Black People, Please Run Away From The Stupid, Fake #WalkAway Campaign
Phony photos, phony movement
Russia has a compelling interest these days in helping Republicans win elections, and Republicans win elections when the Democratic vote is suppressed. Republicans focus on purging voter rolls and let Russian bots handle the fine art of propaganda. The most recent and shameless effort is the #WalkAway viral campaign, promoting the right-wing wet dream that minorities are abandoning the Democratic Party because when Jeff Sessions is our attorney general, the true offense is Maxine Waters's lack of "civility."
#WalkAway, the hashtag, went viral [in July] 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.
"If you are a person of color, an LGBT person, a woman or an American immigrant, the Democratic Party wants you to know you are a victim," Straka says in the video. "This is perhaps the Democratic Party's greatest, and most insidious, lie."
Democrats also "insidiously" inform burning people that they are, in fact, on fire. So, yeah, the whole #WalkAway hashtag is a transparent scam.
Despite all the glee from the right over the possibility, there's no evidence -- not even anecdotal -- that minorities are defecting to the Republican Party. Not that the Republicans even care. They don't need black people to vote for them. They just want us to stay home, maybe go watch Black Panther again -- anything but actually voting. They also appreciate the plausible deniability that the GOP, in the Trump era, is racist. Such reality-based theories could turn off white moderates, who might work or socialize adjacent to a minority.
The #WalkAway campaign "founder" and new BFF of the right is Brandon Straka, a gay hairstylist and "former liberal." His Twitter bio states he wishes to "Red Pill humanity," because apparently Straka, along with men's rights activists, loves co-opting the intellectual property of two trans women more than he wishes to avoid irony.
hey @davidhogg111 u were able 2bully constitutionalists while hiding behind identity politics as an untouchable min… https: //t.co/716jtGax8X
— Brandon Straka (The Unsilent Minority) (@Brandon Straka (The Unsilent Minority)) 1532292856.0
Straka's crusade has attracted such noted black conservative luminaries as Candace Owens and the kid I won't name.I'm sure Diamond and Silk are involved as long as the checks clear. These folks have been walking away from the "Democratic plantation" for a long-ass while. Straka obviously needed some new faces to represent how effective his movement has been so far. Here's a recent personal testimonial.
Take the "red pill" and discover how fake this photo is Shutterstock
I can't account for every anti-Trump Twitter user, of course, but no actual elected Democrat has done any of these things. And where was this nice black lady during the Obama administration when our brother was being lynched in effigy? Probably selling dish soap or wireless Internet, I guess, because as James Kosur revealed Monday in the Hill Reporter , she isn't really a former Democrat but a professional (more or less, why is she posed this way?) model.
It turns out, the fake #WalkAway campaign, launched most likely by Russian operatives, has also been creating incredibly fake #WalkAway ads. In each ad, people of various races and backgrounds are featured with a simple message about why they've left the Democratic party.
The problem with these ads? The people telling their deeply personal stories are actually models who posed for Shutterstock-featured photos.
Yeah, still fake Shutterstock
Seriously, what's with all the "deep thought" poses? Does Shutterstock recruit graduates from the Rodin School of Modeling? This ad also makes no sense even in the context of dishonest propaganda. Democrats are the ones who implemented policies to help families send their kids to college without having to sell their kidneys. Obama tried to clean up student loans, and executed some scammy for-profit colleges, which Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is making dirty again and raising from the dead, respectively. What is my fake brother's deal?
There's also some standard "divide and conquer" tactics among minorities. You have a problem with the Trump administration's immigration policies? Hey, those kiddie jails are for your benefit, slightly different brown person! It is impressive how well Russians understand American racial dynamics. Maybe they have the ghost of Lee Atwater on their payroll.
The fakest of the three, but at least he's not touching his face Shutterstock
#WalkAway clearly violated Shutterstock's terms of service, which forbids using their photos "in a political context, such as the promotion, advertisement or endorsement of any party, candidate, or elected official, or in connection with any political policy or viewpoint." (I think they also swiped the name "WalkAway" from a cool book by Cory Doctorow.)
Fortunately, this whole #WalkAway "movement" doesn't appear to have fooled any reasonably intelligent person.
Ginni Thomas falls for her own party's propaganda
I said "reasonably intelligent."
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Read what you wrote. You are condescending. I do not know why you need to justify yourself and explain that you are not immature, can think, write, have a job and write in your language. Even so, I will follow your lead and will respond in kind. I am grown up as well, gainfully employed, English is one of the languages I can speak, write and understand, not my mother tongue but my comprehension is quite well and healthy. As you may or may not have noticed, I have not needed to recur to insult nor trashy words, which are usually the last resort when lacking arguments. You "assume" too much, I try not to even presume maybe just go as far as suppose; you know what people say about assumptions. The spectrum of people's ideas are not defined by extremes on opposing sides, right or left, black or white, or if people do not agree with my point of view I do not need to label them or discard them, but that is your prerogative.
Cupcake, it's cute how desperately you try to insult me, but I'm a grown-up, gainfully-employed writer and editor with degrees in English. My reading and writing skills are fine.
Yours...not so much, since you seemed to miss the gist of all of my non-comments, which was that your right-wing boilerplate bullshit and rat-fucking lies are not welcome among the Wonketariat.