Sound of Freedom

People have been talking about it, other people have been trying to get others to stop talking about it. It’s a movie that has been made political when it absolutely should not be made political in the first place. It should be universally agreed upon that the horrible things depicted in the movie should be shown and should be shared.

I finally got to see Sound of Freedom and I did not watch it alone, my parents who are in their 70s came along with me. It was out of nowhere, they asked me last weekend if there were any movies I wanted to see over the school holiday period. (The school holiday period starts in another week as of the publishing of this entry.)

I told them, “It’s not a movie I particularly want to see, but I think it’s a movie I should see.” I then told them what the movie was about while purposefully leaving out the part about it being “controversial” or “political” in the eyes of so many. I simply told them that it is a movie based on a true story about a Homeland Security agent named Tim Ballard who quit his job to take down child trafficking rings in South America back in 2013.

Instead of going to watch this movie over the school holidays, my dad called me today just after midday and said we’ll go watch the movie at 6:30 pm and to be ready. When I sat down at that cinema with my parents, they told me that when they ordered the tickets online, most of the seats were sold out so we were lucky we got in at all. We were early so there weren’t a lot of people there, the seats were almost completely empty.

I saw many on X (formerly Twitter) laughing at this movie, showing videos of empty theatres. It was an interesting sense of glee they had, hoping that the movie would fail and that no one would see it. I wondered if those people online were correct, but decided to wait until the movie actually began to make a proper determination.

I saw many in both the US media and Australian media claim that this is a right-wing movie full of conspiracy theories and such. I saw people telling me on one of my many accounts where I do nothing but follow and interact with people on the left (communists, socialists, etc.) that this is a movie for racists whiteys and MAGAts (maggots), and not for anyone who actually has more than two brain cells to rub together.

Incidentally, I also have accounts where I follow people on the right, but I’m not shy about people knowing about those. I hide the “left-wing” accounts for one simple reason. If anyone on the left found out I wasn’t part of their cult, suddenly, I’d find myself the target of some pretty horrible racial slurs and other kinds of harassment. It’s happened before with one of my first accounts where I wasn’t careful enough with what I said and how I said it.

Funnily enough, conservatives (and people being accused of being conservatives when they’re not) don’t care what your political leanings may or may not be and will leave you alone. I’ve never gotten any racial slurs from them despite often disagreeing or arguing our points and counterpoints. Kind of makes you think, no? No? No one wants to think about that? We all just want to live in ignorance because it makes us feel better if we do? I see…

Why do I do this, have multiple accounts following different political factions? Simple. I want to know what’s going on from the different perspectives of everyone around me. I’ve gone down some pretty interesting rabbit holes over the years due to this. I’ve discovered that the people who are accused of being bad people tend not to be the bad people they’re made out to be… and that the people making those accusations aren’t as good as they’re trying to make themselves out to be.

So, when I looked around that cinema, I wanted to know just what kind of people would come and sit down. It started off with a few people, but more and more entered as the pre-movie advertisements started playing. What kind of people did I see coming to a movie that has zero marketing? Were they Trump supporters? Were they evil “wipopo”? I did see a few people with white skin, yes, but this is Australia we’re talking about. I’m pretty sure none of them care about Trump to begin with. I also saw Pacific Islanders, Africans, and other people with brown skin. I saw different groups of Muslims enter and sit down as well. What I saw in that cinema was a diverse range of people from all kinds of different backgrounds sit down in anticipation to watch Sound of Freedom.

In the car after watching the movie, my parents said they were surprised by how diverse the range of people were. Usually, when we go and see any other kind of movie, the great majority of people you see have white skin with a few people here and there with dark skin. After all, the majority of the people who live in Australia come from European backgrounds, so it’s no wonder you would see more people with lighter skin tones normally.

The comment my dad made was that the people there must have really researched the movie because there was absolutely no marketing for it in Australia. The movie has been out since the 24th of August, yet that cinema was almost full. The only seats not being filled were the first row ones right up against the screen and a few here and there between each group of people. They were not aware of the controversies surrounding the movie at this time.

They then asked me, “How did you come to find out about this movie?” I told them straight up that the communists and the socialists didn’t want me to watch the movie. Therefore, I had to watch the movie to see what it was really about. I described to them all of the accusations thrown at this movie. Calling it full of conspiracies, that only stupid conservatives go and watch this because none of it is real. I told them how that the main events in this movie occurred in 2013 and that back then, these kinds of people were praising the efforts of Tim Ballard. Now, those same people are saying it didn’t happen, it’s conspiracy nonsense, and to stop talking about it.

They were shocked by all the things I was saying. My dad told me flatly that nothing in the movie was religious and nothing in the movie was conservative. He was saddened to hear that there were so many people who were so against this movie. I told him that it’s simple. Conservatives support this movie, therefore anyone who is anti-conservative MUST take the opposite stance. That is how the world is today.

There were no Qanon conspiracy theorists in that cinema. They were a diverse range of different people who did their homework and understood this movie was presenting an important issue.

This movie was not made by Qanon conspiracy theorists. It was made by people who saw an important issue that wasn’t being discussed, about real-life events that were once universally praised long before Qanon was a thing.

So why try to paint the movie as some kind of conspiracy movie?

Because in the mind of these losers, the conservatives must not win anything. The people who are anti-conservative will even burn their own country down to make sure that the people who they believe are conservatives can’t win.

In posting this entry, I’ll be accused of being a conservative. I’m not, but that’s okay. These days, simply exercising somehow makes you a conservative. The reality is that anyone who is not part of the cult ideology is “the other” and “the enemy” and other fun euphemisms one uses to dehumanise others.

My dad told me that he was going to do research about the issues that were presented in the movie. It’s not something he has actively thought about, but now he’s aware. He is a hardworking man who is not an idiot and is not a loser. He will decide for himself whether this movie was full of shit or whether these issues are worth putting his time and effort into doing something about.

And that is as it should be.

People should watch this movie and make up their own minds without being pressured by those who say they know better. I’m especially disgusted by those who would tell me that since I have brown skin, I should listen to those white college educated people from the US like themselves for my own good.

A lot of people on this planet really should begin a path of introspection and ask themselves, “Am I the baddie?” …but I know that won’t happen. And no, it’s not the conservatives I’m talking about, it is all those who are against the conservatives that need to take a hard look at themselves. Those who would gladly destroy their own country and make the lives of others more miserable despite saying that they’re the advocates of those very people.

I told my parents this: “All those people who told me not to watch this movie, the communists and the socialists, they’re the most selfish people in the world because they’ll do anything to get what they think will put them on top. They don’t actually care about other people.”

I agree with what Tim Ballard said in the movie, “Never trust a paedophile.”

Let me add the following: Never trust communists and socialists. They’re never the Robin Hoods they claim to be.

Go see Sound of Freedom. It’s a movie that is worth seeing.

And no, you’re not suddenly a saint because you went to watch this movie. It simply presents you with an issue. After that, it’s up to you what you do with the knowledge that human trafficking and slavery is a bigger problem now than it ever was at any other point in human history.

The movie never pressures you into acting in any way. It simply presents you with the horrible reality in a package that you can consume in a cinema.

The choice is yours what you do with that information. That is all.