The Guardian is a Left-wing newspaper.

That doesn’t make it any more untrustworthy than any other news source, since almost by definition every MSM news source is untrustworthy. If you want to get a reasonably accurate sense of what is going on, read many sources. We all have priors, and most of the time they are just inclinations to believe some things more than others due to our preferences and experiences.

But sometimes those priors are so at odds with how the world works and moral decency that a viewpoint should be totally dismissed, and here is a great example.

The Guardian believes that talking about child sex trafficking is too Q-Anon adjacent to cheer for. A movie that celebrates rescuing children from the growing sex trade plays into the dark conspiracy theories that The Guardian fears are animating Right-wingers, so it’s best to sweep the whole problem under the rug.

No, I am not kidding. That is their critique of The Sound of Freedom. Too much God, too much concern for children. It might lead people to think that the child sex trade is a real problem and that too many people at the top of our society are unconcerned about it.

Sounds Of Freedom is based on a true story and shines a light on a child trafficking problem worldwide. Degenerates at The Guardian call it “a paranoid movie”and “the QAnon-adjacent thriller”.

According to the report, the U.S.’ level of sex consumption is one of the primary… pic.twitter.com/O6kw9OyQus

— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) July 7, 2023

The critique of Jim Caviezel’s latest movie is truly bizarre. It concedes that nothing actually in The Sound of Freedom promotes Q-Anon (a conspiracy theory about which I have only the vaguest notion, and nobody I know buys into), but since the theme of child sex trafficking plays a role in both the conspiracy theory and the movie, it’s important to trash the movie lest people worry about…child sex trafficking…or celebrate those who bravely stand up to the traffickers.

However one chooses to slice it, Sound of Freedom has over-delivered on expectations in dollars and cents, a feat of profitability uncommon for a comparatively low-budget production without a major Hollywood-led promotional campaign. Judging by the robust round of applause that concluded the fully-seated screening I attended on Wednesday evening – and this, in the liberal Sodom of Manhattan! – it would seem that the folks at the two-year-old Angel Studios have tapped into a substantial and eagerly marshaled viewership.

Following that money leads back to a more unsavory network of astroturfed boosterism among the far-right fringe, a constellation of paranoids now attempting to spin a cause célèbre out of a movie with vaguely simpatico leanings. The uninitiated may not pick up on the red-yarn-and-corkboard subtext pinned onto a mostly straightforward extraction mission in South America, pretty much Taken with a faint whiff of something noxious in the air. Those tuned in to the eardrum-perforating frequency of QAnon, however, have heeded a clarion call that leads right to the multiplex.

“Eardrum-perfeorating frequency” is, I admit, a nice turn of phrase. It is also itself bizarre conspiracy theorizing par excellence. The movie is about freeing children from sex traffickers, and sex trafficking is a real thing. How do I know? The Department of Justice says so, not just some Q-Anon conspiracy theorists.

It is, in fact, big business. Tens of thousands of children disappear every year in the United States, and many more elsewhere in the world. Sound of Freedom even focuses on sex trafficking outside the US, and there isn’t a hint of theorizing about Bill Clinton leading some sex ring. It is pretty straightforward, and not only tells a real-life story, it celebrates fighting a real problem–one of the worst taking place in the modern world.

Best not talk about it though. Because Right-wingers don’t like sex traffickers, and we shouldn’t encourage them. Next thing you know Right-wingers might want to stop it! Damn Christians!

In Sound of Freedom, he leads a unit to Colombia and eventually goes rogue on his single-minded quest to locate and liberate the still-missing sister of a boy he managed to save from sex slavery. The defenseless siblings are drawn into the nefarious clutches of their abductors in the stomach-turning opening sequence, which clinically walks us through the steps by which a glamorous and implicitly trustworthy woman poses as a modeling scout to round up the most apple-cheeked prospects and separate them from their parents. In a montage that plays like a JonBenét Ramsey fancam, she stokes our horror by primping the youngsters with red lipstick and suggestively mussed-up hair.

And yet a coating of plausible deniability covers a film that takes care to be the most anodyne version of itself, all while giving those in the know just enough to latch onto. The traffickers are anonymous foreigners, mentioned as “rebels” in an unspecified regional conflict with no connection to the alleged Clinton Crime Family, though a title card at the end points back to America as a hub for the “$150bn business” of exploitation. The religious dimension seldom extends beyond a god-fearing undertone, most perceptible in archetypes like the reformed sinner on the righteous path. (Character actor supreme Bill Camp classes up the joint as “Vampiro”, a former narco who gave up his profligate lifestyle after fornicating with a 14-year-old while in a cocaine haze.) The trafficking follows no motivation more elaborate than the servicing of rich predators, eliding all talk of body-part black markets and the precious organic biochemical of adrenochrome harvested as a Satanic key to eternal life. The first rule of QAnon: you don’t talk about QAnon where the normals can hear you.

Just WHO is the conspiracy theorist here?  He literally keeps telling us that the Q-Anon stuff (about which he seems to know quite a bit, and I, a certified Right-winger worried about the Elite’s obvious tolerance for sexualizing children does not) is nowhere to be found in the movie. Still, he sees it where it isn’t there.

It is a “subtext,” and apparently the millions viewing the movie are all deeply steeped in a fringe theory about which few people have a clue.

Again, who is the conspiracy theorist? Methinks somebody needs to lay off the Meth; it inspires paranoia.

These zestier strains of scaremongering are absent in the text itself, but they lurk in the shadows around a film outwardly non-insane enough to lure in the persuadable; the disappointingly un-juicy Sound of Freedom pretends to be a real movie, like a “pregnancy crisis center” masquerading as a bona fide health clinic. (Our hero Ballard, by the way, went on to found the paramilitary rescue squad Operation Underground Railroad, a group criticized as “arrogant, unethical, and illegal” by the authorities. But then, they would say that. They’re in on it, this goes all the way to the top, etc.)

See? He keeps saying that all the things he believes are there sub rosa are not there at all in the actual film. Apparently he believes that we are getting subliminal messages not to have a Coke and a smile, but to…what? Fear child sex traffickers are among us.

I have news for you: child sex traffickers are among us. That isn’t a conspiracy theory. Almost every street hooker is there due to some form of sex trafficking or another, and there actually is an international market in people. Geez. This has been commonly known forever.

Can’t talk about it though. Might get the Christians upset enough to help fight it.

Those hoping for a few detached laughs at the deep-dish delusion sneaking onto the mainstream radar will be bored by the straight face donned for the duration of the run time – until, that is, a small counter in the corner of the credit roll warns of a “Special Message” in two minutes. Having dropped his character, Caviezel himself appears to say that though we might be feeling frightened or saddened, he’d like everyone to leave with a message of hope for the future. Directly after establishing that he’s not the center of attention here, he betrays an evident messianic complex by announcing that his movie could very well be the most important ever made, going so far as to compare it to Uncle Tom’s Cabin in its campaign to shine a light on 21st-century slavery. This is all for the children, we’re told, but they can’t do much to save themselves, can they?

This is the modern Left. They would rather have child sex trafficking kept under the radar than give an inch to conservatives.

The Guardian has just told you so.