There is a guy who goes by the name @ St-Sinner. He seems to be an intelligent and decent person who I, and probably many of you, have gotten into conversations with and we have our disagreements.

He recently put up an attack piece focused on the bane of the moderates, Bernie Sanders. I typed up a response to it and I will put both below.

I am aware that I have a Bernie bias, as does he so I'd like to get feedback from anyone willing to give their two cents. I doubt either of us is totally right but who do you think is more right on this one?

Here is his original post-

"THE TRUTH ABOUT BERNIE
Bernie is not just a socialist but he has been a communist.

Read below and be assured that Trump will unleash all of Bernie's dirt out in the public and nail old Bernie on the wall, so that everybody can see what a terrible candidate we stupid democrats can pick. After all, Trump said that "Bernie's nomination would be a dream come true."

Bernie has had communist tendencies for a long time. [nypost.com]

1 While attending the University of Chicago in 1964, Sanders joined the Young People’s Socialist League, the youth wing of the Socialist Party USA
2 He organized for a communist front, the United Packinghouse Workers Union, which at the time was under investigation by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
3 After graduating with a political science degree, Sanders moved to Vermont, where he headed the American People’s History Society, an organ for Marxist propaganda.
4 Bernie produced a glowing documentary on the life of socialist revolutionary Eugene Debs, who was jailed for espionage during the Red Scare and hailed by the Bolsheviks as “America’s greatest Marxist.”
5 This Eugene Debs, the subversive hero of Sanders, denounced even by liberal Democrats as a “traitor,” bashed “the barons of Wall Street” and hailed the “triumphant” Bolshevik revolution in Russia.
6 “Those Russian comrades of ours have made greater sacrifices, have suffered more, and have shed more heroic blood than any like number of men and women anywhere on Earth,” Debs proclaimed. “They have laid the foundation of the first real democracy that ever drew the breath of life in this world.”
7 In a 1918 speech in Canton, Ohio, Debs reaffirmed his solidarity with Lenin and Trotsky, despite clear evidence of their violent plunder and treachery.
8 Sanders still hangs a portrait of communist Eugene Debs on the wall in his Senate office.
9 After failed runs for Congress, Sanders in 1981 managed to get elected mayor of Burlington, Vt., where he restricted property rights for landlords, set price controls and raised property taxes to pay for communal land trusts. Local small businesses distributed fliers complaining their new mayor “does not believe in free enterprise.”
10 Sanders took several “goodwill” trips not only to the USSR, but also to Cuba and Nicaragua, where the Soviets were trying to expand their influence in our hemisphere.
11 In 1985, he traveled to Managua to celebrate the rise to power of the Marxist-Leninist Sandinista government. He called it a “heroic revolution.” Undermining anti-communist US policy, Sanders denounced the Reagan administration’s backing of the Contra rebels in a letter to the Sandinistas.
12 His betrayal did not end there. Sanders lobbied the White House to stop the proxy war and even tried to broker a peace deal. He adopted Managua as a sister city and invited Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega to visit the US. He exalted Ortega as “an impressive guy,” while attacking President Reagan.
13 Sanders also adopted a Soviet sister city outside Moscow and honeymooned with his second wife in the USSR. He put up a Soviet flag in his office, shocking even the Birkenstock-wearing local liberals. At the time, the Evil Empire was on the march around the world, and threatening the US with nuclear annihilation.
14 Then, in 1989, as the West was on the verge of winning the Cold War, Sanders addressed the national conference of the US Peace Council — a known front for the Communist Party USA, whose members swore an oath not only to the Soviet Union but to “the triumph of Soviet power in the US.”

Please get off this Bernie Pony before it is too late and we lose the big war with the Republicans... UNLESS you are secretly hoping that Russia may help their communist friend Bernie get elected."

He also provided a graphic. To view it, go to the original post- [agnostic.com]

Okay, that's quite a lot to unpack. Here is my response-

What you are selling is hard to buy. [

Let's take a closer look. You have a list of 14 bombshells, each proving that Bernie is a dirty communist. Taken all together, there can be no doubt, he is a Stalin lovin commie.

First, let me tell you why I'm suspicious. Bernie has been running for a long while now. He is the current leader and came close last time. The establishment, the media, the elites, the billionaires, they all want him taken down because they realize that he is a true reformer for the people who will end their corruption and hurt their bottom line. So the most powerful people in the country are highly motivated to find dirt on him. He already has an association with communism because he calls himself democratic socialist and many Americans are too ignorant to know that they are not the same thing. So these people are looking for exactly the sort of information that you provided and they've had a long time to search. Once they find something like this, they will show it everywhere to ruin their competitor's reputation and remove him as a threat to their power. But I haven't seen any of this before. I follow this stuff closely and this is the first time I've seen these accusations. Why is that? Wouldn't this stuff be on the front page all over the place? I mean they are so desperate to attack him with something that they are going after his supporters, saying they are mean and abusive. Why wouldn't they use this smoking gun you have here to just show everybody that he really is a communist?

And of course the answer is that it isn't really true. The source you provided, the New York Post, is a right wing sensationalized paper owned by Rupert Murdoch. I don't doubt that there are some kernels of trust to some of those points, especially those that point out his affinity for Debs, the hero of the labor movement of the 20th century, but I also don't trust this to be factual.

I've heard Sanders compliment the public transportation of the Soviet Union and he said they have beautiful public spaces. Big deal, complementing your country's ideological enemy doesn't make you a commie. I've never heard him say anything good about there government or economic system. I think he is just open minded enough and unnationalistic enough to recognize and feel comfortable speaking about the positive qualities of other nations, even ones that we are at odds with.

Finally, lets say hypothetically, all this stuff, all 14 of your points are 100% true. It really doesn't matter. Even if somehow his secret goal is to bring communism to America, it isn't possible. He will have a hell of a time just getting a rational healthcare system in place. It will be an epic political battle just to get something that the other developed countries have had for decades. Even if he truly was a communist dead set on bring the bolshevik revolution to America, it would be irrelevant. He is very limited in what he can accomplish to the point that some people think he may as well not be president because he won't be able to change anything anyway.

Why are you pushing right wing propaganda? You have expressed to me previously of your urge to vote for Trump and now this. And usually you go around behaving as if you believe that you are the savior of the democratic party. We are trying to hijack the party and you, the heroic moderate, are all that stands between your beloved democratic party and a bunch of socialist Bernie Bros. If you love the party so much, why are you attacking it's front runner with right wing trash?

So yeah this big Bernie take down of yours is a total flop. Probably why it got 0 likes and two comments, one of them your own.

This response was originally written on another thread I was having with him in case you are wondering why it isn't there if you go to the original post.

So finally, the question-
Do you believe the accusations laid out about Sanders made by Mr. Sinner? Let me know what you think.