Real-Life Inspiration for 'Sound of Freedom' Unleashes on 'Sick' Critics: 'There's Some Other Agenda'
It just doesn’t make any sense.
Before the release of the independent thriller “Sound of Freedom,” it seemed that everyone — from Republicans to Democrats to Flat-Earthers to moral relativists to hardened criminals — was able to agree that child sex trafficking was an objectively bad thing.
And yet, since that movie’s release, it appears that there is a growing contingency of voices largely dismissing the horrors of trafficking.
Tim Ballard, the founder of the anti-child sex trafficking group Operation Underground Railroad and the man whom the movie is based on, blasted this growing rhetoric during a Sunday appearance on “Fox & Friends.”
(Ballard is portrayed in the film by “Passion of the Christ” star Jim Caviezel.)
You can watch the whole segment for yourself below:
When Fox broached the topic of some of the less-than-glowing reviews emanating from establishment media, Ballard initially expressed confusion, particularly with why his story was being linked to the QAnon.
“Where is the QAnon doctrine being spewed in the film, [or] in the script?” Ballard said. “I have no idea, because this is what it actually looks like. This is what happened, I was there.”
Those QAnon accusations were perhaps loudest in a largely condemned Rolling Stone “review” of the film that seemed far more interested in raging about conservatives and people opposed to child sex trafficking than things like framing, cinematography, pacing and plot.
This is a good example of what the movie review was like: “Ballard, Caviezel, and others of their ilk had primed the public to accept ‘Sound of Freedom’ as a documentary rather than delusion by fomenting moral panic for years over this grossly exaggerated ‘epidemic’ of child sex-trafficking, much of it funneling people into conspiracist rabbit holes and QAnon communities.
“In short, I was at the movies with people who were there to see their worst fears confirmed.”
The review’s author (who has his own peculiar history with sexual thoughts pertaining to fictional minors) specifically called out some of the more unhinged examples of QAnon conspiracies like “harvesting children’s organs” and “extracting the chemical compound adrenochrome from their brains.”
Note, this is the Rolling Stone author injecting his own wildest paranoia about conspiracy theorists into the movie — there’s nothing about any of that in the movie.
“Why would you want to lie to push an agenda whose goal is to have children be in captivity,” Ballard said. “It’s kind of sick.”
Actually, Ballard is wrong in one specific regard. It’s not “kind of sick.” It’s aggressively, disgustingly “sick.”
“I think of the children that are really depicted in that film,” Ballard said, responding to critics dismissing child sex trafficking as some sort of right-wing boogeyman. “I know what happened to them. Those children were the subjects of child rape videos. Those children were being sold for sex.”
Ballard added: “These are real kids. I see them. I’m still friends with them.”
So the left is running cover fire for pedophiles and child sex traffickers — what else is new?
But why?
After Ballard said that “[i]t’s embarrassing and frankly grotesque,” that these critiques existed, “Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade echoed that same confusion.
“It’s so bizarre,” Kilmeade said. “It’s like they’re pro-sex-trafficking, like [they’re saying] ‘Leave the industry alone.'”
“That’s how it feels to me,” Ballard said. “It feels like there’s some other agenda, because why do this?”
Well, with regards to the Rolling Stone review, there may be an explanation if you dig into the author just a tad.
“I keep wondering about Bart Simpson’s sexual identity,” the very same author wrote six years ago, referring to, yes, a fictitious 10-year-old boy.
If that’s the kind of stuff you’re curious about, then yes, child sex trafficking probably seems as normal as Sunday brunch.
But if you’re not curious about Bart Simpson’s sexual identity (or the sexual identity of any minor, for that matter), then go watch “Sound of Freedom.”
People who think about cartoon children’s sexuality don’t want you to see it. That’s as good a reason as any to go support it.
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