Anyone who’s spent time in the harrowing weeds of political Twitter recently, however, has surely witnessed the prevalence of trolls and bots swarming popular liberals and “blue checks” while simultaneously spreading propaganda designed to influence the outcome of the election.
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.
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To be clear: This isn’t being circulated by earnest yet misguided voters who formerly identified as Democrats. This is clearly being circulated by trolls connected to the Russian influence operations. #WalkAway has obvious roots in the 2016 primaries, when Russian trolls attempted to turn liberal or left-wing voters against casting general election ballots for the eventual Democratic nominee (either Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton), thus diminishing Democratic turnout. The same goal applies here.
Oh and yes, the conservative entertainment complex is on board. Despite the reality that Russians are accosting voters with nefarious agitprop like this -- including other keywords like “rigged” and “witch hunt” -- HuffPost noted that Fox News is reporting this active measure as if it were an actual grassroots “movement.” It’s not.
Via @placeboasis, here's another fake account trying to make #WalkAway happen. 16k RTs for "Sofia Vargoros," a bot with a profile pic stolen from -- I am not kidding -- a book about getting rich from penny stocks. pic.twitter.com/FHWPjaABaX
— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) July 1, 2018