He's a "Bernie Bro".
"Bernie Bro" is a term used to describe upper middle class white males that overwhelmingly support Bernie Sanders both on social media and in their day-to-day lives. We all know a Bernie Bro, and if we refuse the existence of them, we probably are the Bernie Bro. We go on Facebook, scroll through pictures of our cousin's dog and our acquaintances frequent Jesus memes and then, before we're even a minute into our Facebook timeline, we get to the Bernie posts.
A lot of the online dispute over Bernie Bros is either supporters of Sanders disputing the fact that a majority of them are white males or articles about how Hillary Clinton's press team created the term "Bernie Bros" to discredit her opponent and his ever growing posse.
However, the comment section of every article critiquing Sanders' supporters seems to help Clinton's agenda, even if the whole nickname wasn't her doing to begin with.
In this post by The Atlantic, published on October 17, 2015, author Robinson Meyer pokes fun at the pandemic that is the Bernie Bros. The comments are littered with offended statements and protests of inaccurate statements, some claiming that the majority support behind Sanders isn't even white, others stating that the post was simply unnecessary.
I took it upon myself to go the extra inch for this blog post and asked the most frequent Bernie posters on my Facebook what they thought about all of this hullabaloo. Here are their answers, with their names censored out to protect their Bernie Bro identities:
Some really made an effort to explain their allegiance to Sanders, while others were a bit more nuanced with their replies.
What I gathered from this "experiment" was that "Bernie bros" are proud of their support for this presidential candidate. They want to not only explain the reasoning behind their support but also their opposition to other nominees.
These polls also showed that more than half of Bernie's voters were first time voters in a democratic presidential primary. Although it's possible that they voted before, a large majority of that number comes from legitimate first time voters. People are becoming politically motivated and learning more about their government because of the passion they have towards Bernie Sanders. Even if that passion is a bit distraught and chaotic, they're still going to vote and they're still learning more and more about the political process as they go.
After this election is over, it's assumed that most people will go back to their normal business: caring about recent tragedies or gun rights or whatever it is they care about and we'll all forget about the whole Bernie Bros thing. There will be a few though that will continue learning about politics and will really be able to redefine their positions on legitimate issues once they've gathered enough knowledge about the American political system and how it works. And, I think that's what's most important. People do take things too far sometimes like dressing "up as superheroes during Bernie rallies," but if they didn't do those things they probably wouldn't be involved in politics at all.
That being said, please stop oversharing your Bernie memes on my Facebook timeline. I know I could just unfollow your feed, but I do need to get out a couple eye rolls every day to keep me alive, just maybe not more than 100.
