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Timothy Ballard is a former DHS agent who, in 2013, left his role fighting criminal child exploitation and founded Operation Underground Railroad, or OUR. It's a parapolice organization which operates internationally, infiltrating child trafficking rings, identifying ring leaders, working with local law enforcement to arrest the leaders, and providing support to the victims after they are rescued. [1] I have not delved deeply into the history or workings of the group, so their actual effectiveness is a mystery to me, but they boast some impressive sounding results; a blog post from yesterday claims 51 survivors of an international sex ring saved and 22 suspects apprehended in "a joint effort by the Hellenic Police, the Spanish National Police, INTERPOL, O.U.R., A21, and Homeland Security Investigations." [2] It sounds very impressive, uplifting, and even badass. It's the kind of thing Hollywood would love to make a movie about - and they did.
In 2015, director Alejandro Monteverde and a production company approached Ballard to make a movie documenting his exploits. Ballard had been approached many times before by for movie deals but had turned them all down. This time, Monteverde's work was able to impress Ballard (and his wife) enough to convince him to sign on to a movie deal. Ballard was extensively interviewed, a script was written, and filming started in the summer of 2018. Interestingly, Ballard requested that actor Jim Caviezel portray him - Caviezel notably portrayed Jesus (yes that one) in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, though Ballard cited Caviezel's performance in The Count of Monte Cristo as the reason for his request. The film was completed that year and Fox was signed on to distribute the film under the name The Sound of Freedom. [3]
Fox was not around long enough to complete the deal. They were acquired by Disney, who shelved the movie (Disney later claimed they had no knowledge of the movie, which is plausible given the enormity of both Disney and the former Fox). It sat in limbo until earlier this year, when the filmmakers bought back the rights to the movie and approached Angel Studios for distribution. Angel Studios is an interesting company; they are entirely supported by equity crowdfunding, in which small investors provide funding in exchange for securities. As the name might suggest they are heavily Christian focused, with one of their largest previous projects being The Chosen, a dramatic television retelling of the life of Jesus Christ. They implement their crowdfunding model by presenting their investors with several options for new projects and ask them to vote for which ones they would like to see. Reportedly, The Sound of Freedom reached a critical threshold of votes within days, the release was greenlit, and the movie hit theaters on July 4, 2023. It instantly became a hit, and a target for hits.
If you have heard about this movie before now, it was probably in the context of controversy. Lefty media outlets have been dogpiling it, with Rolling Stone calling it "a Superhero Movie for Dads With Brainworms"[5] and a CBC Radio columnist saying it was "a dog whistle for xenophobic Pro-Trump, Pro-Life types".[6] Criticism of the movie itself is weak, with the arguments boiling down to "it's not realistic" and "the plot doesn't always make sense", things that could be leveled at any summer blockbuster. External to the film, they criticize Caviezel and his penchant for QAnon conspiracy theories, but never mention the Mexican native director, whose father and brother were kidnapped and killed by a cartel.[7] What many have been focusing on is these outlets' attempts to seemingly pull the rug out from under the whole movie by downplaying child trafficking as a real world issue, trotting out 'experts' to point out how the depiction is 'dangerous' because it sets 'unrealistic expectations' and generally setting the tone that trafficking isn't really a thing people should be worried about.
This has set them up for the obvious counter from the Right: why are you so mad about a movie where a guy saves children? Child trafficking is bad... right? These commenters point out how outlets like Rolling Stone defended Cuties (the infamous Netflix movie about pubescent girls dancing in modern sexually charged style) and didn't seem to have a problem with Taken, the 2008 movie with an obviously exaggerated human trafficking plot. But that was a decade and a half ago, and we know why this is happening now: it's culture war, pure and simple. While Righties are accusing the Lefties of covering up for their corrupt pedo elites, I theorized this might be legacy media feeling threatened by upstart conservative alternatives, but after researching I don't think there's much more to this than "Red Tribe likes this, so it must be bad". Or perhaps I am not blackpilled enough yet to believe that the slope is so slippery that pedophiles are already being introduced into the pantheon of Letter People.
Other titbits I want to mention:
[1] https://ourrescue.org/ [2] https://ourrescue.org/blog/51-survivors-of-human-trafficking-freed-in-greece [3] https://www.deseret.com/2018/6/4/20646317/actor-jim-caviezel-set-to-play-second-most-important-role-in-o-u-r-story-the-sound-of-freedom [4] https://variety.com/2023/film/box-office/sound-of-freedom-box-office-success-1235664837/ [5] https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/sound-of-freedom-jim-caviezel-child-trafficking-qanon-movie-1234783837/ [6] https://twitter.com/Harry__Faulkner/status/1679207525495844865 [7] https://people.com/crime/ali-landrys-father-in-law-and-brother-in-law-found-dead-in-mexico/
Yeah, I'm head-desking right now because how ideological do you have to be in order to go "pro-lifers think child sex trafficking is bad, and we all know pro-lifers are scum" without realising that you are within a gnat's whisker of going "which means child sex trafficking is a Good Thing that Our Side must and should support"?
I'm not surprised by this because it often happens after take-overs; the new owners aren't interested in the projects the former independent entity were working on, or the new guys scrap projects in favour of their own pet projects. The irony here is that Disney sat on it and sold it back, pretty clearly because they thought it was some niche thing that wouldn't appeal to many, and now it's outdoing their tentpole Indiana Jones movie, a movie they really needed to be a hit after the recent string of less than impressive performances.
I even understand the suspicion about "this is a Christian outfit" but honestly, if you can't even bring yourself to agree with the Bible-bashers that kidnapping and selling kids for sex is a bad thing, I suggest you take a look at your life and your choices. And from what I understand from reviews, this isn't a movie that is all "Y'all need Jesus" and "God saved these children". But the guy depicted/his wife may be religious (in clips the actress playing her is wearing a cross), so is that now a big no-no in the movie making business? 'Oh it has an unrealistically positive ending!' okay, and? That's the movies for ya!
Even crusty old drink-sodden Youtube reviewers liked it!
'Cos the victims in it are Hispanic children. Hmmm, why on earth would that appeal to a Hispanic audience, and not our big superhero movie with a Hispanic side character? Ponder, ponder....
MAPs, darling. "Paedophile" is sooo judgemental and offensive to people struggling with their sexuality who are non-offending. That term and that attitude forces them to interalise social stigma. And it engenders hysteria such as this about scholarly work.
There's always room for another stripe on the Progress Pride flag, and if the LGBT community don't want that right now, give it a couple of years until the softhearted and softheaded sociologists work on normalising such attractions.
It amuses me how many people still think there's support in the LGBT community to normalize pedophilia, given that community used to be significantly more supportive of pedophilia and has been backpedaling on it for decades. What they want to normalize is child sexuality, not creepy adults exploiting it. It's no different than the feminist argument against modesty: women [children] should be free to do what they want without men [pedophiles] sexualizing them for it. Hence Cuties.
Ten years ago liberals would have sworn to you that Sista Soulja style "whiteness is the devil" rhetoric was dead and gone, and would never come back.
And now we know that they were deliberately hiding and nurturing it for over two decades, bringing it out of the closest at the first possible opportunity. When a group treats all interactions as tactical engagements to shift the overton window, that's exactly what happens: the quiet part stays quiet, until a memo goes out and suddenly the absurd strawman extremist position is once again party doctrine.
So we already have one example of an extreme leftist position that was pushed out of the overton window only to return far stronger than before, apparently with the assistance of liberals with a no-enemies-to-the-left policy. Why will this be any different?
There's also the point that only heterosexual age-gap relationships seem to disgust progressives. 8 year old boys in stripper dresses getting cash tucked into their panties by adult men is a library activity, while girls getting married at 17 has been made a crime. This means we're a lot closer to the days of the Berlin adoption agencies giving boys to paedophiles than you'd think from the rhetoric about "predatory (straight) men"
The usual argument for abolishing the AoC is about individual freedom. That's very much not an extreme leftist position; it's an extreme liberal position - a libertine position.
SJ is sometimes called "the successor ideology" because it grew out of liberal culture but is not liberal itself. The direction you go from moderate liberalism to get to SJ is at an obtuse angle with the direction you'd have to go to get to abolishing the AoC. And I say that as someone who wants to lower the AoC.
Does SJ memory-hole stories about gay molestors and occasionally enable them*? Yes. That's because they're optimising too hard on "accept gay people" - to quote B5, "conspiracies of silence because the larger ideals have to be protected". It's not because they actually support child molestation in and of itself.
*The conservative media amplifies this for the exact same reason the SJ media suppresses it i.e. it is highly politically inconvenient for the Blue Tribe narrative. It's not actually as common as reading conservative media would lead you to believe.
Which variety of child sexual abuse? The sort where two men adopt / foster boys they abuse and sometimes produce pornography with or the sort where homosexual men will invite teen boys that are 'old souls' to pool parties for leering, letchery, drug use, and also sometimes pornography production?
I find both unacceptable. I suspect the latter is more common than the former. I also suspect the latter is more acceptable in the letch community.
How common does conservative media lead people to believe it is? I'm certain there are unreported instances of both occurring this weekend. Given the current year acceptance of alphabetism, isn't it likely there's more of this abuse now than anytime in the last 40 years?
What I said was that SJers enabling gay molestors is not as common as conservative media would have you believe.
Haven't they enabled all they've failed to call to account?
Arguably they've enabled all the molesters the SJ activism has camouflaged or hidden. SJ work to normalize homosexuals has enabled a non-zero number of molesters.
I understand not all homosexuals offend. In the same way 'not all men'.
I'm saying that "SJer spots gay molestor, doesn't report it to authorities because doesn't want to appear homophobic" is a real thing but not nearly as common as conservative media would have you believe (though much more common than SJ media would have you believe), in both cases because it's highly politically inconvenient for SJ.
"SJ journalist hears about gay molestor being arrested, doesn't report on it to the public", that's basically standard practice. But this isn't as directly harmful; the molestor is in jail whether or not we know about it.
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A gay teen boy going to a gay pool party in a Speedo where lots of gay non-teens will offer him alcohol and feel him up is bad and creepy, for the same reasons that a heterosexual teen girl going to a pool party in a string bikini where adult men will give her alcohol and feel her up is bad and creepy. But neither are pedophilia and most people find it hard to get worked up about the former happening to someone else’s son, just like they would find it hard to get worked up about someone else’s son going to a cougar pool party in a Speedo where adult women will let him drink and feel him up. I suspect that the first scenario is more common than the other two combined, possibly by a very large margin, but it’s not something that conservative media dwells on a lot.
Alcohol and a grope, likely undersells it. Many would feature hard drugs and sexual assault, the Bryan Singer senario.
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