For those who are not familiar with conspiracy theses, the scenario of Sound of Freedom, released in the United States on July 4, is a classic thriller: after saving a young boy from child traffickers, a federal agent learns that the boy’s sister is still captive and decides to save her too. For those who know the obsession of certain conspiratorial spheres with a so-called sex trafficking network organized by the world’s elites, the same scenario has the potential to make people talk on the networks… But if you add that the film is inspired by the true story of Tim Ballard, a former agent of the internal security of the United States, who set up an NGO to fight against the sex trafficking of children, you get a real call to conspiracy theorists of all kinds (who like nothing so much as failure). auder their fantasies on the basis of a real element). And it did not fail: in a few days the buzz of the “conspi” placed Sound of Freedom in the top 3 of the American box office, alongside Indiana Jones’ latest opus, with a budget twenty times higher.
The lethal weapon of this impressive word-of-mouth has a name: Mel Gibson. In a video widely relayed on the networks, the famous actor and director promotes the film: “One of the most worrying problems in our world today is human trafficking, and more particularly child trafficking. And the first step to eradicating this crime is to be aware of it. Go see Sound of Freedom”, explains Mel Gibson in a statement facing the camera, interspersed with images from the film. Again, who is not familiar with conspiratorial families can believe in the boost from one director to another. It is to ignore the incredible aura of Gibson with the conspiracy theorists, who seized the video, to see in it the denunciation of a hidden oligarchy of child trafficking, and announce the next sensational revelations from the director. One example out of hundreds of thousands: “There will be a lot of people taking down the flag of Ukraine (sic) when Mel Gibson releases his four-part documentary on child sex trafficking,” tweeted former senator Yves Pozzo di Borgo, quoting the headline of an article from a conspiracy site (the tweet has since been deleted).
The passion of Christ
Where does this aura of Mel Gibson come from among conspiracy theorists? The first milestones were set in 2003, when Mel Gibson made The passion of Christ, his film on the crucifixion. The actor’s father, a traditionalist Catholic, but above all a Holocaust denier and avowed conspirator, Hutton Gibson, grants an interview to the New York Times full of conspiracy theories. According to him, the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 were remotely controlled. The number of Jews killed during the Holocaust, inflated. As for the Second Vatican Council, Hutton Gibson sees in it the product of a “Masonic plot supported by the Jews”. If Mel Gibson denied sharing the revisionist positions of his father, his fundamentalist practice of Catholicism mixed with the controversies accompanying the release of his film on the crucifixion created a breeding ground. In 2004, several critics castigated a treatment of the crucifixion marked by anti-Semitism, presenting the Jews as the assassins of God – which did not prevent the film from breaking records at the box office.
“You’re not a survivor of the ovens, are you?”
Two years later, the director was arrested for drunk driving. According to the minutes published at the time by the american media, Mel Gibson would have shouted that “the Jews are responsible for all the wars!” – for which he later apologized. Result: Mel Gibson moves away for several years from the world of cinema as an actor. But his reputation is already made, and the skids reappear one by one. Which will sign its final dubbing by the conspiracy spheres… Because let’s remember, when there is a conspiracy theory, the Jews are at the center in the overwhelming majority.
In 2010, actress Winona Ryder stated in QG that Mel Gibson allegedly made anti-Semitic remarks to him at a Hollywood party. Ten years later, she will confirm her allegations. “You are not a survivor of the ovens, are you?”, he would have said to him. But Gibson’s obsessions aren’t limited to Jews. “We were all talking and he said to my friend, who is gay, ‘Oh wait, I’m going to have AIDS, right?'” the actress also said several years later – which the actor had denied.
A magazine interview Playboy, dating from 1995, is also unearthed. Mel Gibson postulated that several assassinations and attempted assassinations of presidents would have been reprisals for economic reforms that would have challenged the power in place. “There’s something about the Federal Reserve that Lincoln did, Kennedy did, and Reagan tried. I can’t remember what it was, my dad told me about it. Everyone who did that particular thing that could have fixed the economy was defeated. Either way, I’ll end up dying if I keep bullshitting.”
Conspiracy of the Jews
More than fifteen years after the release of The passion of Christ, Hollywood’s withdrawal is still interpreted by many of its fans as the result of a… conspiracy by the Jews – one of the refrains relayed in a recurring fashion in conspiratorial spheres. On social networks and certain forums, we can for example read that Mel Gibson would have been ousted from Hollywood “after his film on the death of Jesus Christ by the Jews”. Or even that “the guy made two films, two masterpieces, but hey, as the gentleman criticized the Zionists, Hollywood turns his back on him. Come on, let’s say it’s pure coincidence”.
“Between his various anti-Semitic slippages, which appeal to the followers of conspiracy theories on the Jews, his reactionary posture, his religious fundamentalist imprint-there is a resonance between religiosity and conspiracy, which does not mean that religiosity underpins conspiracy-Mel Gibson has acquired legitimacy with certain conspiracy spheres” Partner at the University of Paris Diderot and specialist in digital cultures.
Not to mention that the conspiratorial spheres are fond of the figure of the pariah. “But there is no conspiracy in the fact that it was rejected by Hollywood: some producers simply did not want to be associated with people who have a toxic image. Translating it as the ‘blacklisting’ of a ‘system that would like to silence them’ is a classic victimization strategy for conspiratorial spheres”, further believes Tristan Mendès-France.
figure of the pariah
Chance or inclination of always? The actor has often performed or directed the roles of left-behind victims of injustice. In The faceless man (1993), his first production, he stages a disfigured hermit, rejected by his peers and accused of being a pedophile, who will befriend a child wishing to enter a military school. In You will not kill (2016), Mel Gibson was again interested in the figure of Desmond Doss, a conscientious objector who saved 75 of his comrades during the battle of Okinawa, without carrying a weapon.
The character he played in the film Braveheart (1995) was even quoted in 2021, during a QAnon rally in Las Vegas by… Jim Caviezel, the actor on the poster for Sound of Freedombut also the interpreter of Jesus in The passion of Christ – which, according to him, would be at the origin of his exclusion from Hollywood. In front of a crowd of followers, the actor had taken up the famous tirade of William Wallace, interpreted by Mel Gibson, when he addresses the Scottish soldiers before facing the English invader in a fight to the death. “Fight and you may die. Flee and you will live, for a while at least. And one day, on your deathbeds, many years will have passed and perhaps you will regret that you cannot trade all your sad spared lives for a chance, a small chance to come back here and kill our enemies, for they may take our lives, but they will never take our freedom!” Applause. And for good reason: in addition to the profile of Jim Caviezel, spokesperson for many conspiracy theories (including that on adrenochrome, a drug which would be made from the blood of children and which would have rejuvenating virtues), the political positions of Mel Gibson only add to the fervor of this public.
From now on, Mel Gibson is seen regularly lending all kinds of remarks, which it is impossible to verify. For example, many conspiratorial accounts attribute the actor to having denounced, in an interview given in the 90s and in the British program The Graham Norton Show in 2017, the existence of secret ceremonies within Hollywood. “Hollywood is an institutionalized pedophile ring. It’s a den of parasites who have orgies of child blood. Every Hollywood studio is bought and paid for with the blood of innocent children,” he reportedly said. There is no evidence that the actor would have made such statements. But isn’t it the characteristic of conspiracy to fire at all costs? Even imaginary wood…