After its box office success with the audience of Christian fundamentalism in the United States, the film Sound of Freedom – highly recommended in the delirious network of conspiracy theories, QAnon – is already beginning to revive the social networks of Bolsonaroism in Brazil.
The film, which premieres today in Spain and tells the story of a US official who investigates a child trafficking network in Colombia, has become a platform for the rise of activism for groups of the extreme right and ultra-conservative Christianity.
First it was in the US, where Donald Trump hosted a private screening of the film in July at his golf club in New Jersey. Now, in another place that is the breeding ground for conspiracies and ultra-conservative paranoid hoaxes: Brazil.
The premiere at the end of September in São Paulo was attended by the son of the former president and ultra senator, Flavio Bolsonaro, who has in the past accused Lula's Workers' Party (PT) of being complicit in pedophilia. The senator and fundamentalist evangelical pastor Damares Alves, Bolsonaro's former minister, was also there.
Alves – known for her harangues against the satanism of the Brazilian left – made a video call to the Brazilian “Christian community” to attend the film and repeated on her social networks the motto of the film, which is already a box office success in the US. USA: “God's children are not for sale!”
The fanatical and viscerally homophobic neo-Presbyterian pastor Marco Feliciano, deputy for Rio de Janeiro, also attended. “Child trafficking is an issue that the government and the media do not recognize, but conservatives with traditional families are going to defend our children to the end,” he announced after the premiere.
Sound of Freedom tells the story of Tim Ballard, the former agent of the US Department of Homeland Security who, in classic private detective style, dismantles a network of sexual crimes against children. “Instead of focusing on the real victims of child trafficking, who are usually young people and mainly girls, sold by members of their own families, the film simply makes Ballard a hero,” Andrew Chestnut commented in an interview. professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.
When the film premiered in the United States in the summer, it was described in the conspiratorial networks of the post-rational right as “similar to QAnon”, that is, suitable for its audience. This group, which has millions of followers, already constitutes a kind of virtual sect that generates and distributes conspiracy theories about an alleged satanic conspiracy made up of progressive elites and celebrities from Hollywood.
Thirty million Americans – 20% of the adult population – already believe in the central tenets of QAnon, according to surveys conducted last year.
Both Ballard and the actor who plays him, Jim Caviezel – a Christian conservative who publicly defends QAnon delusions – subscribe to many of the paranoid QAnon conspiracy hoaxes. One of these suggests that thousands of children are kidnapped and murdered every year to extract from their bodies the substance adrenochrome – a derivative of adrenaline – which, according to this delusional theory, is highly valued in progressive high society...
Caviezel, who played Jesus Christ in the film The Passion of the Christ (2004) directed by Mel Gibson, denounced an alleged “adrenochrome empire” during an interview about the new film held with Steve Bannon, the ideological guru of the new extreme right. .
The film's Mexican director, Alejandro Monteverde, has distanced himself from QAnon and far-right politicians who have praised the film. “When I started writing the script in 2015, QAnon didn't exist,” he said.
“It is true that the film does not defend QAnon conspiracy theories, but Ballard and Caviezel have spoken at events of people very close to QAnon,” says the doctor in theological studies from Duke University and professor at Virginia Tech University. , Laura Robinson.
In reality, trafficking of young people for sexual purposes – mainly women – is a complex issue, says Robinson. It is part of a world of crime that encompasses drug trafficking, white slavery, kidnapping of migrants, extortion and much more. Evangelicalism and the extreme right often transform a problem of abuse of women into a problem of abuse of children.
“In the United States, the story of very young children who are kidnapped and sent to another country is what mobilizes people; but it is not the most common,” says Robinson. “It is not so attractive to be passionate about the cause when the victim is a 17-year-old drug addict who exploits herself sexually to be able to buy drugs, but it is more typical.”
What is quite obvious is that the film was devised in order to profit from the enormous audience that flocks to networks like QAnon as well as the followers of the fundamentalist cults of neo-Christianity. After earning more than 180 million dollars until September, it is the ninth highest-grossing film despite its low budget.
In Brazil everything indicates that success will be repeated. “Brazil needs to watch this film!” announced Damares Alves, who has made various complaints about pedophile networks supposedly organized by the left in recent years.
In October 2022, during the electoral campaign, he denounced the trafficking of children for sexual purposes in the state of Para in the Brazilian Amazon at an electoral rally. He did not spare gruesome details in his complaints, such as, for example, that “the little teeth (of children) are pulled out so that they do not bite during oral sex” and that “they must eat soft food so that the intestine is free for the time of sex.” anal.” Flavio Bolsonaro, also a senator, tweeted then: “Damares' account of trafficked children is disturbing; "There are still remnants of the PT in Brazil."
It was all a fabrication of the feverish imagination of the Bolsonaro pastor and senator. The Para state prosecutor's office investigated Alves' complaint and found no evidence of this case of child trafficking. The senator will have to pay compensation of one million euros to compensate for the damage caused to the state.
But Alves seems to feel vindicated after seeing Sound of Freedom. “If you thought there were no child kidnapping networks in the world, you have to see this movie,” she insists in a video broadcast this week on her Instagram account.
