File under "OK groomer"
The far right’s fixation on pedophilia is dangerous
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opin...-is-dangerous/
Michael Coren (11 August 2023)
Michael Coren is an Anglican priest. His latest book is The Rebel Christ.
I’ve just experienced another attack on social media. The harassment on X, as Twitter now calls itself, usually lasts around 36 hours, and while most of the nasties are trolls and bots, I can’t pretend that the hundreds of comments don’t have an effect. I’m a priest, progressive, outspoken. No point in complaining. But a disturbing new aspect of these bombardments are the repeated and constant false accusations of pedophilia – not a libellous dribble, but a flood.
It’s not really about me of course, and I’m in good company. Last month in Belleville, Ont., when Justin Trudeau was swarmed by a right-wing mob, one of the hysterical shouts clearly heard was that he was a child molester. It’s grotesque nonsense about the Prime Minister that swamps social media. In fact, there aren’t many politicians and activists on the left who haven’t been accused of this awful crime.
And with a horribly convenient timing, a new movie, Sound of Freedom, is currently the talk of the far right. Jim Caviezel (who played Jesus in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ) stars as Tim Ballard, a former government agent who rescues children from sex traffickers. As the critic Sam Adams wrote perceptively for the online magazine Slate, it “arrived in theatres surrounded by a cloud of innuendo put forth by its star and its noisiest right-wing supporters – conspiratorial insinuations about who doesn’t want this story to be told and what real-world traffickers are really up to.”
Rescuing children is one thing, and entirely admirable, but this phenomenon goes much further than that. Mr. Caviezel himself has spoken of “the whole adrenochrome empire,” describing the substance as “an elite drug that they’ve used for many years” that is “10 times more potent than heroin” and “has some mystical qualities as far as making you look younger.”
Adrenochrome, zealots claim, can only be obtained from adrenal glands in a living human body, thus the need to abduct children. It’s obscene and dangerous quackery, but that doesn’t help convince the cult of the credulous. This rubbish has its origins in a QAnon belief that powerful, international figures intent on resetting the world, controlling people and destroying religious freedom are also kidnapping little boys and girls.
That was the lunacy behind Pizzagate in 2016, when thousands believed that a pedophilia ring led by those at the highest levels of the Democratic Party was operating out of a Washington pizza restaurant. More than a million messages were sent on Twitter supporting the fantasy, eventually leading to employees being harassed, followed by a shooting and then an arson.
There’s always been a strong dose of homophobia involved, through the venomous old canard of gay men being groomers, in spite of all the facts and evidence. Facts and evidence, however, are the last things relevant in all this. The trans issue magnified the paranoia, and it’s been pushed into the mainstream by a new generation of right-wing politicians.
When Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill was being debated, for example, Governor Ron DeSantis’s press secretary Christina Pushaw wrote that anyone who opposed the legislation was “probably a groomer.” In 2020 on NBC, Donald Trump spoke of his supporters as being “very strongly against pedophilia and I agree with that. And I agree with it very strongly.”
These statements have enormous influence on the gullible. Bizarre ideas about superwealthy and secretive cabals imposing godless liberalism, fears of children being sexualized or stolen, a terror of change – all this has been empowered by the increasingly media-savvy secular and fundamentalist Christian right.
The disorder may be unique in details but not in theme. In medieval Europe, antisemitic blood libels accused Jews of kidnapping and killing children so as to use their blood, usually for the Passover ceremony. Pope Innocent IV condemned the libels as early as 1247, but they continued, even as late as the last century. They led, inevitably, to pogroms and murder.
Scratch the surface of modern conspiracy theory and antisemitism often appears, but today the accused are usually singled out not by race but ideology, and that includes politicians and public figures considered to be left-of-centre, or even people who support vaccinations, abortion rights, LGBTQ equality, or climate justice policies. This might sound fanciful, but the evidence is sadly abundant.
It’s particularly tragic as children increasingly suffer under a culture of poverty, food insecurity and forced migration. Ironically, those roaring about pedophile rings tend to ignore all of this and are often downright opposed to legislation that may help children. As well, child abuse and human trafficking are genuine issues and have to be taken extremely seriously; baseless and hateful hyperbole only worsens the situation.
There’s no indication that this horror show is diminishing, and it has to be condemned by conservative leaders who consider themselves to be moderate and responsible. They may not be to blame, but their relative failure to speak out simply won’t do. If something doesn’t change soon, I genuinely fear that violence will occur, and judging by the temperature, volume and numbers of the far right, that violence could be of the worst possible kind.
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