#WalkAway

About

#WalkAway is a hashtag campaign in which former liberals post videos online in which they share stories about how they grew apart from the Democratic Party and left-wing politics.

Origin

On May 26th, 2018, New York-based hairdresser Brandon Straka released a video announcing the launch of the "#WalkAway" campaign, claiming he is "walking away from liberalism and the Democratic Party" (shown below).^[3] Over the next two weeks, the video accumulated 1.9 million views, 73,000 shares and 28,000 reactions.

Spread

On May 30th, 2018, the #WalkAway Facebook^[1] group was launched, which describes itself as a "video campaign movement" for former left-leaning people "who can no longer accept the current ideology of liberalism and what the Democratic Party has become." Over the next month, the group accumulated more than 62,000 members.

On June 30th, Twitter user CJ Pearson tweeted a #WalkAway video, along with the message "Democrats walked away from black folks long ago" (shown below). Within one week, the tweet gained over 25,300 likes and 11,000 retweets.

On July 2nd, The Washington Post published an article titled "The #WalkAway meme is what happens when everything is viral and nothing matters." On June 29th, the An0maly – News Analysis & Hip-hop channel uploaded a video about the hashtag campaign (shown below, left). On July 3rd, the Fox News YouTube channel uploaded an interview with Straka about the campaign (shown below, right).

Search Interest

External References