The founder of the “Walk Away” movement, where numerous ordinary Americans upload videos and photos of themselves saying they left the Democratic Party, said that the claims it is a “Russian bot” campaign are false.
“The recent attempts by left-wing media to invalidate the real testimonials, feelings, and experiences of the real people who have joined the #WalkAway Campaign is yet another desperate denial of the reality that the Democratic Party no longer has anything valuable to offer the American people,” Brandon Straka, the founder of the movement, told The Epoch Times.
“Once upon a time, I was a liberal. Well, to be honest, less than a year ago, I was still a liberal,” Straka, a New York City hairdresser who now describes himself as a former liberal, says in the clip.
Since then, a Facebook page and hashtag was created, and Straka appeared on Fox News to implore progressives to walk away from the party.
Straka explained that people are getting fed up after seeing “more stories of unhinged and uncivil behavior from those on the left and increasingly boundary-less behavior.”
Meanwhile, the Russian-bot narrative, Straka added, that’s being pushed on social media “will only prove to further push people who have had enough of the left away from liberalism and the Democratic Party” and are “now embracing the claptrap rationale that anybody opposed to their nonsensical agenda must be a foreign operative robot.”
“The #WalkAway Campaign is growing daily with Americans of all types and from all walks of life who value tolerance, civility, kind and civil discourse, and an appreciation for the greatest values of America. We welcome all who are fed up with the dishonest liberal media and the infinitely angry climate of the left,” he continued.
“Native American tribal elder from Michigan. I walked away because I choose the kind road. I’m First Nation and positive I’m not a Russian bot. Lol. Blessings. Alicejo Shagikwe,” wrote one woman in the Facebook group.
“I am so grateful to the founders of this #WalkAway Campaign, and all of the people who dared to come in here and share their reason and logic that prompted them to walkaway from the Democratic party. Many of the posts I see in here bravely highlight experiences about racism and bigotry in the Democratic party,” Ted Jotte wrote in the group while holding a sign: “Hey libs and all of you media propagandists. I am not a Russian bot.
Straka, who grew up in a small town in Nebraska, was on board with the fear and loathing campaign around Trump until he began asking people back home why they had voted for him. To his astonishment, they told him about Obama-era regulations that had crippled their small businesses.
“I was afraid of losing all my friends. As I began posting about these things on social media, people started attacking me and unfriending me,” he told Epoch Times. “But I thought, ‘You know what, this is too important.’ Maybe it’s the fact that I’m a gay man and I’ve already been through this—people making up lies about what it means to be gay and trying to shame me. I was like, ‘I’m not doing it. I’m not doing this twice.’"