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Monday, July 17, 2023

Sound Of Freedumb: God's children are not for sale, but they're perfect little pawns for reich-wing agendas

This post has been updated several times since its original publication on July 17, 2023.
~CC

I've said it before on this blog in other contexts (most notably this one): the facts don't matter if the story is good. And for enthusiastic moviegoers all across America who have viewed or plan to view a recently released film called Sound Of Freedom, it's pretty clear that the facts really do not matter. As far as many of them are concerned, this significantly fictionalized work is akin to a documentary, and their marching orders at movie's end are clear. They're on the warpath now, fired up by the film's message and ready to take action by:

  1. "Paying it forward" by giving the filmmakers as much additional money as they possibly can, supposedly to pay for free movie tickets for many others
  2. Tweeting passionately and dramatically about The Tragedy And Outrage Of Child Trafficking
  3. Taking the fam (or hopping on the bus with their church group) to see Sound Of Freedom a few more times so they can tweet passionately and dramatically about The Tragedy And Outrage Of Child Trafficking some more
  4. Repeating, ad nauseam, the mantra of the film's hero: "God's children are not for sale!"
  5. Attacking critics of the film as either being pedophiles, or supporting/covering for pedophiles, or being part of a massive conspiracy to sabotage/censor the film, or all of the above

That last item brings me to the point that if facts don't matter, neither, it seems, does nuance. Consider Twitter, for example, which currently appears to be dominated by sponsored promos for the movie; every ten or so tweets that I see on my feed are plugs from the distributor, Angel Studios. And on every one of these threads that I've viewed, and I've viewed many, the more fanatical fans -- let's just call them the Sound Of Freedolts -- are quick to attack anyone who even mildly criticizes or questions the veracity of Sound Of Freedom. The Freedolts, wittingly or unwittingly, are engaged in a fallacy commonly known as false dilemma, in this case, a contrived either/or situation in which one is either in favor of the movie or in favor of child exploitation.

If you don't like Sound of Freedom or don't particularly want to see it, or if you question its story line or its artistic merits, or you criticize either its star (Jim Caviezel) or the real-life waif-rescuer who inspired the tale (Tim Ballard), then clearly -- clearly! -- you are a pedophile, or at the very least you support pedophilia. Which means, it goes without saying but they'll say it anyway, that you are a communist socialist fascist Democrat libtard who wants The Truth to be quashed so that you and/or your elite buddies can keep on raping helpless little children and harvesting their blood for adrenochrome so you and/or your buddies can attain eternal youth.

Alternatively, or in addition, you are an atheist who hates Christians, and you resent or fear Sound Of Freedom because of its faith-based undertone (which is sometimes an overtone), and you can't stand the fact that both Jim Caviezel and Tim Ballard are proudly and publicly all in for Jesus.

Those explanations seem to make up the general consensus among the right-leaning tweeters, many of whom have observed that Sound Of Freedom is getting tons of publicity and a flood of endorsements from "conservative" and "religious" groups but not so much from "the left." And they all know why: it's because lefties are pedos and sex criminals and/or Christian-persecuting atheists.

Talk about facts not mattering! Matt Gaetz, Gym Jordan, or Roy Moore, anyone? And here's more about who the real pervs are on the American political spectrum.

Let's not forget that the de facto leader of the republican party, and the front-runner in the repub race to the White House in 2024 -- a sexual abuser named Donald John Trump -- has repeatedly and publicly expressed his incestuous fantasies about his very own daughters, most notably Ivanka, of course, but also Tiffany, when the latter was a baby. (!) Let's also not forget that he happily partied with the late and unlamented sex predator and trafficker Jeffrey Epstein back in the day (though the two later had a falling-out, apparently over some real estate deals, and after Epstein was arrested Trump disavowed their past friendship).

And that's not even to mention the notorious churchy pervs (since we we've been discussing religion as well as politix).

But I digress.

If you don't like nuance, turn back now.
The point is this: even as criticizing the bellicosity of Israel does not automatically make one anti-Semitic (though some critics of Israel are undoubtedly anti-Semitic), it's also true that criticizing a (did I mention highly fictionalized?) cult film about child trafficking does not automatically make one a pedophile or a fan of pedophilia. Quite the contrary, especially now that the truth is coming out in the wake of the film's apparently impressive box office success. For such an important and genuine issue such as child trafficking, which few people will deny actually exists, it's reasonable to question the accuracy of the narrative in Sound Of Freedom. From Slate, July 13, 2023:

...Parts of the actual story have been questioned by reporting, including at Vice, which found a pattern of exaggerations and misleading claims by the real Ballard. Other outlets have pointed out that official documents tell a different story about the border arrest than the movie does. The plunge into the Colombian jungle to rescue Rocio is an invention. And some elements of Ballard’s life story are simply hard to fact-check. But the real-life Ballard really did stage a sting operation in Colombia that led to the arrests of several human traffickers.

What’s more, experts in anti-trafficking work have been critical of Operation Underground Railroad’s operations, arguing that these dramatic raids and rescues are not actually effective or are sometimes even damaging to the long-term goal of ending human-trafficking practices. [Operation Underground Railroad, aka OUR, is the organization founded by Ballard to conduct the rescue ops. ~ CLS] And the consideration of what happens to saved individuals after a raid has sometimes been an afterthought. Writing in Slate about her experience attending an OUR raid in the Dominican Republic in 2014, Meg Conley recalled feeling that everyone involved was passionate but inexperienced...

...Conley’s sting rescued 26 girls. Later, after reading a report in Foreign Policy, Conley learned that the local organization tapped for aftercare of the children found itself overwhelmed. The group released the girls in a matter of days. The local group lost track of a number of them.

In 2021, Operation Underground Railroad, or OUR, told Slate that the organization had matured since its early days and was now doing more to support victims after the raids.

In more recent developments, Tim Ballard "quietly" left OUR not long before the release of Sound Of Freedom. He claims that he was forced out, but in any case he's still enthusiastically spreading reich-wing talking points. From Vice, July13, 2023:

Ballard has made no mention of his departure from OUR as he began a one-man press tour focused on the film and the Jim Caviezel-played character based on him. In recent days, he’s been interviewed on Fox News, telling Jesse Watters that criticism of the film by mainstream media outlets was playing into the hands of pedophiles, and by the New York Post, where he said “enforcing the border” is “the only compassionate thing to do if you care about children.” (Ballard has long claimed that a porous southern border leads to sex trafficking of children, a view not shared by most experts in anti-trafficking work.)

In other words, Ballard is only reinforcing the great partisan divide that is so evident in social media conversations about the film. (And to Tim, it's not just porous borders that enable the pedos; it's also gender-affirming care. Oh, the horror, the horror!)

A July 18 piece on Vice goes into more detail about Ballard's departure from OUR, focusing on the fact that Ballard left OUR in the wake of an internal investigation. It wasn't the first time both Ballard and OUR had been investigated (see this June 10, 2021 Vice article). But OUR officials are so far being extremely circumspect regarding details about the most recent investigation.

Ballard has apparently gone on to form a new anti-trafficking group, while collecting the expected reich-wing martyr creds because of what he claims the "godless leftist media" are doing to discredit him, enable pedos, and stop you from watching Sound Of Freedom. From the July 18 Vice article:

In recent media appearances, Ballard has identified himself as the co-founder of the Spear Fund, an apparently new anti-trafficking group. During his appearance on [political commentator and podcast host Tim] Pool’s show, he appealed for donations; Pool’s own website later announced they had raised $50,000.

In an Instagram video posted Monday evening, shortly after Motherboard reached out to his representative for comment, Ballard told his viewers to “expect more lies” about him, assailing what he called the “godless leftist media” for “running interference for human traffickers” and “throwing everything at me right now.” He decried specific, ridiculous conspiracy theories he said he’d seen online about himself—accusing him of supporting the microchipping of children to support a Masonic agenda, for instance—and warned his viewers to “expect more to come.” He also posted several screenshots of media stories about OUR, including a previous story of ours, adding, “There’s nothing they won’t do to stop you from watching Sound of Freedom.” 

Now, I don't blame Tim for trying to discredit stupid conspiracy tales about himself, but maybe they're kinda karmic, since he's been engaged in quite a bit of conspiracy-peddling himself.

Facts do matter.
A July 12, 2023 article in Rolling Stone goes into more detail about the reasons so many child trafficking experts and children's rights advocates are critical of Sound Of Freedom. Most of these reasons center around the film's distortions of the real and deep and complex issues around child trafficking.

Contrary to urban legends about kids getting abducted in Target parking lots by strangers, or anonymous figures snatching children from alleyways, the majority of child trafficking victims know and trust their traffickers, explains Teresa Huizar, CEO of the National Children’s Alliance (Huizar has not seen the film yet, but was able to provide context about the myths and realities of child trafficking). “Some are throwaway kids. They are kicked out of their homes and trade sex for food and a place to stay, and end up being trafficked by a pimp,” she says. “In a lot of these cases, the trafficker starts out calling themselves their boyfriend or girlfriend.” Indeed, a large body of research shows that many child trafficking victims are LGBTQ or gender nonconforming youth who have been kicked out of their homes and forced into the sex trade by someone close to them.

“We want to believe that people trafficking children are unknown, nefarious strangers,” she says. “[It] makes people uncomfortable to think some of these things happen in their own communities, in their own schools, with people they might run into at the grocery store.”

The lack of focus on tragic cases like these, in favor of more dramatic narratives about international rescue missions and shadowy strangers abducting kids, has resulted in a skewed perception of child trafficking. By ignoring the realities of what victims and traffickers look like, and the larger structural issues that prevent at-risk children from getting help — like, say, widely available, government-funded substance abuse treatment programs for families struggling with addiction, says Huizar — anti-trafficking movies like Sound of Freedom and the 2006 blockbuster Taken may have the unintended effect of not shedding light on a very serious and real problem, but obscuring it.

And while some might say this is a stretch, it's even possible that the rage the movie has inspired in some viewers could lead to acts of violence or attempted violence, as Pizzagate did a few years back. I saw a recent comment on a Facebook thread by a viewer who wrote that Sound Of Freedom is a very powerful movie, adding, "I came out angry and ready to hunt." The originator of the thread admitted to feeling the same. I say that if you're going to start hunting for pedos and other sexual predators, maybe start with the leaders of the youth ministry at your local evangelical church, or some of the republican "leaders" on national and local levels, or maybe even with some law enforcement types...but once again, I digress.

Conspiranoia runs deep. Into your life it will creep.
There is another level to the criticism of the film, and it has to do with the fact that it has provided ample fuel for Q-Anon nuts and reich-wing conspiranoids everywhere. Despite the fact that the film itself is not overtly political and makes no reference to the QAnon conspiracy theory, its star, Jim Caviezel, as well as the real-life Tim Ballard, are not only parroting right-wing talking points, as indicated above, but both men have legitimized QAnon and Q-adjacent lunacy. Also from the Rolling Stone article:

The misconceptions about child trafficking promoted by Sound of Freedom are in many ways compounded by the fact that the film has received widespread acclaim from the far right, particularly proponents of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which posits that a shadowy ring of elites is sexually abusing young children. Sound of Freedom does not refer to the conspiracy theory, nor is it overtly political (though Ballard has legitimized a QAnon-adjacent conspiracy theory centering around the furniture company Wayfair, and star Caviezel has espoused some of QAnon’s more extreme aspects, such as the belief that elites are harvesting adrenochrome from the blood of children). But it has been embraced in conspiracy theorist circles and promoted on Q boards, and it is a concern among some anti-trafficking experts that the movie will add oxygen to a discourse that detracts from a real, and very serious, problem, even if those moved by the film have the noblest of intentions.

There's even a raging conspiracy theory or two about the movie itself, one claim being that movie theaters, most notably the AMC theater chain, are deliberately and nefariously suppressing the film by discouraging patrons from seeing it. (As if a big business would actually sabotage a golden money op like Sound Of Freedom has turned out to be.) Both AMC and Angel Studios have tried their best to squelch those rumors, but you know how conspiranoids are when they latch on to a new reason, no matter how spurious, to be outraged. There's just no stopping them.

Regarding the means of alleged sabotage and suppression, several patrons have complained on social media about air conditioning or lighting or sound problems or other technical glitches during showings, and even a forced evacuation in at least one case. Then there are the cases of allegedly sold-out but nearly empty theaters, some of which do seem a bit suspicious, at least on first glance. A July 17, 2023 piece on Daily Dot addresses these claims, citing bizarre seating charts at some of the Sound Of Freedom screenings, which lend credence to claims that fake ticket sales are artificially boosting numbers.

Both opponents and fans of the film have embraced this theory, though for different reasons. Some fans think that "shadow buyers" are behind it all, with the objective of keeping real people from seeing the movie, vaguely like pranksters did in the past with mass fake RSVPs to some of Trump's rallies and personal appearances. Some opponents think it's a plot to artificially boost ticket sales, and/or that it's a nefarious money-laundering scheme. And some folks, not surprisingly, have embraced the go-to argument among the film's fans that pedos are behind it.

Some conspiracists even linked the complaints about technical difficulties to the CEO of AMC having ties to former President Bill Clinton, who had ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Now, that's a stretch. Here's a more likely explanation, though, according to the Daily Dot article.

As for the seats selling out? That might be explained at least in part by Angel Studio’s “pay it forward” ticket program, which allows individuals to purchase tickets so others can see the film. Variety reported that “about $2.6 million of opening day sales were earned through this method.”

According to Angel Studios, more than 7 million tickets have been paid forward. In its FAQ section, the studio said that if not all the tickets are claimed and there are “any funds remaining after the theatrical run, they will be used to pay for streaming Sound of Freedom in the Angel Studios app,” and remaining funds could “also be used to help the filmmaker create additional content.”

As well, it is entirely possible that, seeing as how this pay-it-forward scheme is a fairly new thing initiated by Angel Studios, there could be some bugs in the system that haven't been worked out yet. (If you're interested, here's much more info about the pay-it-forward system, and other innovative ways the film has been funded.)

But reason just doesn't seem to work very well when folks get themselves on a juicy conspiranoid roll.

Fortunately there are those -- and I deeply appreciate them -- who are having fun with the movie-theaters-are-suppressing-the-film hysterics. One that has gained some notoriety was a July 12, 2023 tweet by a comedian who claimed to be an AMC employee.

I work at AMC and just got fired for refusing to add this liquid to a customer’s soda. We were instructed specifically to serve this to Sound of Freedom audiences. I am a microbiology student and took it to the lab to examine and found what looks like nanobots inside.

Accompanying the tweet were two pictures: one of a hand holding a vial filled with gold liquid, and the other a photo of what was presumably a nanobot viewed under a microscope. Fellow tweeters were quick to point out that both photos were several years old and had been grabbed from different sources. That apparently didn't stop some folks from taking the tweet seriously.

And on one of Angel Studio's many, many sponsored tweets, there was the usual round of complaints about the awful things that AMC and the mainstream media (or MSM, as those in the know call it) and the entire left-wing cabal are doing to sabotage Sound Of Freedom. Then this contribution popped up:

I went to see it and literally the MSM was blocking the doors we snuck around them and they were in the theater farting on all the chairs and carrying personal space heaters. I couldn’t believe it but I sucked it up and stayed for america Jesus and trump.

Adding to the entertainment value of the hysteria is the fact that there is a rival conspiracy narrative, this one being spread by investors who saved AMC from almost certain death. They claim that the accusations of suppressive actions by AMC are fake news, intended to sabotage AMC and make its stock value plummet. Pass the popcorn!

I think these conspiracy narratives are so popular for several reasons, one being that they draw people together and help them feel as if they're part of Something Really Big, and a related reason being that, as is the case with other politically-fueled topics, they encourage a persecution complex in believers and spreaders of the tales -- allowing them the indulgence of "smoking that sweet crack pipe of moral indignation" (as aptly described in a different though related context, many years ago, on a Kung Fu Monkey blog post about persecution complexes among the "Religionistas").

Not only can people who buy into the persecution narrative be indignant about the real problem of child trafficking, but also about the perceived censorship or suppression or attempted sabotage of their newest favorite film, and by extension the persecution of its fans. None of us is immune to persecution fantasies, of course, though they do seem to be especially prevalent these days amongst the "conservatives" in our midst, not the least among those of a fundie Christian bent.

And if all of that isn't enough, one of the film's sponsors, Fabian Marta -- who boasts that he was instrumental in rescuing Sound Of Freedom from the evil woke suppressor Disney -- is apparently a promoter of sexual exploitation himself, via the sugar daddy/sugar baby circuit.
UPDATE, August 4, 2023: Marta was charged with felony child kidnapping on July 21 and was arrested on July 23. His Facebook posts boasting about being a funder of Sound Of Freedom, and about having his name appear in the movie's credits, have apparently since been removed.

And speaking of the Mouse House, one of the articles of faith among the conspiranoids is that Disney is part of the great cabal of pedo enablers, and that has to be why they tried to shelve the film indefinitely. But here's some more info about the Disney part of the saga.

Make up your own mind (of course).
If you want to go see for yourself what all of the fuss is about, nobody's stopping you. I'm sure not. But if you do see Sound Of Freedom, do take it with a few grains of salt. And if you want to do something about human trafficking, or at least learn about what's really going on, there are numerous non-political orgs you can contact (The Polaris Project, for instance).

If you see the movie, let me know what you think of it. As for me, I have no plans to see it, either in a theater or on streaming when it's available or on home media, and it's not because I'm "afraid" of the film or because I'm a pedo or a pal of pedos or a wicked oppressor of that most persecuted of groups in America, conspicuous Christians. It's primarily because (1) I almost never go to movie theaters (there actually aren't any theaters in my neck of the backwoods anyway, and I much prefer the comfort of home viewing); (2) we have very limited and expensive bandwidth out here in rural BFE Texas and we cannot afford to squander it on streaming of any type of entertainment; and (3) with very rare exceptions, I don't want to spend good money for a new-release DVD or Blu-Ray. Maybe if I see it someday at the local pawn shop for a buck (the going rate for DVD movies there), I'll buy it. And I'll gladly watch it, virtual salt shaker in hand.

For now, If I want to see a fictionalized thriller about sex trafficking, I'll watch Taken again. No, it doesn't serve up the pathos-on-a-platter of heartrendingly adorable little child victims, but it does offer attractive female teenage vics, for those who are into that sort of thing, which I'm not. But I liked the movie anyway because I like Liam Neeson in his tough-guy roles (as well as his tender roles such as in Love Actually). And although Taken reportedly had the unintended effect of mis-educating the public (according to the human trafficking awareness and advocacy organization I mentioned above, Polaris), at least the filmmakers didn't even pretend that they were trying to "raise awareness" about a real problem; they were simply aiming to create an entertaining action thriller. And Liam, as far as I can tell, isn't going around promoting Q-crap and reich-wing talking points. So there's that.

Suffer the little children...
Finally, a few folks on Twitter have pointed out the glaring hypocrisy of reich-wingers' sudden deep concern, inspired solely by Sound Of Freedom, about innocent little children -- brown children, at that!-- who are being so ruthlessly trafficked, a concern that seems incongruent with the general indifference of republicans/reich-wingers to the plight of children in general, particularly brown ones. Consider, for example:

That last item, regarding the inhumane treatment of migrants at the Texas border, seems particularly relevant here. A Texas state trooper who is also a medic reported these atrocities, claiming that border officials were told to push migrants back into the Rio Grande, and to refuse to give them water despite Texas' sweltering triple-digit summer heat. From Texas Tribune (this was first reported by the Houston Chronicle, but those articles are behind a paywall):

[According to the trooper]“We called the shift officer in command, and we were given orders to push the people back into the water to go to Mexico. We decided that this was not the correct thing to do. With the very real potential of exhausted people drowning. We made contact with command again and expressed our concerns and we were given the order to tell them to go to Mexico.”

The trooper wrote in the email that five days later, a 4-year-old girl who attempted to cross the razor wire “was pressed back by Texas Guard soldiers due to the orders given to them.” The temperature “was well over 100 degrees” and the girl passed out, the email said, adding that she had received medical treatment.

That same day, a man rescued his child who got stuck on a barrel in the water covered with razor wire, according to the trooper’s email. During the rescue, the man got a “significant” cut on his left leg, the trooper wrote. A 15-year-old boy also broke his leg trying to walk around the wire in the river and his father had to carry him across to the U.S. side, the trooper wrote.

Later that night, troopers found a 19-year-old woman stuck in the razor wire having a miscarriage, the trooper’s email said.

And so on, and so forth. All of this has taken place under the auspices of Texas Guv'ner Greg Assbutt's notorious Operation Lone Star, which recently added to its arsenal of immigrant repellents an appalling barrier of orange-as-Trump buoys on the Rio Grande, a barrier that critics have referred to as "Snag and Drown." You may remember Guv'ner Assbutt as the one who has colluded with Free State Of Floriduh Guv'ner Ron DeSatan in an ongoing human trafficking scheme to bus or fly hundreds of hapless migrants, including little kids and babies, to various blue states.

It's one thing to get up in arms, literally or figuratively, after viewing a largely make-believe movie about child trafficking. It's quite another to actively support policies and actions that help children, while actively opposing the actions and policies that harm kids of all races, ethnicities, and ages. Republicans are all about fighting fiercely to protect human zygotes, blastocysts, embryos, and fetuses, even the nonviable ones and even if protecting them kills or permanently damages their human incubators, but when it comes to babies and children outside of the womb... meh.

If there's one larger lesson from the tempest swirling around Sound Of Freedom, it's that clearly it is much more difficult to do something helpful for kids than it is to use little children as pawns to support partisan talking points and agendas.

Related:

Separating fact from fiction in Sound Of Freedom

Let me start by saying this movie is an entertaining thriller and was a worthy watch, for a movie about a white guy in the southern hemisphere, “saving the day” showing brown people “how it is done”. Was it accurate? Well, some of it was. The entire second half was completely fabricated and depended on the ignorance of the average North American. I’ll get into it here.

Separating fact from fiction in the larger tale of Tim Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad
Anti-Trafficking Group With Long History of False Claims Gets Its Hollywood Moment (Vice, July 6, 2023): Not to belabor the point, but Ballard has worked diligently for years to burnish his image as a hero/savior. (This piece doesn't acknowledge that Ballard had recently left OUR, but in later articles Vice did address that fact.) The truth about both Ballard and OUR are not quite congruent with the carefully crafted mythology, which is putting it mildly. By the way, I learned by reading this article that insufferable Scamworld huckster Tony Robbins is not only one of the executive producers of Sound Of Freedom, but he's a big fan and buddy of Ballard. Turds of a feather...

There are cults, and then there are cults...

The Trumpcult connection

  • Jim Caviezel Calls Donald Trump 'The New Moses' And We Can't Let This Pass Over (originally published on HuffPost and picked up on Yahoo.com July 20, 2023): Although as noted above Sound Of Freedom is not overtly political, it has become a political and culture-war flashpoint nevertheless. One big reason, also mentioned above, is that both the film's star, Jim Caviezel, and its inspiration, Tim Ballard, have been all over the right-wing media-sphere spouting right-wing talking points. Not to mention Caviezel's apparent hero worship of Donald Trump. He seems to truly believe that Trump is going to save the children and set all of the sex slaves everywhere free. Jim, you seriously need to choose your heroes a lot more more carefully, FFS.

  • How Donald Trump Reacted to Seeing 'Sound of Freedom' (Newsweek, July 20, 2023): As you surely must know by now, Trump hosted a special private screening of Sound Of Freedom at his Bedminster, New Jersey golf motel on July 19. The main purpose of the screening, according to what his campaign told ABC News, was for Trump to court evangelical Christians, but the special guests were Jim Caviezel and Tim Ballard.

    After viewing the film, Trump called it a "great movie" and an "incredible inspiration," and he praised Caviezel and Ballard to the moon and back. In a statement before the screening, he also criticized media outlets such as Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, CNN, and The Guardian, whom he claimed have "trashed the film and mocked the millions of movie-goers who purchased tickets to screenings." Which is not at all what has been going on, but... see above, regarding persecution complexes.

    For his part, Caviezel has wet himself gushing all over Trump on Twitter by flogging the Moses motif, writing in     a tweet on July 20: "President Trump is going to save Children the likes of which you have never seen! You might even say he is the new Moses telling Pharaoh (World Cabal) to let the children Go Free!  Mr. President …. You are The "New" Moses!… but I’m still Jesus ;) +++" [The latter, of course, is a reference to Caviezel's starring role as Jesus H. Christ in the 2004 Mel Gibson movie, The Passion Of The Christ.] Then, not having gushed and sucked up enough, Caviezel added this on July 21: "Mr President @SOFMovie2023 jumped in Box Office Numbers after we visited you at Bedminster the other night….We are gonna have an incredible weekend because of you Sir! Moses told me it’s ok to un-retire his jersey… says you can wear it for the rest of your life! Love JC+++" If you want to respond to Caviezel on Twitter, tough luck, unless you are actually mentioned in one of his tweets, or he follows you.

    By the way, both Caviezel and Ballard seem to be engaging in a straw-man argument when they insist that Sound Of Freedom is not trying to appeal to QAnon supporters. Few credible sources have accused the film of doing that, and indeed, those behind the film are trying their best to disavow any connection to QAnon or other conspiracies and controversies. Nevertheless the movie does appeal to QAnon supporters, who have openly slapped their own (partisan) twist on it, and Caviezel himself     did speak at a QAnon convention in 2021, and in more recent appearances he has pushed the "big storm coming" trope that is part of the rallying cry of QAnon.

The Mormoncult connection
A cult within a cult: Operation Underground Railroad, the Mormon Church, and me (Christi Thomas Boyce, May 26, 2021): This is well worth reading, even though it's an older piece and predates the current controversies around Sound Of Freedom by a couple of years. And even though Tim Ballard is no longer associated with the rescue org he formed, Operation Underground Railroad (OUR), the author provides some good background info along with highly informed opinions. Her piece is actually a response to a 2021 article, cited above in the main post and shared in many current social media conversations, about the personal experiences of a woman named Meg Conley, who personally went on one of the rescue ops with Tim Ballard back in 2014.

Why right-wing conspiranoids are so obsessed with pedophilia
Why Are Right-Wing Conspiracies so Obsessed With Pedophilia? Mother Jones, July/August 2019: This is an older article, which I've cited previously on this blog. But it's worth sharing again, seeing as how Sound Of Freedom has once again inspired rabid accusations from the right of pedophilia (committed by lefties and liberals, of course).

The appeal of conspiracy narratives in today's political and social environment
How the pandemic and politics gave us a golden age of conspiracy theories (CNN, October 3, 2020):
This article predates the current brouhaha over Sound Of Freedom, of course, but it's relevant nevertheless. It explores how even the most extreme conspiranoid fantasies, once largely confined to the fringe, have become much more mainstream, and it also discusses QAnon. The part about the connective power of conspiracy fantasies is especially pertinent.

The internet, as usual, acts as a potent alchemical vessel for these ideas. Not only does it allow believers to connect with each other, but sophisticated algorithms and the self-limiting power of social media lets people seal themselves off from dissenting views.

These online factions also serve an important psychological purpose.

"People who believe conspiracies are generally more socially alienated and feel disconnected from society in general," says [psychologist John] Grohol. "These are people who are already primed and may feel lonely and disaffected, and the internet gives them a place to come together and share their false beliefs."

That can create a powerful sense of community, of "us against the word," embodied in slogans like QAnon's "Where We Go One We Go All."

"People desire that social connectedness, and if they were to reverse their conspiracy thinking, they would have to give up that social connectedness," Grohol says.

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