Photo Illustration by Emil Lendof/The Daily Beast
By Tim Mak
The socialist trumpets his antiwar record. But he doesn’t mind expensive war machines—if they’re based in his home state.
MANCHESTER, New Hampshire — Sen. Bernie Sanders has railed against big defense corporations at rallies, but he has a more complex history with the military-industrial complex. Most notably, he’s supported a $1.2 trillion stealth fighter that’s considered by many to be one of the bigger boondoggles in Pentagon history.
Sanders has made his opposition to Hillary Clinton’s hawkishness a cornerstone of his campaign. But he hasn’t exactly been anti-war all his career. When it has come time to choose between defense jobs and a dovish defense policy, Sanders has consistently chosen to stand with the arms-makers rather than the peaceniks—leading to tension with some of the most adamant adherents of progressive ideology.
In 1985, for example, protesters massed at the General Electric plant in Burlington, Vermont, where Sanders was serving as mayor. They were protesting the fact that the plant was manufacturing Gatling guns to fight socialists in Central America.
Jim Condon, now a Democratic state legislator in Vermont, was news director of a local radio station at the time and describes himself as an “old acquaintance” of the senator.
“There were protesters who were unhappy that General Electric was manufacturing Gatling guns at the plant, and so they would lock themselves to the gates and engage in civil disobedience. And so the mayor, Bernie, finally got cops to go in and arrest the protesters,” Condon told The Daily Beast. “The GE plant was one of the largest providers of jobs in the city. So it was economically important that the plant stay open and people who worked there went to work.”
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Source: The Daily Beast
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