brandon straka walk away

The Unsiltent Minority/YouTube

What is the #WalkAway movement conservatives are celebrating?

No, people aren't leaving the Democratic Party in droves.

 

David Covucci

Tech

Posted on Jul 2, 2018   Updated on May 21, 2021, 12:07 pm CDT

Did people leave the Democratic Party in droves this weekend? If the reporting of several leading conservative sites are too be believed, yes, the left got a lot smaller under the so-called #WalkAway movement.

But it probably didn’t.

What is the #WalkAway movement?

The impetus for the right is a six-minute video posted in May from a New York-based hairdresser. Brandon Straka, who is gay, spoke into the camera about the Democratic Party’s most “insidious lie” and how the party co-opts people of color and LGBTQ people without actually advancing their causes.

“Once upon a time, I was a liberal,” the video begins. “I felt I’d found a tribe.” But, he said, they will do “absolutely nothing for you.”

Although the video is old, it’s been circulating on the web and exploded at the end of last week, when it was covered by the Epoch Times and Breitbart.

From the Epoch Times, on Thursday.

Some 5 million people on Facebook and YouTube have seen the video by now. A very handsome gay man, who you just assume is about to scold you on progressive talking points, instead says this:

“Once upon a time, I was a liberal. Well, to be honest, less than a year ago, I was still a liberal.

“I reject a system which allows an ambitious, misinformed and dogmatic mob to suppress free speech, create false narratives, and apathetically steamroll over the truth.”

As it exploded, leading conservatives posted about it online, including Sarah Palin and the president’s son.

Sarah Palin/Twitter

But conservatives who are boasting about #WalkAway have… never been a part of the Democratic Party. People did begin posting about why they left, but almost all of it predated this video, a move evidenced by the number of Obama voters breaking from Trump in 2016.

@jonboug/Twitter

https://twitter.com/KrsTianz/status/1013667006363684866

And there’s just one problem with the burgeoning movement.

One of the top accounts that’s been celebrated across conservative circles, @sophialimited, who said she had Hispanic, immigrant parents who decided to leave the Democratic party, was a bot. Twitter suspended it, but not before it racked up tens of thousands of retweets.

The bot swelling didn’t stop conservative blogs from covering the news as a dramatic movement “#WalkAway Movement Gains Momentum as People Leave the Democrat Party in Droves” wrote the Gateway Pundit.

Breitbart announced it has “quickly morphed into a major force on social media and beyond.”

But, if anything, it just became a joke among liberals.

Because no one is walking away from the Democratic party just because Breitbart said people were.

Share this article
*First Published: Jul 2, 2018, 10:09 am CDT
 

Featured Local Savings

Exit mobile version