Alleged Bernie supporters a threat to other candidates and to Bernie

Washington Examiner:

After Nevada’s largest union came out against Bernie Sanders and his unworkable Medicare for All proposal, the online Bernie Bros “viciously” attacked union members with tweets, phone calls, and emails, according to dozens of members.

When union workers made those accusations last week, no one questioned it — largely because it’s become all too common for criticism of Sanders to be met with vitriolic harassment from his online base.

Even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who endorsed Sanders in October, admitted on Wednesday that the Bernie Bros have become a “real problem” for Sanders’s campaign, taking care to distance Sanders from the toxic environment his online army has created and instead blame such events on today’s internet culture.

"We know the amount of anonymous activity that happens on the internet," Ocasio-Cortez told The View. "And that's simply — it's difficult. It is difficult to control. You have a Twitter handle with a bunch of numbers on it with two followers that are lobbing vitriol at you. We don't know where that comes from, but I know it doesn't come from the campaign."

Ocasio-Cortez has a point: The internet uniquely allows anonymous trolls to swarm individuals and get away with it. This isn’t just a problem among Sanders’s base. It’s everywhere. And although Sanders has denounced the “vicious” behavior exhibited by the Bernie Bros, he can and should do it more forcefully, as Ocasio-Cortez eventually acknowledged.

The Bernie Bros are becoming a real liability for Sanders and his campaign. The hostility they display toward any person who disagrees, no matter how civilly, distracts from Sanders’s core message and isolates on-the-fence voters. Twitter might not be real life, but the online harassment many of Nevada’s union workers have experienced over the past few weeks could very well affect Sanders’s standing in the state.
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Sanders claims that those making these statements against his critics may be Russian trolls.  But the Project Veritas tapes of his supporters show a base of support that is downright fascist and a threat to opponents.