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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023

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Your analysis matches what I've been seeing. I've also been following the Wiki Talk pages on this film which is pretty wild. The argument is that QAnon is a thing, so it's important to note in the Wiki page that this film is...somehow...associated with Q-Anon. To me, it all looks like opinion laundering. Something like, "We've convinced ourselves that Q-Anon is an important conspiracy (because Trump believes some or all of it?) that everyone should be aware of (and against), so now we can point at any tenuous connection to Q-Anon as an obvious problem." The argument is circular.

Here's one line from the wiki page that really stuck out to me:

Caviezel has endorsed the spurious belief that child traffickers drain children's blood to obtain adrenochrome,[53] a chemical with supposed anti-aging properties.[60] Caviezel suggested he had seen evidence of children being subjected to the practice.[62] Caviezel reiterated his belief in the adrenochrome conspiracy theory during the press tour for Sound of Freedom.[63]

First, the word 'spurious' is obvious editorializing (against Wiki's view-from-nowhere) which is unsupported by the linked article, but what's really 'spurious' is the claim that 'adrenochrome' is an obvious conspiracy theory. The take goes like this, "adrenochrome doesn't do what people claim, therefor any reference to this is a conspiracy theory." That should raise some flags because, whether or not Adrenochrome is real, effective, or something Caviezel believes in, has no bearing on whether or not people are killing children for their blood, something Ballard claims having seen numerous times in videos he had to watch for the DHS. AFAICT, there's no dispute (or even discussion) about the claim of blood sacrifice just whether or not Adrenochrome is real or a conspiracy theory. This is a prime example of the kind of reporting/editorializing that sets people on edge.

I've been watching this story develop on various media-critique YouTube channels and it's just bonkers how rapidly this became culture war. If you're a publication on the left, why not simply leave it alone, say nothing? That's the part that's weird to me. From a strategic point, how does this not tip middle-of-the-road Americans toward the conservative viewpoint and further reduce the credibility of these journals? The RS piece is especially egregious, IMO.

Also, the denigration of the film is weirdly anti-Latino. As you correctly pointed out the production is almost entirely Latino and the film has a lot of Spanish with subtitles. It's about to be released in Mexico, at which point, I think we're going to see it get a huge bump. If one considers this a Mexican cinema production (cast, crew, writing and directing are largely Mexican) this is the highest performing Mexican film of all time. It's admittedly a bit of stretch and why I didn't add it to the Mexican Cinema wiki page. I'll let other people have that fight.