We need to hardfork away purely malicious ideologically-driven auto downvoting, and/or massive manual downvoting. Will you work to address this?

Sorry, no. My position on flagging can be found here.

These attacks were totally unprovoked

Stakeholders are allowed to downvote content that they don't believe is deserving of rewards. There doesn't have to be any reason - it is their choice as stakeholders.

.. My suggestion is to reach out to bernie on steem.chat (nextgencrypto) very nicely and politely and try to see if there is a way you can come to an agreement on how to proceed. Do not be an ass; do not try to tell him what he can/can't do; and do not try to tell him he is wrong in his choice to flag you. If you go into the conversation with the right attitude, he is often actually nice to deal with and there is a good chance you will find some type of resolution.