Old Glory: banking on reich-wing conspiranoia

 

Old Glory Bank wraps itself in the American flag and the bogus banner of anti-wokeness to appeal to reich-wingers' grievances and fuel their conspiranoia.

For years I've been harping on the theme of reich-wing/"conservative"/Christofascist whining -- members of those interrelated tribes are perpetually griping about being "censored" or "cancelled" or "deplatformed" or some such -- so The Great Debanking Narrative, one of the more recent vintages of the same tired old red whine, comes as little surprise.

The Great Debanking Narrative holds that good, patriotic, law-abiding Americans are being "cancelled" by big banks solely because of their political and/or social and/or religious values. A driving force in this narrative at the moment is a relatively new digital financial institution, based in Oklahoma, that calls itself Old Glory Bank, which uses the debanking issue as its primary marketing hook.

Formerly the First State Bank of Elmore, Oklahoma, Old Glory was founded by a quartet of reich-wingers. These include conservative political commentator, radio host, former GOP presidential candidate and ardent Trumper/election denier Larry Elder; country music singer and reich-wing zealot/Trump supporter/former Celebrity Apprentice winner John Rich; former Trump HUD secretary "Sleepy" Ben Carson; and former two-term Governor of Oklahoma, Mary Fallin-Christensen, a woman with impeccable reich-wing credentials (anti-LGBTQ... anti-public-school-teachers... anti-affordable-health care... anti-reproductive-rights... but pro-Big-Oil and a Trump ally to boot).

Old Glory proudly declares that its mission statement is the United States Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights, with a focus on the First and Second Amendments. Judging from examples cited in the press release linked to in the previous sentence, that focus is framed in a host of imaginary grievances:

If the government requests that Old Glory Bank punish or cancel a customer for lawfully attending a protest, Old Glory Bank confirms it will not comply. If the government requests that Old Glory Bank cancel a customer for participating in the American lifestyle and using fossil fuels and lawful firearms, Old Glory Bank states it will not comply.

I noticed that the press release neglects to mention customers who -- armed with tear gas, stun guns, pepper spray, bear spray, metal bars, flagpoles, baseball bats etc. -- attend a "peaceful tour" of the United States Capitol Building (which is, after all, the people's building!), and break its windows, smear feces on its walls and floors, threaten to murder legislators and the vice president, beat police officers within an inch of their lives, and attempt to violently overthrow the United States government in order to keep their Cheeto Jesus in power. But maybe that wasn't mentioned because it goes without saying that the J6 "patriots" are among the oppressed/repressed/censored/egregiously wronged target market for Old Glory.

Old Glory Bank has been popping up on my Xitter feed frequently of late, due to its paid ads, most notably this one from October 17, 2023:

Too many law-abiding Americans are having their bank accounts canceled simply because their bank doesn’t like what they stand for. That’s un-American. Old Glory Bank’s mission statement is the Constitution. Open your account today at [old glory bank dot com].

When one reader expressed cynicism about Old Glory Bank's allegation, the bank responded with a flustercuck of multiple links defending its opinion that good, God-fearing, patriotic Muricans are in fact getting debanked solely because of their anti-woke beliefs and values. That response was copied and pasted several additional times on the thread, and on other Old Glory posts where the bank's allegation was challenged.

Links that prove... not much at all
Since I don't believe in presenting multiple links as a flustercuck, I'll break them down for you here [with annotations by me], in the order in which they were (repeatedly) presented by Old Glory Bank. You can follow the links and decide for yourself whether or not they actually prove the allegations or merely document them.

• Business Insider, May 14, 2023: 19 Republican states accuse JPMorgan of closing bank accounts and discriminating against customers due to their religious or political beliefs
  [Well, technically, it was the republican states' Attorneys General who made the accusation, via a letter to JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon. It's no big surprise that these fanatics, several of whom aggressively supported the January 6 insurrection and who were adamantly opposed to even the most sensible COVID mitigation and containment efforts, would be boosting the reich-wing banking conspiranoid narrative. ~CC]
  
  
• MSN link (but the original article is actually from the ultra-reich Daily Caller), August 2023: Chase Closes Prominent Vaccine Skeptic's Business Account And Executives' Personal Bank Accounts
  [And who is the "vaccine skeptic" in question? None other than alt-health/conspiranoia crapitalist Joseph Mercola, D.O. (Doctor of Osteopathy), to whom this blog has paid tribute on more than one occasion -- most notably via his faithful life partner Erin "The Health Nut" Elizabeth, who invoked the holy name of Mercola several times as she continually fanned the flames of the "dead holistic doctors" conspiracy a few years back. For instance, there's this August 2018 Whirled post (keep in mind that some of the info about Snopes.com ownership is now outdated); see under the sub-head, "Health Nut goes nuts over Snopes piece". And I had this to say in July 2016, under the sub-head, "Dead holistic docs conspiracy rages on." In the more distant-past archives, there's a bit about Dr. Mercola in this August 2014 post, under the sub-head, "Joseph Mercola, sitting pretty at the top of the alt-health heap."
  
  More recently, both Mercola and his faithful Erin became notorious for being some of the most influential spreaders of COVID misinformation on the Internet. According to a New York Times piece from July 2021, "[His activities have] earned Dr. Mercola, a natural health proponent with an Everyman demeanor, the dubious distinction of the top spot in the “Disinformation Dozen,” a list of 12 people responsible for sharing 65 percent of all anti-vaccine messaging on social media, said the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate. Others on the list include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist, and Erin Elizabeth, the founder of the website Health Nut News, who is also Dr. Mercola’s girlfriend." ~ CC]
  
  
• Newsweek, March 3, 2023: PNC Bank Dumping Donald Trump Jr. Leaves Conservatives Furious -- 'Outrageous'
  [The "outrage" was that PNC Bank abruptly closed the business account for a news aggregation company set up by DJTJ, aka Traitor Tot, the easily-triggered, coked-up oldest son of you-know-who. Junior learned everything he knows about the red whine business from his daddy, who is still the undisputed whiner in chief. ~ CC]
  
  
• Business Insider, January 17, 2022: MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell says he's 'disgusted' with 2 banks he claims are cutting ties with him over 'cancel culture' after his phone records were subpoenaed by the January 6 committee
  [Oh, yes. The MyPillow loon, devoted Trumpster, and active supporter of The Big Lie and the violent insurrection/attempt to overturn the United States government. Not exactly the most sympathetic "victim." ~ CC]
  
  
• Fox Business, October 13, 2022: Chase Bank allegedly shutters bank account of religious freedom nonprofit, demands donor list
  [Allegations that an unnamed Chase employee said this, that, and the other to a "religious freedom" (translation: Christian theocratic) non-prof. The allegations certainly advance the Christofascist martyr narrative, but aren't actual proof that "people of faith" are being targeted by Big Banking. ~ CC]
  
  
• The Daily Fail Mail, August 25, 2023: EXCLUSIVE: 'Debanking' row breaks out after Bank of America shuts down account for ultra-conservative Christian charity that serves impoverished Ugandans
  [More "Christian" whining. Yawn. ~ CC]
  
  
• The Guardian, July 18, 2023: Nigel Farage claims to have proof that bank closed his account over his 'values'
  [Note to Old Glory Bank social media team: Nigel Farage is not an American. And his "values" are fascist ones, but that's neither here nor there. ~ CC]
  
  
• The New York Times, February 22, 2022:
  Canada Ends Its Freeze on Hundreds of Accounts Tied to Protests
  [This article is about the Canadian government and Canadian truckers involved in the great anti-mandate protests in the Deep Covidiocy Era. While technically Canadians are in fact Americans, by virtue of being part of North America (same goes for Mexicans), they're not actually the American Americans being pandered to by Old Glory Bank. ~ CC]

Before you accuse me of engaging in ad hominem arguments and failing to prove my point, I'll add that I am aware of the fact that my annotations to the link list and my criticisms of the debanked accusers do not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they were not targeted by their banks purely for their personal values and beliefs. That said, the only completely honest statement about the accusations against the banks is that we just don’t know for sure. Anecdotal evidence and opinions do not constitute proof.

Much to the credit of Xitter-at-large, there has been plenty of trolling on the Old Glory ad cited above. Overall the responses are skeptical, with several folks declaring that OGB is most likely just another Trumpian grift. (One naughty wag expressed distrust in a bank that was named after a glory hole.) Apparently Old Glory gave up on responding to every one of the doubters. But at least the remarks have been allowed to stand, so far, so it could be said that OGB is at least honoring its stated commitment to free speech.

* * * * *

As you can imagine, the reich-wing media were all agog at the news about the formation of Old Glory Bank. For instance, Western Journal had this to say:

Financial organizations including PayPal, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase Bank, and online fundraisers including GoFundMe have all canceled customers merely because they support conservative causes or traditional American values.

In June of last year, for instance, two Florida-based banks, BankUnited and Professional Bank, canceled President Donald Trump’s accounts after the left falsely accused him of fomenting an “insurrection” on Jan. 6, 2020.

"Falsely" accusing Trump of fomenting an insurrection... yeah, okay. Totally objective reporting there.

The American Tribune wrote:

A group composed of Larry Elder, Ben Carson, John Rich, and other American patriots has banded together to buy a bank in Oklahoma, First State Bank of Elmore City, so that they can run it as a bank that caters to ordinary Americans that don’t want to be “debanked” for supporting the same values as their ancestors, as many conservatives, particularly those in the punditry and firearms industries, have been in recent years.

So it's all about the guns and the punditry (gunditry?).

The Daily Wire focused its announcement about Old Glory Bank on the evil censorship and "cancellation" of conservatives by Big Tech. Other outlets basically parroted the Old Glory Bank press releases. Press releases are the eternal blessing for lazy journalists.

Real values or empty words?
Some might argue that there’s nothing inherently bad about establishing a business based upon specific political/social values or principles, nor with choosing that company’s products or services based on one’s support of those values. It happens all the time, and certainly there are businesses -- yes, even financial institutions -- that are based on or cater to progressive or liberal or "woke" values such as environmental friendliness or social responsibility. Live and let live, give consumers a wide range of choices, let the market decide, and so forth. And, in general, I would agree with these arguments, but in the case of blatantly right-wing factions these days, there seems to be a glaring double standard.

For instance -- and I hope you'll pardon what might appear to be a digression -- consider the intensive effort by red (MAGA-poisoned) states in the US to seriously restrict ESG (environmental, social, governance) investment of public funds. ESG investing means, in theory, that in addition to financial analysis of the investment, environmental, social, and corporate governance factors are also taken into account.

Never mind the credible argument, calmly and rationally laid out in this February 2023 piece from The New Republic, that the whole "woke investors" thing is mostly a fabrication (the CRT of the investment world?), since the so-called "woke" money managers really care only about their bottom line. The red pols have deemed ESG to be "woke" and they don't like it at all -- partly on general [fascist] principle, and partly or mostly because they reflexively fight anything that might possibly smooth the transition from fossil fuels to more sustainable energy. Mustn't let the big oil and gas companies down.

Accordingly, red states from Texas to Florida to West Virginia have labored mightily to stop public pension funds from using ESG as a consideration when making investment decisions, and they have pulled billions from asset management firms such as BlackRock, despite concerns that doing so would cause financial harm. To them, anti-woke values are clearly more valuable than woke ones, potential adverse financial consequences be damned.

Since we're on the topic of values and principles, let's get back specifically to Old Glory Bank, which proudly proclaims its own values as "American" ones while flagrantly catering specifically to the reich. I wonder, as it seems that others have wondered (judging from the Xitter trolls) if the bank would be equally willing to embrace individuals or companies with blatantly “woke” values such as LGBTQ rights, racial equality, reproductive choice, assault weapons bans and other sensible gun safety measures, the phasing out of fossil fuels in order to address the climate crisis, and the like. And what about flag burners, who are only exercising their First Amendment rights, after all? Or advocates of police defunding/abolition? Would OGB remain true to their slogan, “We stand with you, no matter where you stand”?

Finally, I think it's appropriate to address Old Glory Bank's general branding as having the customer's best interests at heart, as opposed to the evil big banks. I have to wonder why the reich/republicans -- whose base is clearly the target market for Old Glory Bank -- seem so determined to undermine larger efforts at real, widespread banking reform and consumer protection in general. Yes, I know that unfortunately the banking lobby is so powerful that even some Democrats, fearing their reelection chances, joined forces with the republicans in 2018 to weaken banking regulations. But by and large it's the republicans who fight regulation of the banking and finance industries, mainly because they're deeply beholden to Big Banking. Repubs are even trying to destroy the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other hard-fought-for consumer protection agencies and initiatives.

For that matter, the reich/republicans and their allies seem hellbent on destroying as many consumer protection agencies, laws, regulations, and practices as possible, taking us back to the bad old daze. Xitter owner Elon Musk has been preaching the word about the urgent need for "comprehensive deregulation." One of my favorite Xitter wags, Mrs. Betty Bowers, responded to one of Musk's tweets a couple of days ago:

Bring back: Lead paint. Asbestos. Flammable pajamas. No seatbelts. Canned tuna fish with mercury. Grocery stores bleaching chicken to make it look less rancid. Car companies, like Tesla, endangering drivers with exploding cars. Payday loans that steal from people.

Viewed in that greater context, Old Glory Bank's expressed concern for protecting their customers in any substantial way is hypocritical, and their overall mission amounts to little more than grandstanding on behalf of reich-wing identity politics. They may be fooling MAGAts, but they aren't fooling the rest of us.

"Anti-wokeness" is a growth industry
The marketing strategy for Old Glory Bank is rooted in two intertwining myths: (1) that the American reich holds the undisputed monopoly on patriotism, faith, support for liberty and freedom of speech, support for first responders and the military, concern about national security, and every other fine American value you could name; and (2) that because of their embrace of these stellar values, the reich are being grievously oppressed by the government, the courts, the media, Big Tech, the education system, and now, the financial system as well. In this garbled hero/martyr narrative, every aspect of American life has been "weaponized" against the good guys.

As it happens, Old Glory Bank wasn't the first bank to attempt to do the very thing they accuse big banks of doing: weaponizing the financial system. In late 2022, a banking startup called GloriFi collapsed before it had even begun. From Rolling Stone, November 21, 2022:

Pitching itself as a financial institution that allowed one to be “free to celebrate your love of God and country without fear of cancellation,” GloriFi’s marketing read more like a campaign ad than an enticing APR offer on a new credit card. Highlights from the “about us” page include: “OUR BILL OF RIGHTS IS NON-NEGOTIABLE” and “WE ARE ONE NATION UNDER GOD.” 

In its short tenure GloriFi, managed to launch checking and savings accounts as well as credit cards, with plans to offer mortgages and insurance in a future that will no longer take place. Founder and CEO Toby Neugebauer pitched plans to offer gun owners discounts on home insurance, credit cards made of shell casing material, and assistance paying legal bills if customers shot someone in self-defense. Over the summer, GloriFi secured conservative commentator Candace Owens as a co-founder and spokesperson for the brand. 

Wow... there are those gun-nut/ammosexual values again. These people are obsessed with their firearms. Alas, GloriFi was unable to put its real-world money where its grandstanding mouth was. Reported chaos among staff and financiers, and clashes with Texas financial regulators, caused it to miss its planned launch date several times. The drinking habits of Toby Neugebauer, who converted his Dallas mansion into the company headquarters, didn't help matters at all. In the end, GloriFi went down in a blaze of... well, not exactly glory.

But the idea of "anti-woke" banking just wouldn't die, and along came Old Glory, proudly waving its colors and its ideology. And it's not just banking that has captured the anti-woke crapitalist imagination. There is a whole parallel economy developing in America, composed of firms whose stated mission is to fight the perceived threat of "wokeness" -- you know, such devilish concepts as LGBTQ rights, racial and ethnic diversity and equality, reproductive autonomy for women, rational gun safety laws, acceptance of climate science, and so on.

But again... not surprising. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, fascists gotta fash.

Debunking the debanking narrative? Maybe it's just the algorithms
Reich-wing whining aside, there are plenty of reasons to hate big banks. I get it. At one time or another, many if not most consumers (me included) have been frustrated by banking policies and practices, such as outrageous fees for every activity or mistake; incomprehensible and seemingly arbitrary terms and conditions; lousy customer service; systemic racial bias in loan practices; big banks' support of predatory lenders; lack of transparency; data breaches; and on and on. And yes, banks have been known to close customers' accounts for reasons that don't make sense and/or that the banks refuse to divulge to bewildered account holders.

And, indeed, if any of the above-mentioned reich-wing whiners' accounts were closed solely because of their political beliefs or their faith, that is unacceptable, no matter how strongly I may disagree with those beliefs.

But from what I have seen so far, there is no hard evidence that right-wingers/conservatives/religious (translate: right-wing Christians) are being targeted for those reasons. What we have instead is only their own and their allies' anecdotal evidence, rooted, as always, in an intractable persecution complex.

More importantly, suffering consumers are not, in fact, limited to members of the conspicuously righteous reich. In recent years, banks have been suspending, restricting, or closing accounts belonging to a broad demographic of hapless consumers, oftentimes citing "suspicious activity" as a reason but refusing to offer the account holders any further explanation.

And while some may claim that attributing the arbitrary actions to "algorithms" is a convenient coverup for nefarious activities on the part of the banks, in many cases the problems may very well be rooted in algorithms, and exacerbated by confusing and conflicting laws and regulations as well as plain human incompetence. An article in the New York Times (April 8, 2023) went into these issues in some detail.

Whatever your opinion may be of the Times, the article is worth reading if you can get past the paywall. For those who can't, here's a Bing search results link to other resources.

But I really don't expect my little shout into the void to make any difference at all in the reich-wing persecution narrative, which has become such rich marketing/fundraising fodder not only for politicians and theocrats but also for "anti-woke" businesses such as Old Glory Bank. Reality is nuanced and complex, but marketing strategies almost never are. The ongoing attempt to repress the righteous is their story, and by golly, they're sticking to it.

Unholy Moses! Sound Of Freedom star Caviezel wets himself kissing up to Donald Trump while amplifying his own QAnon convictions

[Sound Of Freedom star Jim Caviezel] has repeatedly referenced some baseless claims embraced by the QAnon conspiracy, which sees Trump as a savior figure.

While promoting "Sound of Freedom" on Steve Bannon's podcast, Caviezel warned without evidence that children are trafficked for their blood -- a claim he has made before -- and, in the past, he has invoked "the storm," which QAnon followers think will be a kind of climatic battle against evil. (Efforts to reach Caviezel for comment were unsuccessful.)

~ ABC News, July 19, 2023

Jim Caviezel, star of the surprise blockbuster thriller about child trafficking, Sound Of Freedom, has in all apparent seriousness proclaimed #NeverWasMyPresident Donald John Trump to be "The New Moses." He's actually not the first person to call Trump a New Moses (here, from a 2016 blog post, is a considerably less flattering example), but in any case Trump is apparently eating up Caviezel's praise, even "re-Truthing" it twice so far on his little social media playground. And his campaign seems all set to brand Trump as a heroic leader in the fight against human trafficking as he takes another stab at infesting the White House in the 2024 US presidential election.

I mentioned these developments in the resource list at the end of my previous blog post about Sound Of Freedom, but it's worthy of its own post as well. If some of this stuff looks familiar, it's because I copied and pasted my own words directly from that post. Why reinvent the wheel?

Jim Caviezel, along with the inspiration for Sound Of Freedom, Tim Ballard, were special guests at a private screening of the film at Trump's Bedminster, New Jersey, golf resort on Wednesday, July 19, 2023. It was primarily an evangelical/political (evangitical?) to-do, as reported by ABC News ahead of the event.

Wednesday's event has a specific purpose, according to his campaign: to burnish both his record on human trafficking and his credentials with evangelical Christians, who are a key bloc in states like Iowa that are early in the GOP.

"Sound of Freedom" is a faith-based film, and evangelicals are one of its main audiences. An adviser to Trump told ABC News that the screening was going to include a large faith-based element.

Faith-based, my ass. As has been mentioned probably hundreds of thousands of times over the past few years, Donald Trump is hardly the role model or leader that the "faith-based element" of old would have enlisted to fight any evil, including and perhaps especially sexual exploitation or human trafficking of any sort.

But that was then and this is now. Today, all too often, "faith-based" is code for "Christofascist theocrats who want to destroy democracy and remake America in their own image" -- in other words, the endlessly power-hungry religious reich and other "conservatives." It's not at all surprising that in the wake of Sound Of Freedom, which has these folks newly outraged or pretend-outraged over human and particularly child trafficking, they are kissing up to Trump even more, because they believe him to be their primary source of power and influence.

Accordingly they do not seem to care at all that their orange hero has been found liable for sexual assault; that he 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; and that he happily partied with the late and unlamented sex predator and trafficker Jeffrey Epstein back in the day. (Of course the two later had a falling-out, apparently over some real estate deals, and after Epstein was arrested Trump disavowed their past friendship, but still.)

Epstein wasn't even the only pedo pal with whom Trump has been associated over the decades. Here's a partial list, courtesy of a recent Twitter...er... make that "X" post. If you think that's too shaky a source, look up the info yourself. (And please don't bother what-a-bouting by bringing up Bill Clinton. I've previously owned up to having cut Bill too much slack in the past, but in any case he isn't running for president and will never hold public office again. And don't bother with the Biden accusations either. The Ashley Biden allegations have never been authenticated, and there is zero evidence to support the numerous pedophilia rumors about the president.)

And never mind that Trump has repeatedly expressed contempt for the Jesus crowd and their beliefs. Jesus people vote, and they exercise ungodly influence on potentially millions of voters in the "poorly educated" demographic that Trump has praised and that make up a significant part of his base. That's really all that matters.

Also never mind that despite the Trump campaign's claims to the contrary, Trump was not exactly on the front lines in the fight against human trafficking. His immigration agenda actually set back the clock on that struggle. (Here's a pretty comprehensive history of his vile "zero tolerance" policies.)

Oh, it's political, all right.
A fiercely far-right friend of mine on Facebook, in a recent conversation about the film, accused me of making everything political, a tactic he's employed several times previously as a way of dismissing points I've tried to make. (I don't know why I keep trying to play chess with pigeons.) Now, as mentioned previously on this blog and scads of other places, Sound Of Freedom is not an overtly political movie. But... um... I wasn't the one who made Sound Of Freedom political. I'm just one of zillions of people spewing out comments about the fact that it has become very, very political.

One big reason is that, as also mentioned on my previous post, both Jim Caviezel and Tim Ballard have been all over the right-wing media-sphere spouting right-wing talking points, many of them direct endorsements of Trump and his "policies" and/or vicious slams at President Biden.

Here's Ballard for instance, as reported on the right-wing outlet The Daily Signal a few weeks ago.

The woke Left is championing the same “pedophile doctrines” that enable child sex slavery, warns Tim Ballard, a former Department of Homeland Security agent who has rescued hundreds of children from sex slavery.

He also warns that taxpayer dollars are in effect funding child sex slavery under President Joe Biden...

And Ballard goes on and on with false claims about Biden's border policies (while claiming that trafficked kids are praying for Trump's Big Wall to be completed). He also clutches his pearls over other culture-war issues, most notably transgender care. It's all in the service of promoting Sound Of Freedom, and, yes, it's all extremely political.

And here's Caviezel, as also reported on The Daily Signal.

Caviezel and his co-actor Eduardo Verástegui, rumored to be pondering a presidential bid in Mexico [spoke] in a June interview with The Daily Signal at The Heritage Foundation studios in Washington, D.C.

Both actors, who are Catholic and vocally pro-life, stressed the connections between sex trafficking and pornography, open borders, and abortion. They hope that the movie will shake viewers from apathy into action to aid victims of human trafficking across the globe.

Again, all in the service of promoting Sound Of Freedom, and blatantly political.

And now that Caviezel has pulled Cantaloupe Caligula onto the Sound Of Freedom bandwagon by shamelessly pandering to the latter's massive ego, while the Trump campaign is working hard to burnish Trump's image as the Savior Of Children, the movie is more political than ever -- with the very real and serious issue of human trafficking set to become further politicized as well.

On July 20, Newsweek reported on Trump's reactions to viewing the film at his golf motel. 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 you know those reich-wingers and their persecution complexes.

For his part, Caviezel has rolled over on his back and wet himself kissing up to 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 ;) +++

In the olden daze the "faith-based" contingent would most likely have considered Caviezel's Jesus remark to be unforgivably blasphemous, and they would have immediately canceled him and his entire body of work; after all, just a few decades ago, throngs of indignant American teens and their parents were burning Beatles albums merely because John Lennon indicated to an interviewer that the public seemed more infatuated with the band than with Jesus.

Well, those days are gone (and frankly, good riddance). In any case, Caviezel's Jesus claim is a reference to his starring role as Jesus H. Christ in the 2004 Mel Gibson movie, The Passion Of The Christ. So it most likely didn't raise an eyebrow among the faithful, who for the most part had embraced Mel's movie too.

Apparently not having gushed and sucked up and wet himself sufficiently, 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.

Because of Caviezel and Ballard, "Q-adjacent" doesn't even begin to describe it.
As also mentioned on my previous post, both Caviezel and Ballard seem to be engaging in a straw-man argument when, defending the film against its detractors, they argue that Sound Of Freedom is not, not, definitely not a QAnon movie. Few credible sources have actually accused the film of being blatantly QAnon, instead describing it as "Q-adjacent" or something similar, and then offering specific and valid reasons for that description. Those behind the film, such as Angel Studios, are trying their best to disavow any connection to QAnon or other conspiracies and controversies, but it's an uphill battle.

For there's no denying that the movie does appeal to QAnon supporters, who have openly slapped their own (partisan) twist on it. And front and center in this effort are Caviezel and Ballard themselves.

But you'd never know that by talking to them. Ballard, for instance, had a disingenuous response to a question about the matter on a Fox & Friends interview earlier this month. From Media Matters, July 11, 2023:

In the Fox & Friends interview, Ballard also denied the film itself had anything to do with the QAnon conspiracy theory, which holds that a cabal of liberal elites are engaged in a worldwide pedophile ring.

“There has been criticism in the mainstream media where they suggest there is some sort of a connection to your movie and QAnon,” co-host Steve Doocy said. “Can you explain that?”

“I can't explain it and neither can they,” Ballard responded. [Pants on fire, Tim! ~CC]

Ballard has refused to distance himself from QAnon in the past, legitimizing an outlandish theory that furniture company Wayfair was involved in child trafficking, for example. More broadly, the anti-trafficking movement that Ballard has helped to create retains significant overlap with QAnon. (OUR ultimately denounced QAnon in a written statement to The Atlantic.)

The Advocate had a few things to say about the QAnon connection with the film. From July 20, 2023:

Some commentators have said that in dramatizing Ballard’s work, Sound of Freedom exaggerates it and distorts the nature of child trafficking. And while it does not push QAnon ideology, both Ballard and Caviezel have stated their belief in QAnon claims, continuing to do so while promoting the film.

The Advocate piece notes that QAnon adherents have said they hope the film brings more into the fold, adding:

“It’s being marketed to QAnon believers, it’s being embraced by this community, and its leading actor is a huge part of the QAnon community,” Mike Rothschild, author of The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything, told NPR’s Morning Edition.

Another right-winger who is embracing the film is Donald Trump, who is scheduled to host a screening Wednesday at his Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., NPR reports. The former president is a hero of the QAnon movement, whose supporters claim he’s fighting the cabal.

Moreover, Caviezel himself spoke at a QAnon convention in Las Vegas in October 2021, and in more recent appearances he has continued to push the "big storm coming" trope that is part of the rallying cry of QAnon. His 2021 Vegas speech was, as noted on a tweet by @patriottakes, "riddled with religious fanaticism and Q propaganda."

[Caviezel said] "We must fight for that authentic freedom and live my friends. By God, we must live and with the Holy Spirit as your shield and Christ as your sword may you join Saint Michael and all the other angels in defending God and sending Lucifer and his henchmen straight back to hell where they belong."

It underpinned his speech that mentioned child sex trafficking, an issue at the core of the QAnon conspiracy, as well as a fight against Satan and liberal values.

A few months earlier, Caviezel had appeared virtually at the Health & Freedom conference at Rhema Bible College in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. From Vice.com, June 10, 2021 (keep in mind that this was more than two years before the release of Sound Of Freedom):

[Tim] Ballard couldn’t appear in person in Oklahoma, Caviezel explained. “He’s down there saving children as we speak. They’re pulling children out of the darkest recesses of hell," he said. "All kinds of places, the adrenochroming of children.” 

“You said adrenochrome?” host Clay Clark, an Oklahoma personality who bills himself as a “growth consultant” and business guru, asked a moment later.  “We need to discuss that.”

“Essentially, you have adrenaline in your body ... and when you are scared, you produce adrenaline,” Caviezel explained. “If a child knows he’s going to die, his body will secrete this adrenaline. And they have a lot of terms that they use that he takes me through, but it’s the worst horror I’ve seen. It’s screaming alone. Even if I never, ever, ever saw it, it’s beyond. And these people that do it, there will be no mercy for them.” The audience applauded, solemnly.

Caviezel, whose agents and managers did not reply to several requests for comment, had just promoted one of the more extreme and lurid conspiracy theories out there, and one central to the cosmology of QAnon—the utterly false idea that a cabal of elites is torturing and killing children to obtain a fictionalized biological substance—and he’d done it in the same breath that he promoted OUR. (Adrenochrome is a real chemical compound, but the idea that it can only be harvested from terrified torture victims was purely the stuff of horror movies before Q came along. For QAnon believers, however, it has a much larger significance. The concept that evil elites are harvesting the substance from murdered children is a central facet of their belief system; they believe those elites take the substance to maintain their youthful appearances or life force.) 

We briefly touched on the wackadoodle adrenochrome conspiracy on my previous post, but here again is a link to info about that.

(By the way, some other luminaries speaking at that "Health & Freedom" conference in Broken Arrow included Chicken Soup for the Soul king Mark Victor Hansen, as well as Mike Adams and several other alt-health/reich-wing conspiracy peddlers -- which reinforces a point I made in a September 2021 post about the growing alliance between Scamworld and reich-wing politix.)

The Q-ish taint on Sound Of Freedom, of course, plays into the politicization and culture-war angle. From Vox, July 14, 2023:

The ongoing spread of QAnon as well as the recent reappearance of classic homophobic “groomer” rhetoric have given conservatives the ultimate perfect excuse to demonize liberalism. Just as Ballard’s real goal seems to be less about protecting children and more about promoting Tim Ballard, calls to protect children are really about attacking left-wing ideology, no matter how bizarrely unfounded such attacks are.

And reviewers who have criticized the film have been caught in the crossfire of the culture wars. Also from the Vox article:

...reviewers who’ve been less than charitable about the film have been deluged with harassment from people calling them pedophiles and groomers. Rolling Stone’s Miles Klee, who, in his review, highlighted numerous examples of Sound of Freedom fans linking themselves to QAnon, told journalist Marisa Kabas that “the intensity of the death threats and pedophile smears outstripped any previous hate campaign I’ve experienced in my career.” (Disclaimer: Both Klee and Kabas are former colleagues and friends.) Still, Klee also noted that to the film’s fans he was just “a convenient embodiment” of evil for “a demographic that thinks child abusers and groomers make up the entire government, entertainment industry, and media, and all run cover for each other.”

That far-right Facebook friend I mentioned earlier in this post even suggested the possibility that I might be making excuses for pedophiles, an accusation apparently triggered by the fact that I clearly wasn't buying into the false narrative that there's a massive and sinister organized effort to keep people from seeing Sound Of Freedom (see my previous post, under the heading, "Conspiranoia runs deep. Into your life it will creep.").

* * * * *

So here we are. Thanks to Jim Caviezel, we now have an image of Trump as The New Moses. I'm sure that the real imaginary Biblical Moses is rolling over in his imaginary grave, but whatever. And yes, I know that I could make a joke about a burning bush, or offer some snide remark about a red sea of screaming, foaming-at-the-mouth MAGA-capped Trump worshipers. But I'm better than that.

The takeaway here, in case it isn't painfully obvious, is not necessarily that Caviezel's cheese may have finally slid off his cracker, although that may also be true, but that despite the filmmakers' and the distributor's better intentions, Sound Of Freedom has found itself up to its neck in the Q fever swamps -- and that is due in no small part to a leading man who just can't seem to shut his sanctimonious, conspiracy-spewing pie-hole.

Related:

So now Donald Trump is... Moses? Daily Kos, July 24, 2023: Daily Kos staff member Hunter ponders on the feasibility of Trump as a leader in the fight against sex trafficking.

"I'm still Jesus" is the sort of sentence that used to cause record-burning rallies, but Donald Trump as the hero who will stop sex trafficking. The grabby, rapey, ogle-teen-girls-in-dressing-rooms, import-foreign-models hero Caviezel thinks has to lead this whole operation. Donald Trump as the "Moses" who will confront the sex traffickers with a booming "let my people go"—I mean, what?

And why stop at Moses? Trump, Hunter suggests, could fill up an entire Bible.

Now, that's not to say inserting Trump into every last bit of the Bible wouldn't be an entertaining endeavor. Caviezel could probably make it his next film, no problem. Trump is already supposed to be Saul né Paul, Cyrus the Great, and something near to the second coming of Jesus. Slap together a new Bible in which Donald Trump plays every role: He'd love it, Jim would love it, his base would love it. It'd come out pretty weird but sure, go for it.

But the devil is in the details.

Anyone who has read the Bible knows that Trump already appears in it. It's in the Book of Revelation. Don't give him all these new fake roles while ignoring the one he nailed the audition for.

Yeah, what Hunter said.

Why the child sex trafficking film 'Sound of Freedom' is getting such conflicting reactions, Upworthy, July 20, 2023: The author of this piece, Annie Reneau, explores why, all too often, people who love the movie are accused (by left-leaning commentators) of being QAnon quacks, while those who criticize it are accused (by those who lean rightward) of being evil pedos. Reneau has the advantage of having interviewed Tim Ballard back in 2018 when Sound Of Freedom was still in production; at the time, she thought he was a full-blown superhero.

I learned a lot talking with Ballard, but notably missing from our conversation was anything QAnon-related. He mentioned nothing about pizza parlors or Hillary Clinton eating babies (remember Pizzagate?), nothing about Hollywood actors secretly being arrested for some global sex trafficking ring run by elites, nothing about adrenochrome or any of the other QAnon claims that were already well underway in 2018. The industry he talked about was similar to what other anti-trafficking organizations I've spoken to have described.

But what a difference a few years made.

But in the years since I spoke to Ballard, I've been dismayed to see him and OUR tacitly courting of QAnoners who have completely wrong ideas about what child sex trafficking looks like. I've watched partisan politics play a bigger and bigger role in Ballard's anti-trafficking messaging (and fundraising) and have been baffled by his and OUR's seeming refusal to denounce any specific QAnon kookery—despite the comment sections of their social media accounts being filled with the stuff...

...All I've ever seen from Ballard and OUR are vague statements like, "We don't support conspiracy theories," which is meaningless, because QAnon folks don't see themselves as conspiracy theorists. When the big #SaveTheChildren push came about in 2020, with its skewed statistics and total misrepresentation of the scope and reality of child sex trafficking, neither Ballard nor OUR corrected the widespread misinformation QAnon followers pushed. Instead, they saw the attention as an opportunity.

Reneau says that the way Ballard and OUR have failed to set the record straight with their QAnon following has led directly to extreme and predictable reactions to Sound Of Freedom, adding that it doesn't help that the film's lead, Jim Caviezel, seems to be fully embracing the QAnon lunacy, and that Ballard has turned the whole thing into a partisan, politicized fight between good and evil. She closes her article with a list of resources for learning more about child sex trafficking and some of the organizations that are combating it, sans the Q and reich-wing controversies.

'Sound of Freedom' Is Surprisingly Popular With Democrats (Newsweek, July 31, 2023): This might put a bit of a damper on the partisan political hoopla from both republicans and Democrats that has been swirling around the media in the month since the movie's release, but according to a recent poll of 1,500 US adults, conducted by Redfield & Wilton Strategies on behalf of Newsweek, 59 percent of Democratic voters have a "favorable" or "very favorable" opinion of Sound Of Freedom, and only 10 percent view it unfavorably. Among republican voters, 65 percent have a positive view of the film, while it is viewed positively by 73 percent of third party voters and 49 percent of non-voters.

As for the "suppression" conspiracies, 21 percent of Dems believe them, according to the poll, while 37 percent of repubs do. And as for the accuracy of the film, if we're to believe the polling samples, 74 percent of republicans believe that the film's portrayal of human trafficking was either "reasonably accurate" or "very accurate," while 57 percent of Democrats believe the same.

What do I make of this? It's interesting, but doesn't change my opinions that Sound Of Freedom needs to be viewed through a skeptical lens, regardless of the politics of the viewer, and that anyone who wants to learn true facts about human trafficking, and/or do something to help, needs to turn to much more credible sources than a fictionalized movie or the self-aggrandizing "hero" upon which the movie is based. (Start with The Polaris Project.)

Covidiot protests in DC, Ottawa & elsewhere cement the marriage between alt-health "freedom-fighting" conspiranoids & far right

In September of 2021 I published a post about the strengthening alliance between the most vociferous anti-vax/anti-mask/"alt-health" factions and the American right. The post, which is arguably even more useful for the offsite links list at the end than it is for my own contributions in the body, was framed around an October 2021 event at the famous Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee: "The Truth [sic] About Cancer Live" convention. It was promoted as a health symposium, the type that features the expected denigration of conventional medical treatments (in this case, for cancer) and provides a platform for anti-vax propagandizing -- but the political component was undeniable.

True, the speaker lineup at that Gaylord Gullibalooza included some of the loudest and daftest (or most cynical) alt-health luminaries working the sucker circuit today, such as discredited doc and anti-vaxtivist Andrew Wakefield; nutcake Dr. Sheri Tenpenny, who believes COVID vaccines are a plot to turn us all into trans-humanist cyborgs; and conspiracy peddler/health-frauducts pusher/right-wing rabble-rouser Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams, the latter of whom has a money-grubbing finger in both the political-punditry and the alt-health pies. But the main attractions seemed to be incendiary right-wingnut political figures: most notably, top-listed keynoter Eric Trump, and Eldertrump toady and convicted-but-pardoned felon Roger Stone.

The following month, Rolling Stone published a good report/commentary on the event, sounding the alarm, as I and others had, about the marriage between health-nuttery and right-wing politix.

Right-wing figureheads like Trump and Stone aren’t chemo deniers, but they can’t resist a speaking fee, or an opportunity to rile up gullible conservatives already punch-drunk on grievance politics. As Oren Segal, Vice President of the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism and host of the podcast Extremely, tells Rolling Stone, gatherings like “The Truth About Cancer Live” are breeding grounds for bad ideas.

“This has been quote-unquote ‘mainstream’ now for a while,” Segal says. “These narratives [have brought] what some would consider legitimate voices together with more fringe [figures] throughout the country for some time, and so obviously the big concern is the more that you have people who have a significant reach or a voice, who are giving voice to conspiracies that seek to undermine democratic institutions, the more that disinformation gets normalized and the more potential for polarization there is.”

My only quibble with Mr. Segal is that bit about "legitimate voices." While he qualified his statement by including "what some would consider," the truth is that there really aren't that many legit voices in the alt-health movement these days. But his point, and those made in the Rolling Stone piece, are well taken, and are congruent with the points I tried to make in my own post in September.

I just don't think that the perils of these unholy alliances can be overstated. The evidence is everywhere. On January 23, 2022, for example, there was a big march in Washington, DC protesting (COVID) vaccine and mask mandates. The next day, The Daily Kos published a piece about the event, observing that even though the anti-vaccination/"holistic health" movements began life as largely left-wing/liberal/hippie phenomena, things have changed:

As this Sunday’s “Defeat the Mandates” march in Washington, D.C., however, showed us, there’s no longer anything even remotely left-wing about the movement. Populated with Proud Boys and “Patriot” militiamen, QAnoners and other Alex Jones-style conspiracists who blithely indulge in Holocaust relativism and other barely disguised antisemitism, and ex-hippies who now spout right-wing propaganda—many of them, including speakers, encouraging and threatening violence—the crowd at the National Mall manifested the reality that “anti-vaxxers” now constitute a full-fledged far-right movement, and a potentially violent one at that...

Indeed, promotions of violence, as well as vile displays of antisemitism and Holocaust trivialization, were everywhere.

Many of the rally attendees wore yellow replicas of the Star of David badges that were forced upon Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and many of them carried signs referencing both that horrific episode of history and the German Nazi regime that inflicted it. So did other speakers, such as Del Bigtree, CEO of the anti-vaccination group Informed Consent Action Network, who added a threatening tone directed at journalists.

"Unlike the Nuremberg Trials that only tried those doctors that destroyed the lives of those human beings, we're going to come after the press,” Bigtree told the crowd.

Violence was also an undercurrent in the audience, some of whom carried signs suggesting a lethal response: “Shoot those who try to kidnap and vaccinate your child.” Another agreed with Bigtree, calling for “Nuremberg Trials 2.0.”

I have zero patience with those who trivialize the Holocaust by comparing vaccine and mask mandates to the atrocities committed by the Third Reich last century against 6 million Jews (and more than 5 million non-Jews). Yet making this comparison seems to be a common rhetorical tactic among right-wing "freedom fighters" who should know better and should be ashamed of themselves.

And by the way... Memo to the ignoranti:
Vaccine mandates do not violate the Nuremberg Code.

When you parrot that "Nuremberg Code/Geneva Convention violation" narrative you are diving into dangerously stupid territory. And I'm talking about the level of stupid occupied by the likes of cancer quack/fake doctor/fraudster/neo-Nazi Leonard Coldwell, as evidenced in this copy-and-paste post on his Facebook timeline on January 20, 2022. [Click on the pic to enlarge it if you need to, but be warned that the time it takes you to read this screed is time you will never get back.]

The Daily Kos piece I cited above (here's that link again) pinpointed the COVID-19 pandemic as a turning point in the development of the alliance between anti-vaxxers and far-right wingnuts, with increased radicalization of the allied factions and resulting endangerment of public health and safety.

The coalescence of the anti-vaccination movement with other far-right conspiracist movements—particularly the authoritarian QAnon cult—has been an ongoing phenomenon since COVID-19 broke out in 2020, and the radicalization of its believers has been gathering steam increasingly since. Likewise, the inherently violent nature of many of these movements has resulted in an increasing drumbeat of real-world violence directed at health care workers, local authorities, and anyone who supports the pandemic measures.

Yep, and it's pretty scary.

Of course, the phenomena we're discussing are not limited to American culture and politics. All across Europe, for instance, there's a growing anti-mandate movement that is attracting far-right groups and is fomenting violence. It's been happening in Germany, and in Austria (and Belgium and the Netherlands and France), and in Italy... and it just seems to be getting worse.

And closer to home, if your home is in North America, witness the yuuuge march on Ottawa this past weekend, attended by Canadian truckers and apparently thousands of non-trucker allies who clogged up and bogged down Canada's capital city in order to protest COVID mandates. Originally the purpose of the protest was to rail against a rule requiring truckers to show proof of vaccination upon returning to Canada from the U.S.; those that don’t are required to quarantine for 14 days. But the event soon evolved into a more sweeping protest against COVID mitigation mandates in general. And while overall it has reportedly been a "peaceful" event for the most part, there have been reports of swastika flags, desecration of a war memorial, and threats of violence.

Unsurprisingly, #NeverWasMyPresident Donald John Trump, in Texas during the same weekend for a couple of fascist rallies, praised the Ottawa protesters, claiming that they were "doing more to defend American freedom than our own leaders by far." Trump's coked-up elderspawn, Donald J Trump Jr., also endorsed the protest, describing one of the truckers as a heroic fighter against "medical tyranny."

Also unsurprisingly, Canada's Conservative Party supported the protestors, who aimed much of their anger directly at Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. (Trudeau and his family felt compelled to leave their home in Ottawa that weekend, due to security concerns.)

Notwithstanding the hoopla, vaccination is actually pretty popular among Canadian truckers and the Canadian population in general, according to Forbes.

Despite the large turnout, 90% of Canada’s cross-border truckers are fully vaccinated against Covid-19, along with 79% of the population overall.

So there's that. It's also noteworthy that the Canadian Trucking Alliance opposed the protest, saying this is "not how disagreement with government policies should be expressed."

Now, I get that many insist that it's not vaccines that are the problem; it's the mandates. People hate being told what to do (though curiously enough, many of the anti-vaxxers have no problem with authoritarianism in general, as long as it's right-wing authoritarianism). For many others, however, it's the vaccines themselves that are the problem. In any case, if a significant number of people still refuse to get vaccinated because of their own misguided beliefs, COVID will continue to win. Indeed, Canada is currently in the middle of a spike in Omicron variant cases, and its hospitals and over-burdened healthcare workers are strained to the max.

But the anti-mitigation maniacs on both sides of the Canadian-American border, and both sides of the Atlantic, for that matter, have shown time and time again that they don't care about little things like that. For them, it's all about fighting for their own "freedom" to go vax-less and mask-less -- never mind how many people, including themselves, they may be endangering.

And unfortunately, they have been immeasurably emboldened by the far right, even as they continue to throw their support behind the craziest and/or most fascistic right wing politicians. It truly is a marriage made in hell; too bad that the rest of us have to suffer as a result.