One wouldn’t normally jump to equate 74-year-old Bernie Sanders with the boy band One Direction and their screaming young fans, but as Maryam Louise of Inquisitr points out, there are some connections there.
Despite being farther apart in age from his fans, Sanders also enjoyed the support from many enthusiastic young people. Just as young concert-goers cry when they see One Direction take the stage, young Sanders supporters cried at the DNC after he failed to earn the nomination.
Back in February, Slate even said Bernie Bros and One Directioners have similar antics on Twitter.
The rise of both the presidential candidate and the boy band were built “tweet by tweet, GIF by GIF, dollar by dollar.” This was highlighted by Sanders himself, who reminded the crowd at the DNC that his average campaign donation was $27.
It’s not just the leadership of former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz that has been under fire. One Direction fans revolted against the band’s management for being “aggressively controlling.”
One Direction even fights with FanFair Alliance against the corruption caused by online ticket scalpers. It’s not quite on par with corruption from the top 1 percent that Sanders has come out against, but it’s a start.
“So far, it seems that the only thing that the One Direction and Bernie Sanders fan armies do not have in common is a documentary about the fans, themselves,” Louise writes.
“Moreover, like One Direction, Bernie Sanders will likely endure as a celebrity with a strong fan following because he might run for president/release a new album in the future,” she also writes. Sanders actually has released an album, a collection of folk songs recorded in 1987.
One Direction has also gotten political themselves, with the release of their “Dear Leaders” video late last year.
