Republicans’ favorite summer blockbuster flirts with antisemitic QAnon blood libel
Actor Jim Caviezel in ‘Sound of Freedom.’ Courtesy of Angel Studios
This article originally appeared on Haaretz, and was reprinted here with permission. Sign up here to get Haaretz’s free Daily Brief newsletter delivered to your inbox.
Republican lawmakers have lauded the action thriller and surprise summer blockbuster film “Sound of Freedom” as putting a mainstream spotlight on the scourge of child trafficking.
The film and its star, Jim Caviezel, however, are tangentially linked to the QAnon conspiracy movement, at the very least – and many of its strongest advocates have directly invoked antisemitic tropes while promoting it.
The film is loosely based on former Department of Homeland Security agent Tim Ballard and his fight against child trafficking. While it depicts common criminals as being behind the smuggling rings, and its distributor denying any linkage to conspiracy theories it has been quickly lauded by the far-right and QAnon conspiracy theorists who argue that global elites are responsible for sex trafficking.
Republican lawmakers have increasingly faulted the Biden administration’s reversal of Trump’s policy enabling unaccompanied migrant children to enter the country as leading to child exploitation.
Underage migrant children are indeed exposed to brutal working conditions in violation of child labor laws, as reported by the New York Times, resulting in many cases being too quickly moved to sponsors.
While Republicans claim this has led to nearly 90,000 cases of child slavery, however, the number is actually based on 85,000 unanswered follow-up calls from the Department of Health and Human Services to sponsors, according to the Washington Post.
The Post adds that 81 percent of calls are actually answered, so unanswered calls are not representative of the situation nor are unanswered calls indicative of exploitative situations.
QAnon’s antisemitic blood libel of trafficking children, meanwhile, is rooted in the debunked claim spread throughout social media that an Italian sculpture depicts the alleged murder of two-year-old Simon of Trent in the 15th century.
Jewish residents were falsely blamed for conducting a ritual killing before being tortured into giving false confessions leading to their execution. Pope Paul VI decreed in 1965 that the town’s Jewish residents had nothing to do with his death and the whole affair was a fraud.
Both the affair itself, and the claim that the statue in question depicts the alleged affair, have both been proven historically inaccurate, though this has not stopped the antisemitic conspiracy theory from being propagated on social media – and now elevated by among the world’s most famous men including Elon Musk.
Another common antisemitic conspiracy theory propagated by QAnon adherents is the idea that “satanic,” “globalist” and/or “Hollywood” elites harvest adrenal glands from trafficked children as a fictionalized life-extending or psychedelic drug known as adrenochrome, which is a real chemical compound produced by the oxidation of adrenaline.
Ballard, who himself has promoted conspiracy theories about online furniture retailer Wayfair selling children, recruited Caviezel after viewing him in Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” – a film notorious for its pervasive antisemitic themes and imagery.
“If a child knows he’s going to die, his body will secrete this adrenaline. These people that do it, there’ll be no mercy for them. This is one of the best films I’ve ever done in my life. The film is on Academy Award level,” he added.
Caviezel recently decried the coverage of his remarks on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, blaming Jewish billionaire George Soros – yet another antisemitic trope.
“A couple of years ago, I’m talking about adrenochrome. You can’t say that word. You cannot say anything about on George Soros. Do you know that he knows he owns many of these companies like The Daily Beast? They sure had their fun tearing me apart,” he said.
“There’s a big storm coming and they know it,” he added, referencing the commonly used QAnon slogan “the storm is upon us,” referring to the fight against the imagined cabal.
Mike Rothschild, author of “The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything” further noted that “Q-pilled antisemite” Caviezel ranted about “the Rothschild banks” and “a Rothschild pope” oppressing Christians.
“I’m certainly not antisemitic,” Caviezel told Bannon. “The studios wouldn’t hire me, but see they’re all controlled by the central banks.”
After the film’s release, Bannon directly linked Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine positions with Caviezel’s film.
“This is about this realignment – and guess what it’s about, it’s what I’ve been talking about – the anti-vax, the vaccine-hesitant, anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian,” Bannon said.
“You say, ‘Well, why would you be anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian?’ Go watch the film Sound of Freedom. It’s about DHS officers that are on this professionally, your tax dollars, and they’re pulled off it when it gets to be too uncomfortable to people in power,” he said.
Caviezel would make a return appearance on Bannon’s podcast, again invoking “the adrenochome empire” as driving child trafficking.
“This is a big deal. It is listed under the NIH. It is a chemical compound. It’s a molecular structure known as C9H9NO3. It’s an elite drug that they’ve used for many years. It’s 10 times more potent than heroin and it has some mystical qualities as far as making you look younger,” he told Bannon.
During his subsequent media blitz, Caviezel described the issue as “greater than” the Nuremberg trials and separately appearing on a show hosted by QAnon adherent Scott McKay, who has previously claimed Jewish people have established banking systems “in exchange for the child blood sacrifices.”
He again invoked adrenochrome while on the Charlie Kirk Show, additionally comparing QAnon adherents to Christians persecuted by the Pharisees, once again harkening back to Gibson’s film about Jesus.
Despite Caviezel’s well-established record, however, it has still become one of the most successful movies of the summer and highly praised by key Republicans and leading right-wing figures.
Musk promoted the film, saying he recommended “putting it on this platform for free for a brief period or just asking people to subscribe to support (we would not keep any funds).”
I recommend putting it on this platform for free for a brief period or just asking people to subscribe to support (we would not keep any funds)
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 14, 2023
Donald Trump shared a trailer to the film on Truth Social, and his daughter Ivanka praised it for “shed[ding] light on the harrowing reality of #HumanTrafficking, awakening our collective conscience and inspiring us to take action for those trapped in its dark web.”
Senate Republicans’ official Twitter account have promoted a four-minute video highlighting the issue, stating: “Over 85,000. That’s how many children are missing under Joe Biden. He has created the largest child trafficking ring in U.S. history.”
“Go see Sound of Freedom. Child sex trafficking is real and the numbers are unimaginable. We must all work together in a tireless effort to save the children,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said. Sen. Ted Cruz added “wow. Wow. Wow. Go see Sound of Freedom.”
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