I am not shy when it comes to mentioning that out of my family (all Venezuelans), I am the only one that didn't fall for the alt-right Trump pipeline. I mean, very briefly in 2008-2011, I was a libertarian/ancap before that was a mainstream and quit when I found that the AnCap meet ups I was seeing online looked like white supremacist gatherings. Then Bernie came along, and I agreed with him, and I had to investigate Venezuelan socialism to square it away with my internalized opposition. So I did read Capital. I also read the UN and Treasury website on Venezuelan sanctions and realized why Venezuela is having such a difficult time. My brother, who was a Bernie-bro in 2016 has fallen with the alt-right. I cannot overstate how Hillary Clinton, the DNC, and pied piper strategy to run against Donald Trump has devastated the minds of Americans.
He was a Bernie bro, when Bernie got ratfucked. My brother also fell on hard times, he turned increasingly pessimistic and exacerbated his mental illness. His mishandled OCD – his therapist was terrible– led him to stay home and listen to more extreme right-wing content, he was struggling to pay off his student loans (which Joe Biden never canceled/pardoned). And he is now a libertarian/AnCap, Peter Schiff type, a silverbug, an absolute MAGA cretin and evangelical christian weirdo (we are Catholic). And because he is still struggling to find a decent job, applying to CBP.
I found this out recently when my mom called to ask for information, "because your brother is applying to join a federal government agency" and I told them I wouldn't not give them anything, they didn't already know. Come to find out he has taken a fitness test and will join the CBP.
This shit sucks man.
2016 radicalized so many people in both directions. Burnie's loss in the DNC primary had a profound effect on his supporters. Donald Trump had the rhetoric to capture a fair portion of the people who were disillusioned by Bernie losing the primary. I think it exposed people's budding tendencies and gave them permission to go all in on them. I have no idea if someone has attempted to dig into this phenomonon at all, but it seems pretty clear to me that the rise in Burnie's left-wing populism allowed Trump to piggy back on that momentem and convert a good portion of it into right-wing populism.
I remember at the time being on Sanders Reddit servers and chuds would come by and actively recruit people. A lot of times, it would start with some sort of bigotry ⸻ transphobia, or antisemitism (back when that word actually meant something), or good ol' fashioned misogyny. All that anti-establishment anger got redirected toward spiting the left.