a hard truth that implicates Americans --> Hollywood happy ending

September 20, 2023 10:41 AM

The Horrible True Story that Inspired Sound of Freedom Is Probably Our Fault, Part 1. And Part 2: Who took kids from Haiti and why? Part 3: Looking for kids in all the wrong places. Part 4: reconsidering trafficking. Part 5: “the American cultural trafficking narrative.” And don't give your money to Operation Underground Railroad. No really, don't. Plus the OUR founder and now an executive producer of Sound of Freedom are both accused of sexual misconduct.

Laura Robinson previously on MeFi.

posted by spamandkimchi (39 comments total)

On September 17, 2023, Lynn Packer broke the story that Tim Ballard had been forced out of the organization he founded after multiple allegations of sexual harassment, frequently surrounding incidents where he had women pretend to be his wives on raids. Vice released a similar story the next day.
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:50 AM on September 20, 2023 [4 favorites]

The You're Wrong About podcast's most recent episode is on the topic of Sound of Freedom and revisits their previous episodes on the human trafficking moral panic. [Apple Podcasts] [Google Podcasts] [Spotify]

I can't recommend this episode and this podcast enough.
posted by AlSweigart at 10:55 AM on September 20, 2023 [22 favorites]

From Vice, today: Operation Underground Railroad Child-Rescue Missions Were Based on Psychic Intelligence (Anna Merlan, Tim Marchman).
posted by MonkeyToes at 11:17 AM on September 20, 2023 [10 favorites]

(for those of you who are You're Wrong About fans, that episode's guest is the podcast's cofounder and former host, Michael Hobbes, who had since moved on to host Maintenance Phase and If Books Could Kill... I strongly recommend all three)
posted by Riki tiki at 11:21 AM on September 20, 2023 [15 favorites]

Donors, Rawlings added, “are not made aware that Nephi, via Mr. Russon, is the key piece of O.U.R. Operational Intelligence.”

This would be hilarious if it weren't so sad and evil.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:25 AM on September 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

As soon as this movie came out I saw articles from various real child trafficking activists and workers saying “ yeah. ….. this movie is bullshit and O.U.R. isn’t a real respected organization.” It’s not just the one guy.

My R Facebook friends of course posted about what a powerful and touching movie it was.
posted by caviar2d2 at 11:29 AM on September 20, 2023 [4 favorites]

Sound of Freedom producer Eduardo Verástegui is a Trump-supporting Mexican actor and singer turned far-right Catholic activist who organized a Mexican version of CPAC and is using the relative success of the film to try to launch his political career in Mexico.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 12:04 PM on September 20, 2023 [13 favorites]

*I transtemporally remotely viewed this comment and then thought better.*
posted by y2karl at 12:07 PM on September 20, 2023 [5 favorites]

I'm still waiting for the verdict on Sound Of Freedom's "pay it forward" scam for selling movie tickets. I think the tickets counted during the week during which they were purchased, regardless of when, or if, they were redeemed. If people waited a while before redeeming these gifted tickets, they would actually be cutting into the revenue that theater owners would be collecting, because the earlier in a run the ticket is sold, the greater a percentage of the ticket price that goes to the studio. It's later runs that get more theater revenue and less to the studios.

So... I'll be very curious to see how theater owners feel about this scheme, and what the final data is on how many of these gift tickets were sold vs how many were redeemed, and whether this ends up being a thing theater owners allow to happen again in the future.
posted by hippybear at 12:14 PM on September 20, 2023 [5 favorites]

That scheme strikes me as a crowdfunded variant on the book sales grift to land a political book in the bestseller list. The one difference is as hippybear points out - the cash split varies on time between the theater and the distributor and that could get interesting.
posted by drewbage1847 at 12:25 PM on September 20, 2023 [7 favorites]

I'm not sure the Pay it Forward itself counts as a ticket sale. Here is what their website says:

Upon submitting my Pay it Forward contribution, I acknowledge and agree that Angel Studios will make reasonable efforts to use Pay it Forward ticket sales for the audience growth of the intended film or series. However, Angel Studios becomes the owner of all funds upon receipt and may use them at its sole discretion to further the Angel Studios' mission of amplifying light through impactful stories.

They may have inflated their numbers by using these funds to buy tickets and leaving an empty seat. But the act of sending money to a production company doesn't count as a ticket sale.
posted by muddgirl at 12:42 PM on September 20, 2023 [3 favorites]

Interesting because I could have sworn that they were boasting about it as ticket sales, so - either they were buying tickets or they kept the $$ and pervaricated about it. I'd have my bets.
posted by drewbage1847 at 12:46 PM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

Oh, they DEFINITELY were reporting those as ticket sales to the places that track such things. That's how it ended up at the top of the charts.
posted by hippybear at 12:47 PM on September 20, 2023 [8 favorites]

As a distributor, using those funds to buy tickets but not give them to anyone to attend the film robs the theater owners of concessions sales, which are a major part of their income stream. I'd be pissed as hell if I had a screening that was "sold out" but only 30% of the audience actually showed up. [Pulling numbers out of my ass to make a point.]

If that is a thing they were doing, that might mean this is the last film they ever distribute. If they were keeping the money for themselves, well, that's a matter for someone to get angry enough about to get courts involved in to pursue.
posted by hippybear at 12:51 PM on September 20, 2023 [14 favorites]

It doesn’t matter if this is the only film they distribute, because the actual goal of this film is to keep fearmongering and fascist worldviews in the zeitgeist. They’ll just put together totally different oligarch-funded media project the next time they need to keep their beach ball aloft
posted by Jon_Evil at 1:35 PM on September 20, 2023 [17 favorites]

It's a "group sale." Church group buys a block of 50 tickets but only gives away 10.
posted by muddgirl at 1:37 PM on September 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

No, it's a thing where at the end of the movie the star and/or director appear on the screen and ask you as an individual audience member to buy a ticket to "pay it forward" to someone else.
posted by hippybear at 1:48 PM on September 20, 2023

images from this poster used to promote local rally today (two men and child), they are associating this with "protecting children" from the indoctrination in public schools (gender stuff, I guess)

now is the time to find groups that are fighting against this

one of the more organized and visible groups in my community is the United Church, we've held a Pride Picnic the past few years and yesterday I was out sidewalk chalking with the minister in advance of today's rally. by 'organized and visible' I mean: soon to close, due to low congregation numbers and consequent budget issues. I just don't see the same energy, organization, and funding going into pushback against these hateful bullies and their shit messages.

if it seems hard to resist now, just wait till it gets more entrenched.. more of the fence-sitters just completely fade out and/or align to the scary people because, well, that is how fear and bullies work.
posted by elkevelvet at 1:50 PM on September 20, 2023 [4 favorites]

Called by God: In 2014, I went on a vigilante raid to “save” kids sold for sex. What we did haunts me now. By Meg Conley, for Slate (2021).

"The research, I learned, tells us our 2014 raid was most likely just another childhood trauma for those 26 kids. We made their lives worse. ... When Ballard called me into that house, he put me in harm’s way so that I could write a story about him."
posted by MonkeyToes at 1:51 PM on September 20, 2023 [13 favorites]

singer turned far-right Catholic activist who organized a Mexican version of CPAC

The first thing that comes to mind when I hear CPAC is Canadian parliamentary television, which renders this comment delightfully strange.
posted by selenized at 2:02 PM on September 20, 2023 [5 favorites]

because the actual goal of this film is to keep fearmongering and fascist worldviews in the zeitgeist

With sexual criminal behaviour in general so strongly in the front of everyone's minds right now, I am still anticipating waves of fake Q evidence to facilitate a purge. The Putin regime has been cooking up propaganda like this for years. It's just waiting for "conservative" governments to take power in the West before it can be effective.
posted by CynicalKnight at 2:06 PM on September 20, 2023

From the No, really, don't link, above: "Insistence on the frequency of trafficking, and specifically on a narrative that is confluent with “stranger danger” fears in the US, is itself a marketing tool that organizations use to whip up devotion and collect donations." I'm interested in the work that "Sound of Freedom" is doing (as well as its promotional scheme, and who is getting paid), and I think Jon_Evil has a point: "the actual goal of this film is to keep fearmongering and fascist worldviews in the zeitgeist."

My level-headed feminist friend was given free tickets and went to see it. She came away upset about the idea of trafficking; it worked on her, it made her feel fearful and agitated, and she was not able to hear my comments about the story behind the movie. Who benefits from that?
posted by MonkeyToes at 2:10 PM on September 20, 2023 [11 favorites]

A few weeks ago, the director was on CBS morning news with Gayle King (and like no push back). It was really surprising.
posted by armacy at 2:22 PM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

Just a reminder that nearly every time a Conservative person, anywhere in the world, starts ranting about some form of impropriety, crime, or genuine atrocity, it's because they're trying to get ahead of some scandal somewhere or trying to normalize something that shouldn't be normalized.

It's projection. It's always projection.
posted by aramaic at 2:31 PM on September 20, 2023 [43 favorites]

It's been interesting to watch this play out in Utah. The LDS Church sent around a media piece distancing itself from Ballard and rebuking him. There are rumors that Ballard was going to run for Romney's senate seat, and many saw the rebuke as a way of blowing up that campaign ahead of it's launch. The ultra-conservative MAGA right in Utah is siding with Ballard and claiming that either the LDS Church never said anything and the media is making it up to smear Ballard, or that they've been corrupted and taken over and are no longer the real leaders of the LDS Church. I've been sitting back and watching them draw knives against each other, and it seems like every day there is a new revelation about it.
posted by msbutah at 3:01 PM on September 20, 2023 [9 favorites]

Everything about Sound of Freedom, from the story it is based on to how it became the "number one" film in the US is very ugh.

I think this is the first time the movie has been mentioned on the blue so please also note that the star of the movie Jim Caviezel is big on conspiracies and Qanon and everything that goes with it. He was apparently implying that the movie was going to talk about adrenochrome harvesting during the media blitz (it did not - as far as I can tell, Ballard and OUR don't use that particular angle at all).

You can hear more about Jim (prior to Sound of Freedom coming out) on the QAnon Anonymous' Episode 143: Jim Caviezel: Enter The Cavortex
posted by LostInUbe at 3:10 PM on September 20, 2023 [6 favorites]

yes, this Jim Caviezel

warning: link is to Cavaziel as battered Jesus Christ from Mel Gibson's Passion of Christ. Christ what an asshole.
posted by philip-random at 3:29 PM on September 20, 2023 [6 favorites]

Just a reminder that nearly every time a Conservative person, anywhere in the world, starts ranting about some form of impropriety, crime, or genuine atrocity, it's because they're trying to get ahead of some scandal somewhere or trying to normalize something that shouldn't be normalized.

It's projection. It's always projection.

Can't favorite this enough
posted by Snowishberlin at 3:30 PM on September 20, 2023 [5 favorites]

Zhu affirmed she chose to go into sex work on her own. There was no trafficking, and the state’s case evaporated. They’d just found immigrants who worked long hours as sex workers to support themselves.

It s insanely frustrating that all this evidence of hard choices and hard conditions created by poverty, colonialism, racism and capitalism can be re-framed as some unified nutty conspiracy.

People won't or can't imagine the solutions to child poverty, but they can imagine weird antisemitic crap like Hillary Clinton eating babies.

Is Joe Manchin the biggest child trafficker in the US, for killing child support?
posted by eustatic at 5:43 PM on September 20, 2023 [7 favorites]

I got four paragraphs into the third chapter of the first part, and thought, "OK, Haiti is a very poor country and infamously corrupt. I am betting even good people at good institutions there end up doing sketchy shit for money if it seems like it'd be harmless" and sure enough that looks like pretty much Haitian orphanages in a nutshell.

The only thing which ended up really surprising me in this is the restavek system, which seems horrifying but also entangled with Haitian culture enough that a bunch of white people showing up and trying to make it not happen is probably the worst way to combat it.

And also, I think Americans have lost an awful lot of credibility if we want to tut about how willing Haitian orphanages are to transfer children without keeping any records of them or making sure they're actually up for adoption, after we "lost" thousands of migrant children we forcibly took from their families in the last several years. Haitian orphanage administrators are poor and immersed in a system where law and regulation are almost entirely cudgels used by petty authoritarians, so the fact that they're easily led into corruption is not very surprising. But what the hell's our excuse for doing the same thing in a place which frequently claims without irony to be the greatest nation on earth?
posted by jackbishop at 6:29 PM on September 20, 2023 [10 favorites]

Sound of Freedom’s Tim Ballard Is a Star on the Right. Why Would His Church Denounce Him?
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is conservative. But maybe not like this.
BY BENJAMIN E. PARK (Slate)

“In a previous age, such allegations would likely end someone’s career. Yet in the era marked by a conservative base pledging fidelity to someone like Donald Trump, Ballard is poised to take advantage of a playbook that has already been prepared.”

I thought this was interesting, especially in light of Ballard’s rumored senatorial ambitions.
posted by MonkeyToes at 9:18 PM on September 20, 2023 [4 favorites]

For a second I read the line about Hillary Clinton Eating Babies in eustatic's comment completely the wrong way and thought '...Wow, evidently we are now in Bizarro World Pizzagate on Steroids.'
posted by y2karl at 10:45 PM on September 20, 2023 [1 favorite]

But what the hell's our excuse for doing the same thing in a place which frequently claims without irony to be the greatest nation on earth?

Note that we are continuing to separate migrant families despite the change in presidents.
posted by srboisvert at 3:58 AM on September 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

oddly, i had a family member raving about the film, the day after i listened to you're wrong about. like talking to a wall. the epi is an updated version of a prior epi on 'trafficing panic' directly addressing that garbage film. A+
posted by j_curiouser at 6:50 AM on September 21, 2023

The You're Wrong About podcast's most recent episode is on the topic of Sound of Freedom

Thank you! Transcript.

"Like how much, how much people are acting out basically like their feelings and their anxieties in a lot of these moral panics, rather than looking at the actual state of, you know, the situation, the state of the statistics. I feel like there's just a lot of like kind of emotional needs going into this typically, especially in these movements that they're really only looking at the harm of children to the extent that they can weaponize that against societal others."
posted by MonkeyToes at 1:20 PM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

The ultra-conservative MAGA right in Utah is siding with Ballard and claiming [...] that they've been corrupted and taken over and are no longer the real leaders of the LDS Church.

Sure hope they have their ducks in a row because you come after the king you better not miss.
posted by Mitheral at 1:20 PM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

Mel Gibson, Dana White, Elon Musk, Ben Shapiro, Jewel, Odell Beckham Jr., Tim Tebow and the Family Research Council have all endorsed the film.

Good to know.

And I'm not happy about that missing Oxford comma.
posted by kirkaracha at 1:49 PM on September 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

I haven’t clicked all the links so maybe someone has already posted it, but Mormon Stories has extensive coverage, including a two-hour interview with the Vice reporters yesterday.
posted by the christopher hundreds at 4:55 PM on September 21, 2023

Via a 2021 Vice article, and from 2021:

The Moms Who Fear Child Sex Trafficking More Than COVID . QAnon and lockdowns fueled an explosion of fears that American children are being forced into sex slavery. One organization stood to benefit. (Romper, by Leah Carroll)

Thank you, the christopher hundreds; Mormon Stories has some good links.

OUR is sounding more and more like a psychological grift that’s creating and reinforcing a state of fear among people who are (made) worried by the world. That it’s akin to—if not aligned with—Q bullshit makes sense, given their target audiences. And paranoia about LDS deep state leadership? We’ve seen this playbook before.
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:47 PM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]