On Friday afternoon, a judge in South Florida
dismissed a lawsuitagainst the Democratic National Committee, brought by people who accused it of committing fraud during the 2016 primary to the detriment of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt). Neither the DNC nor ousted chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) responded to the dismissal when asked to comment.
Within hours, the attorneys who bought the suit, Jared and Elizabeth Beck, were providing updates on the case to the blogger and fantasy author H.A. Goodman. Calling out the people and outlets who they believe had covered them unfairly, the Becks described a legal system so corrupt that there could be no fair accounting for what the DNC did. It would be up to alternative media to get the truth out.
“This population has been battered by propaganda, and misinformation, and corrupt politicians for so long,” Jared Beck said. “If you go into court, and you represent anyone but a rich person or a powerful corporation, the chances of you having a fair day in court are slim to none.”
for a certain kind of 2016 Sanders supporter, the primary never really ended. It grew into a defining, eye-opening event — a moment when it became clear that Democrats could not be trusted, were not worth co-opting, and might literally be getting away with crimes.
Goodman, whose
devotion to Sanders as a Huffington Post blogger gained him a small but dedicated audience, transitioned from columns about the Vermont senator’s inevitable victory to vlogs about the truth coming out about Clinton and the DNC. Sitting in front of a WikiLeaks logo, Goodman alternated updates on the #DNCFraudLawsuit with updates like “CLINTON EMAIL GRAND JURY TO INDICT HILLARY CLINTON UNDER ESPIONAGE ACT: Imminent,” and “SETH RICH MURDER ANNIVERSARY MARKED BY GUCCIFER 2.0 FILES COPIED LOCALLY, NOT HACKED BY RUSSIA.”
And Goodman is one node in a busy network of pundits on full-time war footing against the DNC. YouTube, with its easy use, free storage, and possibility of global reach, has become an agora of 2016 primary bitter-enders. YouTube
previously played the same role for far right; in reporter John Herrman’s read, it made mini-celebrities out of “monologuists, essayists, performers and vloggers who publish frequent dispatches from their living rooms, their studios or the field, inveighing vigorously against the political left and mocking the ‘mainstream media,’ against which they are defined and empowered.”
Something similar, but smaller, has grown up around the people who want to prove that the 2016 primary was stolen from Sanders. Over the weekend, there was no TV coverage of the case; it was easy to spend hours, instead, absorbing punditry on YouTube. The case against the “mainstream media” was easy to make, anyway as the Becks’ lawsuit drew little national attention.
“If you’re in independent media, and you didn’t think it was your job to cover the underbelly of the DNC, I’d like to know exactly what you think your job is,” said YouTuber Tim Black after the case was dismissed. “How can you look in the mirror, a journalist, a speaker of truth, and not cover this case?”
