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Former agent who inspired QAnon-linked thriller says critics have agendas
Garry Maddox
August 23, 2023 —4.00am(Inderesting…)
Tim Ballard has had it with being linked to QAnon conspiracies.
The former US Department of Homeland Security agent, who estimates he has gone on “several dozen” missions to rescue sex-trafficked children since founding Operation Underground Railroad a decade ago, has become the public face of the surprise American box office hit Sound of Freedom.
Ballard is played by Jim Caviezel from The Passion of the Christ in a dark low-budget thriller that has taken a stunning $US178 million – more than the latest Indiana Jones and Mission: Impossible movies – since faith-based distributor Angel Studios released it on Independence Day.
While it dramatises a mission to rescue sex-trafficked children in Colombia without taking sides politically, the movie has been championed by the far right in America’s fractious culture wars.
Its supporters have included Steve Bannon, MyPillow proprietor Mike Lindell, QAnon followers online, Mel Gibson, who is one of the executive producers, and former president Donald Trump, who held a private screening at his Bedminster golf club a month ago.
That leaves Ballard facing awkward questions, ahead of the movie’s opening in Australian cinemas this week, like whether he believes in the QAnon conspiracy that liberal elites run paedophilia rings.
“That gets into some conspiracy theories that I’m not a part of, even though I’ve been accused of being a part of this QAnon movement,” Ballard says on a patchy Zoom call after a premiere in Buenos Aires. “I’ve disavowed it so many times. But I will say that the sex addiction that brings the demand for child sex is everywhere.
“It’s on every level of every economic order, every type of person. Professionals, educators, law enforcement and politicians. Jeffrey Epstein is an example. So I don’t think it’s more prominent in elite circles. I think it’s really just everywhere.”
Ballard, who co-chaired a council established to guide federal anti-trafficking policymaking during the Trump presidency, describes human trafficking as a $US150 billion a year business around the world.
He claims his teams have rescued more than 7000 women and children and assisted in the arrest of 5000 paedophiles and traffickers. But in the storm of controversy that has surrounded Sound of Freedom, Ballard has been accused of self-mythologising and embellishing his exploits.
An attorney who is an authority on anti-trafficking, Erin Allbright, has described the movie as being so “divorced from reality” about how trafficking works that it could harm victims.
Ballard puts criticisms of the movie down to people with agendas and says its success reflects rising concern about the sexualisation of children.
“There’s a movement, for example, to change the name paedophile to ‘minor-attracted person’ in order to normalise all this,” he says. “We have a crisis at our border with 85,000 unaccompanied minors, thousands of them children under five years old, who have shown up and been released to whoever picks them up.
“And that’s into the country that’s [the biggest] consumer of child exploitation material in the world …The people that are pushing those agendas are doing all they can to stop Sound of Freedom and making false accusations. It’s like the battle lines have been drawn almost around this film about those who will stand up for children and those who are not going to.”
Director Alejandro Monteverde has also distanced the movie from QAnon, telling The Los Angeles Times that becoming the rallying cry for conspiracy believers has been heartbreaking, hurtful and “discredits the purity of the work”.
Moar in Link: https://www.smh.com.au/culture/movies/former-agent-who-inspired-qanon-linked-thriller-says-critics-have-agendas-20230818-p5dxli.html
THAT 4AM THOUGH