Bernie Bro

Bernie Bro (sometimes spelled Berniebro), collectively Bernie Bros, is a term coined in 2015 by Robinson Meyer of "The Atlantic" as a pejorative to describe young male supporters of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in the 2016 United States presidential election. The term remained in use for the 2020 United States presidential election.
Origin.
Definition.
Robinson Meyer, a writer for "The Atlantic", coined the term "Bernie bro" in an October 17, 2015 article to describe young, white, progressive men who, in his view, believe that "The only reason you, and every other Facebook user, haven’t supported Bernie yet is your own willful ignorance".
In the article, Meyer characterized "Bernie Bro" as "male... white; well-educated; middle-class (or, delicately, 'upper middle-class'); and aware of NPR podcasts and jangly bearded bands." Furthermore, according to Meyer, "[t]he Berniebro asserts that this country needs highly principled, pie-in-the-sky progressive policies, regardless of how likely they are to become legislation. The Berniebro supports free college for all and a $15 minimum wage... The Berniebro voted for Barack Obama in 2012. And 2008, if the Berniebro was old enough to vote."
Reaction.
Sanders campaign response.
In February 2016, Sanders distanced himself from the group as a result of alleged sexist attacks against rival Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. On CNN's "State of the Union" programme"," Jake Tapper asked whether he had heard "about this phenomenon, Bernie Bros, who support you and sometimes attack in very sexist ways". Sanders replied "I have heard about it. It's disgusting...Anybody who is supporting me and who is doing sexist things, we don't want them. I don't want them. That is not what this campaign is about."
In an interview with Thom Hartmann, state Senator Nina Turner (a campaign surrogate for Senator Bernie Sanders) criticized the use of the term: "I just think it is really hyped by the Clinton campaign. I mean, both candidates have people who really, really support them and sometimes in ways that are not nice. But it's the same thing, if people want to research this, it's the same thing that the Clinton campaign did to President, then Senator, Obama. I think they were called 'Obama Boys.' So it's really the same stuff recycled that there are a group of men out there that are rabid and they're sexist and they're really against Secretary Clinton." Max van Dyke made a similar point in 2017.
During the ninth 2020 Democratic debate, Sanders suggested that Russians were impersonating people claiming to be his supporters online. A Twitter spokesperson rejected this suggestion, telling CNBC: "Using technology and human review in concert, we proactively monitor Twitter to identify attempts at platform manipulation and mitigate them. As is standard, if we have reasonable evidence of state-backed information operations, we’ll disclose them following our thorough investigation to our public archive — the largest of its kind in the industry."
Online reaction.
Bros4Hillary, a Facebook group founded by Clinton supporters, was created during the 2016 primary. Following the 2016 presidential election, the group was renamed Bros4America and worked to elect Democrats in the 2018 midterm election.
Analysis.
A "Washington Post" article analyzing mass trolling in the 2020 primaries points to a Facebook tool introduced in 2019 that allows sharing to multiple groups easily from a mobile device. Researcher Trevor Davis notes use of the tactic may help explain the scores of memes against Sanders's opponents appearing in nearly simultaneous bursts, distributed by "highly networked clusters" of Facebook users. Davis did not conclude the campaign itself was involved but focused instead on the Facebook activity by supporters.
Criticism.
According to Vice News, in September 2019, women under 45 comprised a larger share of Sanders' supporters than men of the same age group. After the 2020 Nevada caucus, "The Washington Post" stated that he was "forcing a sudden reckoning in the Democratic party" because of his strong support from Hispanic and Latino voters.
In January 2016, "The Intercept" journalist Glenn Greenwald called the Bernie Bro narrative a "cheap campaign tactic" and a "journalistic disgrace" and indicated that more women supported Sanders than Clinton: "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." He also asserted a lack of evidence for the concept. He summarized his opinion as follows: "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."
Nathan Wellman asserted in US Uncut in January 2016 that users of the term "are essentially erasing the contributions of women and people of color to the Bernie Sanders campaign to propagate their own narrative, rendering them as invisible people. This is one of the oldest forms of violence perpetrated by white people of privilege."