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In July 2018, various websites reported that the social media hashtag #WalkAway represented a mass movement of people leaving (i.e., walking away from) the Democratic party. The #WalkAway movement was characterized as an answer to the blue wave, a belief shared by liberals that Democrats were poised to make major electoral gains in November 2018 midterm elections. The campaign was launched by New York resident Brandon Straka, who in mid-June 2018 created a video replete with dramatic theme music in which he presented himself as a former liberal who was walking away because liberal politics no longer embodied his values of unity, personal empowerment and love. The video was widely shared on social media, but as Abby Ohlheiser, who pens a blog about the Internet for the Washington Post noted, that following took place almost exclusively on the right-wing Internet. In late July 2018 however, the #WalkAway campaign was criticized for sharing memes utilizing photographs of liberals who were purportedly personally testifying to walking away from the Democratic Party, but those memes actually employed commercial images of anonymous people provided by the stock photography site Shutterstock: Straka took to Twitter to say the memes were not authentic #WalkAway campaign material: In an email, Straka told us he didn't know who created the memes, but that any official material from the #WalkAway campaign would bear specific branding: It's unclear who created the memes, or whether they were shared by people who consider themselves associated with the #WalkAway hashtag movement. But verifying what materials and persons might have any official connection with the movement is difficult since the campaign exists mostly on social media, with Straka self-identifying in his social media profile as campaign founder and in a group hosted by him on Facebook. #WalkAway memes employing stock photographic images have been shared by at least one prominent conservative figure — Ginni Thomas, an attorney who contributes to the conservative Daily Caller website and is married to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas: Noting that live Twitter tracking tool Hamilton68 (operated by the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund) had recorded Russian bots and trolls helping to amplify the #WalkAway hashtag, some critics blamed Twitter for failing to quell the spread of Russian propaganda:
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