Facebook Purges #WalkAway Movement Page, Thousands of Testimonials Gone
“I have a dozen paid employees. I have dozens of volunteers. ALL BANNED at the same time today. “
The WalkAway movement was started by Brandon Straka, who left the Democrat party and became a Trump-supporting conservative after the 2016 election.
Straka inspired hundreds of thousands of other Americans who felt the Democrats had moved too far left and also walked away from the party. Now Facebook has purged his page.
Straka’s followers created thousands of videos documenting their personal stories, and now it’s all gone.
Andrew Mark Miller reports at the Washington Examiner:
Conservative #WalkAway Facebook page removed along with hundreds of thousands of videos and followers
Conservative activist Brandon Straka announced that Facebook has removed his page with over half a million followers and also banned members of his team.
“FACEBOOK has removed the #WalkAway Campaign and has BANNED ME and EVERY MEMBER of my team!!!” Straka, founder of the #WalkAway movement, tweeted Friday morning.
“Over half a million people in #WalkAway with hundreds of thousands of testimonial videos and stories is GONE,” he added. “Facebook has banned everything related to #WalkAway.”
Straka also included screenshots of messages from Facebook, including one that said the page was “removed for violating terms of use.”
Straka confirmed to the Washington Examiner that his Facebook group, the business page for the nonprofit group, and his personal account were all shut down Friday morning.
He added that people merely associated with the page were also removed from Facebook.
“Every volunteer, every paid employee, banned,” Straka said.
How can this be perceived as anything other than political?
https://twitter.com/BrandonStraka/status/1347592064322719744
https://twitter.com/BrandonStraka/status/1347627806348484608
In the video below, Straka talks about steps he is taking to keep his organization going.
https://twitter.com/BrandonStraka/status/1347726124315516929
Now that Twitter has banned Trump, no one is safe from this.
The purge is real.
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Comments
Big tech, Simon and Schuster all in effect book burning.
Deleting tens of thousands of posts made over several years by many authors is, essentially, Hi-Tech book burning.
Cancel culture echoes the Nuremberg Laws.
A WaPo cartoonist very recently depicted Trump supporters as rats.
The Nazis routinely depicted Jews as rats in political cartoons.
The Dems and their media allies are using the Nazi’s 1930s playbook.
This is what happens when you play by the rules. I simply don’t understand why people have trouble understanding that.
I think the people in power/elites are truly frightened, and are lashing out. It is now transparently clear 40% of the population will never accept Xiden as President, no matter the media push. The Swamp is lashing out, and no MAGA supporter is safe.
They don’t look frightened to me.
They look emboldened.
These are not defensive actions. They are on the offensive, wiping out any and all opposition. They are convinced that they are winning, and they are, and will continue to unless we actively resist.
The more we wait, the harder it will be.
This. Where is the desperation? These are the actions of people who believe they have won and are solidifying their victory.
Much like Muhammad did when he created Islam. We can expect Biden-Harris to follow in his footsteps, and try to make criticism of them a capital crime.
I disagree. Their actions are clumsy and brutal. There’s no media build-up, just a sudden sledgehammer all at once, and BEFORE Biden is sworn in. This doesn’t strike me as confidence, this strikes me as fear.
The sensible approach would have been to move slowly, wait. Trump is out in a few days, so moving like this before he’s gone makes no sense… unless they’re desperately trying to silence him and make sure he’s isolated from the people.
I think they know that Trump has more than 80M supporters, and that the time is know to seize the moment after that Capitol Hill stunt they set up. They must un-person, de-legitimize, and de-platform every conservative they can find before anyone can organize. They know they can’t win with their ideas, so there must be no discussion allowed.
Even with the fraud machines set to “MAX FRAUD”, there’s a chance they will lose the Senate in 2 years, and there must be no opposition now so they can implement their draconian policies on the country. They will be sure to make changes that are difficult or impossible to undo.
Yeah, but he does have a point. I well remember the fall of the Soviets. They never looked more invigorated or more threatening than just before they collapsed.
The problem is, of course, to be good enough to distinguish between robust health and frantic posturing, at a time when the wounded animal can least afford to allow such detection.
These are definitely not the actions of people confident in their legitimacy or the support of mainstream Americans. They know absolutely that the election was stolen, and they are working frantically to consolidate power and suppress all dissent because they have good reason to fear it.
I am relatively young. All of this is pretty new to me. How can you tell the difference. It looks like a confident power consolidation to me, but I have nothing besides my gut on that.
Oh, they are confident they will get away with it because they are in complete control of government, the deep state, and the media. But if they were truly legitimate they would have no need to ruthlessly suppress dissent. Straight from the playbook of all socialist authoritarian regimes.
I disagree to a certain extent. The more power Stalin, Mao and Hitler got, the more paranoid they became. Each new victory, each enemy slaughtered merely seemed to increase their frantic insecurity. In their twisted minds they envisioned enemies, plots and conspiracies everywhere, which fueled a cycle of even more death and destruction.
/This
To some extent, I think Leslie is correct above. The shaking of the minority base of the Democrats must have them worried. The overreach of one of their biggest supports, teachers unions, and their obvious lack of concern for the children they are supposed to be teaching must have the Dems worried. The shut down of all effective education for a year could cause many poor parents to rethink their support for Dems. The overreach of so many Dem politicians, who have locked everything down and cost hundreds of thousands of small businesses to be destroyed, must have them worried. The exodus of many from the most leftist states, might have them worried–if those people come to understand that it is the leftism that caused them to flee.
Dems are in a shaky position. Using heavy-handed tactics to try to make the other side anathema does strike me as a bit desperate.
They apparently don’t understand that they are pissing off half the population.
What if we setup a system where people could record their vote to a database, and those numbers could be shown in real time. If those numbers diverged much from the official numbers, that would at least let people know that the election is fraud.
We need to start a crowd-sourced intelligence effort to identify and dox all media companies’ employees. Let them start to worry about everyone who is within 1000 yards.
I’ve never believed that two wrongs make a right. But, many people will persist in their wrong doing until they are made to pay a price for it. Turning the other cheek only works with people who are basically decent. It never works with bullies and those who lust for power over their neighbors. Gradual escalation doesn’t work very well either. Push back needs to be a multiple of what they’re doing to us to ensure that the lessons that need to be learned are learned quickly.
I agree. Even as a child I marched to a different drummer, I was frail, asthmatic and my interests had little in common with other children. I was constantly being roughed up by bigger, often older children. As I grew older the gap increased, and friendships were rare.
I am probably Asperger Syndrome, I ended up with genius level IQ, but that is coupled with many deficiencies. All math and science is really easy for me, but writing, spelling, recognizing social ques, are all quite difficult.
Anyway, in 6th grade at a meeting between the school principal and my parents which was over constant bullying, the principal told us that I would have to take my lumps.
My response to that was to apply my considerable knowledge of chemicals to make a liquid irritant, which I sprayed in the bully’s eyes, followed with ticking him between his legs, then kneeing him, knocking him down, and jumping on his chest. He was out of school for three weeks.
At that point the principal wanted to expel me, but faced with a lawsuit, that did not happen.
After that, I was left alone, and the rep followed me all the way through middle and high school. I did have people occasionally threaten me, my response was always that they could probably beat me up, but they would not be able to stop me from screwing them over.
My solution to friends was a long list of adult mentors, I figured out that they were gold mines knowledge, and that propelled a very successful career. That career required use of what I learned from that bully. Big companies are full of arrogant bullies, and I was an expert at making them sorry SOBs. It was quite gratifying.
I see similar traits in Trump, he is ethical, tenacious, and not a quitter. I am looking forward to seeing how Trumps deals with these truly horrible people. He most certainly has enough resources to destroy them one by one.
Democracy dies in darkness.
If you have republican elected representatives, write them now and ask what THEY are going to do about the 1st Amendment purge ongoing on social media. If you have democrat overlords, it would only serve to needle them. Then again, why not.
This is what I sent my senators and congressman:
“The tech monopolies have completely overtaken the 1st Amendment rights of American Citizens; aggressively banning and deplatforming people and businesses from Facebook, Twitter and Google/ YouTube for daring to have conservative opinions and/or not accepting the ongoing leftist media narratives. Apple has even threatened to do the same with Parler if it refuses to go along with their efforts (Android already has).
Monopolies or fascists, whatever you want to call them, are YOU going to stay silent while they shut down the 1st Amendment? “
They will do nothing! They had an opportunity with a Senate majority and a good president
Start looking into primarying them.
Indeed, they have done nothing, and will do nothing. They have abandoned you.
Now what?
If I were to bother to send such a message to the Controlled Opposition, it would end with a request for a response as to why, exactly, we need an organization that can’t react to such existential threats on its own without being asked, and why we should continue to pay them for this level of nonfeasance.
They will no doubt reply that the First Amendment only limits the kind of laws Congress may pass and that publishers like Facebook have a right to control what appears on their platform.
(Yes, I think FB, Twitter, et al would actually welcome being classified as publishers. They can afford to do the level of moderation required, unlike their upstart competitors.)
These are not the actions of people that think Xiden won fair and square.
This is Marxist thought control.
Cutting the lines of communication is one of first goals Of a takeover. It’s only going to get “better” folks.
They are making no pretense. This is Germany 1933.
~ In every way. Even (especially perhaps) in regard to our financial status. Inveterate liar de Blasio-Wilhelm very recently came right out and stated in no uncertain terms that it is his intention to redistribute wealth; he said the very words. You can’t get any more “ist” than that. Führer-ist, Cancel-Culture-ist, Socialist, Leftist, Communist, Marxist, Stalinist, anti-free-market-ist, anti-capitalist, etc.
I joined “WalkAway” when it started on Facebook. I saw a lot of the photos and testimonials from people all over the USA. The stories were rather similar over time and there was a certain amount of “show boating” by some. Never-the-less, it is terribly sad that so many of these people used Facebook – in good faith – thinking it was a platform for people for both Democrats and Republicans. But starting in the fall of 2020, Facebook has become a Democrat-only social media business. As to the future? Clearly those of us who are not Democrats will either be silenced or we will have to build and support our own social media world. That takes lots of money and technical skills.
Why do we need social media at all???
I remember the old-school social media, where my friends and I would talk face-to-face. “IRL”. What a concept!
Why, indeed? Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and others are things that we never knew we couldn’t live without. Oddly enough, as much of a geek and tech head as I am, I’ve never had an account with any of these save for Facebook. I had the account for about a week, it’s serve the purpose I needed, and then I closed it.
As they spiral through the social media platforms, they will then go after the blogs and websites. They will be all de-platformed and shut down. The final redoubt of mass electronic communication will be email, which they will, too, find a way to monitor.
If Parlor and Rumble, etc., try and build their own server infrastructure, they will find a way to cut off the phone lines and external switches to isolate them.
They are moving very quickly. This is nothing less than a totalitarian suppression of freedom.
Welcome to 2021.
We need effective, rapid,secure communication channels.
I did something like this 20 years ago, and we were infiltrated by a bad player. I divided the membership list in two, then broadcast different fake information to each half. when the mole reacted on one half, I divided it in half again and repeated. The process was repeated until I identified the mole. This took a few months.
Dividing an ordered list in half, testing and repeating until you find the right item is called a shell metzner sort, and is commonly used in programing.
Last thing I remember
I was running for the door
I had to find the passage back to the place I was before
“Relax,” said the night man
“We are programmed to receive
You can check-out any time you like
But you can never leave!”
– Hotel California
We are no longer “the land of the free”.
Hope it’s still “the home of the brave”. I have a feeling we’re going to need a lot of that.
I was advised some years ago to “use” FB for our own purposes. But it was clear this deplatforming was occurring, the filtering was occurring, and it made no sense to me to build anything on a platform that could and would take it all away without warning and without meaningful appeal.
They did it to Dennis Michael Lynch and many others. It was just too obvious.
I came to the same conclusion, depending on social media is similar to allowing ones business to depend on a few customers. Never allow too many eggs in one basket. Sooner or later it bites you.
Straka’s followers created thousands of videos documenting their personal stories, and now it’s all gone.
It was extremely foolish to expect a leftist website to preserve their videos undermining the narrative.
Even more foolish would be not making backups using your own machines or a politically-neutral cloud server (assuming any of those still exist.)
Proton mail is now offering a cloud service. It’s based in Switzerland. I have no idea whether they will eventually turn on us, but for the time being their service seems to be pretty decent.
Who would’ve thought the left would descend to full totalitarianism even before Biden’s inauguration? This isn’t a spontaneous response to the Capitol; it’s been planned for a long time, down to the moment of instigation.
The invisible hand is about to do an Ike Turner to FB and Twitter. Youtube will slowly get theirs.
They have grossly underestimated how much Americans (and the world) value free speech and how much conservatives have been quietly tolerating them.
Think about it. About half the country wants to leave your platform and would do it in a heartbeat if an option were available. Parler management would have to be completely retarded to NOT win here.
I don’t know if they are publicly traded, but I will be buying options on them if they are.
http://www.Gab.com is better. I can’t stress this enough.
AND it is hardened against all the deplatforming coming Parler’s way.
Richard Epstein has a theory of civil rights law that may apply. What the civil rights act ought to have banned is discrimination in monopoly markets, in particular state-enforced or custom-enforced (nice restaurant you have here shame if anything were to happen to it). Then and only then is freedom of association lost. Otherwise (Masterpiece cake) just go to another store.
What we have here is private violence in monopoly market. If you start your own platform, it won’t be able to get banking services etc. Nice platform you have here shame if anything were to happen to it.
So a loss of freedom of association can happen in such circumstances, private company or not. There’s a conspiracy that goes along with your private company.
A lot of people have smartphones [I don’t] running Android or iOS. There is a movement for a 3rd option – open source linux-based smartphones. Two come to mind – Librem5 and PinePhone. I am waiting for software development of PinePhone to become more advanced before taking the leap.
This is the alternative to Google and Apple with their Android and iOS. We need Parler and Gab, etc., to develop linux-based apps. I refuse the “terms of condition” to sign up with Google or Apple. I value my privacy.
Android is an open source Linux-based smartphone OS. You can download the source yourself right now, and if you know how to port it to your phone, install it and run it without any of the Big Tech Big Brothering.
What you can’t get are the Google Apps, such as the Play store and I think Maps, Mail, etc. because those won’t install on an “uncertified” version of Android. But it’s trivial to make your own app store and distribute software through it.
This is not the country I grew up in; it’s more akin to communist countries than to what we’ve known as our republic. The best we can hope for is a US version of the Cultural Revolution, wherein the younger, most radical members will turn on the others for sins only the radicals can see, until they burn out their fervor — or someone finally has the courage to douse it. I can promise you it won’t be the left that operates the fire extinguisher.
Where are the links to share on Parler and Gab?
The prof has announced that we will be adding links to Parler and MeWe in the upcoming site redesign. Gab, as far as I know, is not part of the plan. You should be able to copy and paste our link into Gab, though. I’m not sure on that since I was on Gab for about a minute before I deleted my account due to the onslaught of antisemitism and alien conspiracy theories, etc. Shudder.
Me too. About two years ago. It was right out front and in your face, so I got out of there as fast as I could. Not going back, either. I started a Parler account about 2 years ago as well, but I use it about as often as I used to use Twitter, i.e. never. The last time I used Twitter regularly was when people were still figuring out what it was good for, and most tweets were about things like where you were going for lunch.
Commentator at AoSHq said his son’s veteran support group has been wiped out
Brandon Straka is not a hardcore conservative. He is a mild-mannered gay hairdresser who happens to think that the Democrats are doing minority communities more harm than good and that the gay rights movement goes too far sometimes.
The point here is to moderate Republicans. If you think you can avoid becoming a casualty of cancel culture simply by avoiding taboo topics; the deep state, minority crime rates, the “science” behind glowbull warming, etc; you are probably mistaken.
“Parler management would have to be completely retarded to NOT win here.”
Too late. Expecting companies like Amazon to be either neutral or fair and betting your entire corporation’s vital infrastructure on that assumption shows a lever of naivety bordering on retarded. The fact that their whole platform depends on a single vendor tells me they aren’t serious. Not being able to relocate to another hosting platform even after having days notice that the plug is getting pulled also speaks to a level of incompetence.
There is absolutely room for a Twitter alternative. It needs redundant servers, redundant network access, and enough business savvy to understand that you never make any material or service that is mission critical single vendor. Ever.