OMG... the #walkaway bro is like something straight out of "The Producers"

[ehrnst]

FFS - this guy is a Leonard Saint Dubois for the Russians and the fringe.

Two months ago, Brandon Straka was a New York hair stylist with $300 in his savings account and a struggling side job as a performance artist.

Now, thanks to his starring role in a video telling Democrats to ditch their party, he’s the head of a movement that’s been embraced by a wide swathe of the pro-Trump internet and earned him shout-outs from some of conservative media’s biggest names.
.................................................................................................

This isn’t the first time Straka has tried to get attention with his changing political convictions. In October 2017, Straka staged a “jukebox musical” called “RESIST: A Rock Revolution” that shares a lot in common with his viral #WalkAway video, albeit with far more jarring aesthetics.

After a strained performance of the “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Straka takes the stage in a Republican armband, a beret, and a military-style outfit modeled on Patty Hearst’s uniform after she was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army. Then he launches into a Trump-themed cover of “Forever Young,” asking the audience “who wants some fucking truth?”

Soon after that, Straka kicks into a Gilbert & Sullivan-style song about the concept of gaslighting.

What follows for the next 90 minutes is a bizarre collision between the political controversies of the Trump era and decades of pop music. At one point in the musical, Straka sings Harry Styles’ “Sign of the Times” while playing footage of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. Meanwhile, an artist paints the 2016 electoral map.

While Straka says his musical won over his liberal audience, he concedes that it didn’t get close to the kind of outsized attention #WalkAway is enjoying.

“The rage and the hatred on the left is more powerful than any jukebox musical,” Straka said.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-rights-new-viral-star-is-red-pilled-hair-stylist-from-new-york

And you can see a delightful sample on his Kickstarter page - which unsurprisingly didn't reach it's goal.

https://www.gofundme.com/resist-a-rock-revolution



I would love to be a fly on the wall when someone shares this video with Mel Brooks.

[Gothmog]

1. The Russian bots are back -- and now they're fueling the #WalkAway propaganda attack on Democrats

The #walkaway crap is a pure bot driven attack designed to suppress Democratic voters. https://www.rawstory.com/2018/07/russian-bots-back-now-theyre-fueling-walkaway-propaganda-attack-democrats/

One of the present-day agitprop campaigns linked to Putin’s hacker squads is the “WalkAway” hashtag.

The Huffington Post reported over the weekend that this troll attack is a counter-measure against the potential “blue wave” coming this fall, with the WalkAway hashtag intended to simulate real-world Democrats who have apparently chosen to leave the party due to its (try not to laugh) alleged intolerance and lack of civility. It’s a ludicrous concept, given the galactically more egregious incivility of Trump and his Red Hats, extending back at least three years and including a deadly terrorist attack in Charlottesville, among myriad other examples.

In any case, this “hashtag has been connected to Russian bots,” according to the HuffPost report:

It has ranked as the third or fourth most popular Kremlin-linked hashtag for days, according to bot tracking by the Hamilton 68 site run by the bipartisan Alliance for Securing Democracy, which keeps tabs on Russian activity on the American internet.

Arc Digital has made the same connection in the “strikingly similar” tweets pushing a “familiar narrative” of Democratic “bullying.” Arc traced the campaign from a Facebook group in May and subsequent tweets whose traffic suddenly began to explode late last month.

As I write this, Hamilton 68 has ranked #WalkAway as the most tweeted hashtag in the last 48 hours.

[Gothmog]

2. The #WalkAway meme is what happens when everything is viral and nothing matters

From the Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2018/07/02/the-walkaway-meme-is-what-happens-when-everything-is-viral-and-nothing-matters/?utm_term=.0f59057c3c62

On the pro-Trump Internet last weekend, the #WalkAway hashtag was the nexus of an exciting idea: that “millions of Americans are walking away from the Democrat party,” as one pro-Trump account put it. Breitbart said that the hashtag had gone viral; the Epoch Times said it represented a “growing movement” of Democrats — particularly minority Democrats — abandoning their party, and liberalism.

#WalkAway, the hashtag, went viral this weekend, as something of a delayed reaction to a popular video renouncing liberalism by Brandon Straka, who described himself to the Epoch Times as a New York hairdresser and aspiring actor. The video, posted in late May, now has more than 1 million views on Facebook. In it, Straka says he was once a liberal, but now he is not....

There’s little actual evidence to suggest that #WalkAway represents a mass conversion of millions — or even thousands — of Democrats to the Trump Train since Straka’s video. Instead, the #WalkAway hashtag is going Conservative Internet viral on the same hope driving recent pro-Trump support of Kanye West: that the country is on the verge of a mass conversion to conservative thought, a Great Awakening of sorts. And the thing about anticipating an awakening is that it never actually has to happen for the idea of it to go viral.

[ehrnst]

3. And like so many "Democrats are weak and corrupt" tropes

it's exploited by Russia and the GOP. with the help of "Brogressives," who are steamed that straight white men's issues aren't so much the focus of Democratic leadership, especially those who sit when they pee.

[Gothmog]

4. The pictures in the tweets are all stock photos

Link to tweet

[ehrnst]

6. I don't see any graphics training in his background. He certainly had help with that.

Who funds him?

He also certainly had help with buying the domain name walkawaycampaign.com - they keep the registrant and location of the registrant hidden.


The assistant listed on the website Robin Martinez-Hamilton has been furiously asking "walk away" people to post selfies with a sign showing the hashtag on FB to 'prove that they aren't bots' but those replying aren't really getting the idea that the #walkaway movement is about liberals who have walked away from the Democratic Party.... they are also posting #MAGA in their selfies, which doesn't really help the case that they were indeed Democrats before 2018...


https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10155299594522827&set=gm.2004808459539052&type=3&theater&ifg=1

[Scurrilous]

5. K&R