Twitter Files: The Campaign To Smear And Shut Down Brandon Straka And His #WalkAway Movement
“Analysts quickly concluded #WalkAway was real. “Surprisingly, there’s only a small amount of fake engagement’.”
When I first saw Brandon Straka’s #WalkAway video back in 2018, I was hooked and knew I had to write about it.
His story is rather like my own in that I long ago in my youth considered myself sort of liberal in that old “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” rubric that was, on reflection, truly nonsensical.
I didn’t care if gay people wanted to be open about their gayness, I didn’t care if musical artists talked about “taboo” subjects, and I didn’t care if people smoked “weed” . . . as long as they didn’t do it near me. But I did care very much about individual liberty, about the Constitution, and about our great country. While I voted mostly Republican, I was kind of just floating along, though leaning Republican after 9/11 . . . until I saw Sarah Palin’s rousing acceptance speech and was floored when Obama was elected with his “fundamental transformation” agenda (if you care to learn more about that, click here). I knew then that I was done with any flirtations with “vote for the person not the party” stuff and that I had to pick a team. I chose Palin’s team, the Tea Party team, the then-nascent American First team.
Anyway, Straka’s video hit a chord not only with me but with thousands of disaffected liberals (lowercase “l”) and Democrats across the nation. It took off, with thousands of people uploading their videos about why they were leaving the Democrat Party. It was a watershed moment, and it was an existential threat to the Democrats. They had to shut it down.
We saw it when Facebook purged thousands of #WalkAway testimonials. We saw it when Straka was caught up in the corrupt Biden-Garland DOJ’s net and sentenced to home confinement and probation over J6.
What we didn’t know but have long suspected is that Straka and his #WalkAway movement were purposefully targeted by the Biden-Garland corruption machine who worked to smear and shut down Straka and his thoroughly legitimate #WalkAway movement. It’s appalling, unAmerican, and unacceptable.
Matt Taibbi covers this complete travesty in detail at his substack and also provided the following on Twitter (X)–click over to read the whole thread:
2. In Atlanta Monday, I testified before Georgia state Representative @MeshaMainor, in a free speech hearing centered around the censorship of members of the “#WalkAway” Facebook Group, whose 500,000-plus accounts were deleted by Facebook on January 8th, 2021.… pic.twitter.com/RIgCSmOq3e
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) June 6, 2024
4. On May 26, 2018, little-known New York actor Straka launched #Walkaway, a Facebook group for disappointed Democrats ready to “walk away” from their party. Straka’s first video quickly went viral:https://t.co/VUrYSt0NXA
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) June 6, 2024
6. On July 1, 2018, a firm called New Knowledge tweeted, “The #walkaway campaign is an excellent example of how organic discussions about divisive topics are co-opted by domestic extremists,” adding the site was “amplified by foreign actors for maximum disruption.” pic.twitter.com/bjlN6tf5dv
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) June 6, 2024
11. Analysts quickly concluded #WalkAway was real. “Surprisingly, there’s only a small amount of fake engagement,” said one analyst on July 11th, adding, “The majority of users that are using #Walkaway are legitimate users.” pic.twitter.com/qUxKeqS4UB
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) June 6, 2024
13. Of the suspicious accounts, 19 tweeted “28 times about #Walkaway.” This looked like a small group of actors inserting conspicuous fakes. The firm found a suspicious spike from between June 23 and July 4 – when #Walkaway was first accused of being “amplified” by Russians.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) June 6, 2024
16. As noted in previous Twitter Files reports, Roth exposed the Hamilton 68 method as “bullshit” in October of 2017. The “dashboard” that purported to track 600 accounts linked to “Russian influence was actually “pure bluster,” tracking ordinary people, not Russians.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) June 6, 2024
25. Steven Colbert did a #WalkAway bit: “Russian trolls make things trend!” His source? A Daily Dot article relying on Hamilton 68, showing Straka over a headline: “Russian trolls on Twitter pose as ex-Democrats for #WalkAway movement.”https://t.co/1vDYZr057x pic.twitter.com/E40lMIIsNi
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) June 6, 2024
29. Factcheck and Botcheck were two related companies begun by a pair of Berkeley students named Rohan Phadte and Ash Bhat, whom Wired praised as the College Kids who “will do what Twitter won’t”: pic.twitter.com/PekicIlh6H
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) June 6, 2024
Democrats have no grassroots movements, so they astroturf “movements” and work to shut down actual populist movements by Americans sick of their perfidy. It’s shameful and disgusting, and it cannot stand.
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Comments
“russian disinformation” etc etc
is the equivalent of conspiracy theories and allll that other communist bs
A b/c the leftists narrative is supported by GOP/MAGA tax money they have that continued smirk on their botoxed face
WE do s we please and yuo suckers are paying for our meals etc
Small “l” liberalism aside
a vote FOR THE DEMS has always been a vote for a communist
sure it didnt “seem” that way and was presented in such a manner that you thought you were fighting for civil rights ( uhh,, that the same left /dems had kept from poc and whites) when civil rights were already on the books
correction:
All b/c the leftist narrative
It seems like they only things Dems are really good at are grand con games, fraud, canceling decent people. That and they do a good job of recruiting deplorables’.
A good rule of thumb whenever someone is yammering about some variation of ‘Russia, Russia Russia’ is to make eye contact (to observe the Cray Cray), put one hand on your wallet (lest they steal it) and your back against a wall (lest they stab it) as you make your way to the nearest exit. The same sorts of folks yammering about Russia as a constant boogeyman also brought us Covid Mania totalitarianism among other things. These folks want more power+$ and if they gotta trample the Constitution and lie along the way to a ‘fundamental transformation’ of the USA they frankly don’t GAF.
That half the country is more than ok with ALL of this is a frightening juncture to be at as a country. There no longer seems to be basic ideas and core principles that hold us together. A Trump presidency may hold the worst of it off for awhile but I wonder how this ship can be righted.
A purge against conservatives, activists and even former government officials who oppose the “Deep State” has been ongoing for the better part of a decade.. People have been indicted, thrown in jail, and de-platformed, yet the Republican Party has done nothing.
Until the ring leaders start paying a price, none of this will change.
More widespread than many understand. See Operation Vigilant Eagle. The supporters and enablers of big govt are quite determined to succeed in maintaining their power, prestige, authority and the ever increasing flow of taxpayer dollars to their grift. Many who say they are opposed to d/prog policies seem all too eager to assist.
Let’s not forget that the media, except for the Herculean efforts of Matt Taibbi and his colleagues, have become an Orwellian Ministry of Truth. The Hunter Biden laptop is Exhibit #1. When it was necessary for election interference, the media was more than happy to go along with the assertion by the US intelligence community that the laptop had been modified as part of a Russian disinformation scheme. Now (as reported by Jonathon Turley), the very same media outlets are reporting matter of factly that the same laptop presented as evidence in the Hunter Biden trial that the laptop was NOT tampered with. No mea culpas, no investigation, no reporting on the change of status for the laptop. Just the Ministry of Truth defining the new reality …..
“Matt Tlaibi…”
Uhh, slip of the fingers when typing?
Yeah, Fuzzy…. that needs to be fixed. Taibbi’s no conservative, but he’s nowhere near Tlaib status.
Definitely a typo, and fixed, thanks!
Thank you for the info, Ms. Slippers.
Will we see trials for treason?
Nope.
No, because there has been no treason.
“Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.”
In this instance there hasn’t even been any kind of crime. Lying is not a crime.
The vile and evil Dhimmi-crats and their FBI/media/tech shills/lapdogs/trained seals continually spread propaganda lies asserting that citizens, organizations or movements who exhibits less than total fealty towards the Dhimmi-crats and their agenda must have influenced by the Russians.
Yet, these same reprobates refuse to concede, much less criticize, the pervasive, malignant and undeniable influence/hand of Iran, Qatar and other Islamofascist/Muslim supremacist states, in funding, organizing and indoctrinating American youth, academic institutions and media organs to become rabid, goose-stepping, Jew-hating and Israel-vilifying Islamofascists.
He and his colleagues are to be commended for their courage and steadfastness in spite of how they were targeted by Facebook and others and then the DOJ for little more than his presence in DC on Jan 6.