftboating and guilt by association both depend on vague insinuations and it's sort of hard to debate those. if aspersions are going to be cast, then i do think it's helpful to spell out what the person is supposed to have said or done that's a problem. or if the issue is the company they keep, then it needs to be specific people who've done specific things (not just some general milieu of people who might be associates of other people), which he's specifically enabled or to which he has specifically turned a blind eye.

maybe that seems like an unfairly high standard or burden on the accuser? to me it feels like a necessary bulwark against just becoming a telephone-game rumor mill ("i have it on good authority that many concerned people have raised concerning concerns") and anyway against the confusion that i think we all know comes on the internet and with discourse around palestine and israel. we all know that "anti-Jewish" often turns out to mean "anti-occupation" or other such sleights of hand, depending which publications and authors are involved. and so i do feel like when public figures are vaguely and indirectly "targeted" in this manner, that it's worth figuring out which ones actually are anti-semites. this is even more true than ever with the ascendance of right wing and neo-nazi discourses - there are a lot of public figures who ARE very dangerous, fascistic anti-semites and there IS an urgent need to identify and stop them.

You're probably right that all of that is important, so I think you should go and help do it. Because, yes, it's a high burden on the accuser, and a lot of the accusers are right-wing trolls, and they aren't going to do it.

I think both Mordy and I are explicitly saying that we don't think Sanders is an anti-semite? All we are saying is that it would be a really good idea to take this conversation, to go look up evidence with an open mind, sift through it. Instead of yelling 'Go roll in your own feces'. It helps with the defence.

it's kind of hard to not respond that way when lengthier rebukes create the impression that there are "serious discussions" around the issue which can end up giving the accusation more weight, as we saw with the UK media and Corbyn (while Tory racism/xenophobia went more or less completely ignored)

so far i've done what i was told which was to go read up on sarsour, but what i read in september and what i read today have not raised anything that seems remotely troubling...? but i am not jewish and also can be a dope, so i may be missing some really important implications of things that i read, or there were other things i should have read that would have explained everything. so if there's something there, or something other than the sarsour case, maybe someone less burdened will be kind enough to point my attention to it. right now it still feels like "there are a lot of concerns about concerning things" but sure yeah it's not anybody's job to disabuse me of that notion.

imo this is a perfect storm of:

1. a multifaceted issue that the media/Discourse treats as a simple binary ("x is/isn't AS")
2. that is also virtually impossible to DISprove
2. when bad actors with ulterior motives and no scruples are legion

how can you fight that effectively in instances where there's little to no "there" there except to tell people to get fucked

and of course to make it all the more maddening no one in the media gives a fuck about AS on the right, as David Graeber chronicles in this thread

leaked from Meltwater (corporate media monitoring tool). Mentions of phrases in press:

2015
Labour Anti-Semitism
1 result
Conservative Anti-Semitism
0 results
Tory Anti-Semitism
0 results:

2016
Labour Anti-Semitism
2.52k results
Conservative Anti-Semitism
0 results

1/

— David Graeber (@davidgraeber) December 18, 2019

Reading about Women's March 2019 didn't seem remotely troubling?

imperialist-tolerant libs never get accused of cozying up to US war criminals in the MSM, do they?

i cosign feces roll

so far i've done what i was told which was to go read up on sarsour, but what i read in september and what i read today have not raised anything that seems remotely troubling...?

it's troubling that she has defended farrakhan (as well as spoke at his 2015 rally, tho later distanced herself from his antisemitism when there were crticisms) . if you're not sure why it's because farrakhan has published a prolific amount of literature calling jews cockroaches, blaming jews for the existence of the slave trade, and advocating violence against them (last week's jersey city shooters were inspired by farrakhan's writings among others). she said the founding of israel was jewish supremacism. she's pro-BDS which you may feel is not antisemitic but most Jews believe is. she said that there's no place in the left for zionists. she celebrated rasmea odeh. like most antisemitism charges on the left it is very hard to disambiguate "criticism of the occupation" from antisemitism and honestly as a jew it's exhausting to have to keep having this conversation. i'm not trying to argue that being pro-BDS is antisemitic but i am trying to argue that jews who think it is aren't right-wing trolls - they are mostly Dem voters. maybe they have a blindspot here but hopefully we want to understand them, if for nothing else to understand how better to argue/explain to them how they're wrong.

So, Sarsour is criticized as anti-Semitic by some because she defended Farakhan, who has written and said many virulently anti-Semitic things, but she has not specifically defended Farakhan's anti-Semitic writings or beliefs, but instead has deliberately distanced herself from them. Also, she has criticized the politics of Israel and the majority political positions of jews in the USA regarding Israel in ways that are difficult to distinguish from being simply anti-occupation rather than anti-Semitic.

Then, Sanders is criticized as anti-Semitic, because he has accepted Sarsour's public support and not made a point of criticizing Sarsour's criticism of Israeli politics and the occupation. This, in preference to referencing Sanders' own statements about Israel as evidence of what he thinks.

This is mighty thin gruel, but for the people who are disseminating it, it is an effective tactic, because it will result in Sanders explicitly endorsing the occupation, or it will weaken support for Sanders among jews and others who accept the idea that Sanders might be anti-Semitic. A win for them either way.

aimless otm

she defended Farakhan, who has written and said many virulently anti-Semitic things, but she has not specifically defended Farakhan's anti-Semitic writings or beliefs, but instead has deliberately distanced herself from them

What is this nonsense?

Mordy: "tho later distanced herself from his antisemitism when there were crticisms"

I took him at his word.

Aimless OTM seconded.

I think Mordy quite implicitly described it as nonsense.

I mean, fair enough, if the majority of the left thinks it's no big deal to defend a virulent anti-semite if you distance yourself from anti-semitism in general, then there's kinda nothing the rest of us can do about it. But then there's pretty obviously a 'there' there, and there's not really going to be any coherent defence once the trolls get into it.

I'll just say that Bernie has been in the Counterpunch orbit of foreign policy thinkers and that group includes people with lots of questionable quotes and views about Israel and Jews.
― Mordy, Wednesday, December 18, 2019 5:44 PM (two hours ago)

i hate counterpunch but the people who write for them tend to be from the "bernie is secretly an imperialist warmonger" crowd

I’m sorry but this is just very clearly not a campaign issue

also you can play this game any which way you like — other moderate candidates are “in the orbit of” plenty of neocons who have said and done awful things that don’t get the same kind of scrutiny by the press

i've seen a couple right-wing media places (commentary, NRO, federalist) say that bernie has antisemitic surrogates but have not called him antisemitic. the only time i've seen the msm bring it up is to push back (i saw something from NBC & the Guardian - I haven't noticed anyone else covering it). so if it's about the press no one afaict is calling bernie an antisemite within the press. if we're talking about just ppl talking ilxors condemn moderate candidates for being in the orbit of neocons all the time.

fkn berniebros are back on their bullshit

SCOOP: Bernie Sanders has won the endorsement of People’s Action, a coalition of 40 progressive groups that said it represents more than 1 million members in key early-voting states and others across the country. https://t.co/wniq1ZFgit

— Holly Otterbein (@hollyotterbein) December 19, 2019

I swear I saw this headline a week or two ago. how many of these supposedly massive groups are there?

enough to elect him, one hopes

I am sure Bernie hangs out with anti-semites because he 100% thinks they are fun and cool.

I know there are some Nate Silver supporters in here

In general, candidates rising in the polls are overrated and candidates falling in the polls are underrated because people intuitively presume that there's "momentum" in polling when (simplifying a lot here) empirically polls are more like a random walk with some mean reversion.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) December 19, 2019

Can anyone translate this for me? His stuff is somewhat high level for me so I often don't get what it means

'i provide useful information in the immediate runup to elections but i insist on commenting on political current affairs at all other times despite having little to add to the discourse'

It means he is panicking

Yes, that is definitely a thing that Nate Silver does.

That's the nerdy version of panicking.

He is saying people read too much into small movements of polling instead of taking the long look. Like seeing a single poll giving Bernie 22% and saying he is surging.

Or seeing that Warren was rising a point every two weeks, figuring out how many weeks were left until Iowa, then think that's how good she is likely to do. When she was always just as likely to stop plateauing or moving down instead. Polls move around a lot in primaries, often for short term reasons.

Really obvious stuff in word salad xp

Yes. What an unprecedented crime to make a less than perfectly worded tweet.

It's called panicking

Warren is now ~4 points ahead of Bernie in post-debate national polls. But that's not the only reason she's more likely to win the nomination. Her polling is much more robust than his overall, including stronger numbers in Iowa, more momentum, and better net favorability ratings. pic.twitter.com/fGtXEvkOM0

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) September 19, 2019

Thanks, Fred. I'm not great at reading Silver's stuff as, like you say, he's not a particularly clear writer. I think I misunderstand him on the role of momentum, and if its an important factor or not. Tweets probably not the best place for clarity though!

You can draft tweets you know. Or put a good twitter thread in place and structure an argument.

I think he has changed his mind a bit on 'momentum' since he made the primary model. Like, he was always a bit skeptic, but he seems much more so now. Like, I saw those two tweets collected and a tweeter going 'he is making it up as he goes along' and yes! It's exactly what he is doing! He is trying to model the primary while it's happening, and adjusting his predictions accordingly. That's what data journalism should be.

On a recent podcast Nate said that because of data their punditry has improved from 90% bullshit to more like 60%. I feel a lot of people are trying to take him down for being 60% bullshit, but these people also believed there would be a hung parliament in the UK because a red telephone told them so. [Shrug]

people WANTED to believe that. gun to their head, few would have made that their guess.

anyway, ten pinocchios for Bernie

Fact check from team @CNNPolitics: @BernieSanders spoke imprecisely when he said the world spends $1.8 trillion on weapons of destruction. "The $1.8 trillion figure represents all global military spending in 2018, not spending on weapons in particular." https://t.co/u3Ns7nOhtw pic.twitter.com/QwlCg0m3ad

— Annie Grayer (@AnnieGrayerCNN) December 20, 2019

The red telephone thing was bananas. Everyone needs to be more vigilant about this stuff