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Surprise blockbuster ‘Sound of Freedom’ echoes antisemitic QAnon conspiracies
(JTA) — While “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” have hogged the headlines, an unlikelier blockbuster swept the box office this month: “Sound of Freedom,” a thriller lauded by QAnon conspiracy theorists and high-profile Republicans.
It also draws from a conspiratorial well that includes a number of anti-Jewish canards, including the “blood libel” accusation, while its star, actor Jim Cavaziel, has floated antisemitic theories in interviews promoting the film.
Despite the film’s low budget and independent distributor, “Sound of Freedom” has made over $100 million in its first few weeks, going toe-to-toe with “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” since it opened on July 4. The release date aligned with its patriotic Christian undertones, captured by the protagonist’s solemn line, “God’s children are not for sale.”
In real life, Caviezel, who plays a federal agent rescuing children from sex traffickers, has openly embraced QAnon. Caviezel’s character is based on Tim Ballard, who worked in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security before founding the anti-trafficking group Operation Underground Railroad.
Caviezel is best-known for playing Jesus Christ in Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ,” which stirred accusations of antisemitism when it was released in 2004 — a controversy compounded by Gibson’s antisemitic tirades following its release.
The QAnon movement is largely based on a conspiracy theory that a cabal of progressive elites controls world events and runs a child trafficking ring, harvesting the hormone adrenochrome from children. According to QAnon lore, former President Donald Trump sought to defeat this operation.
“Sound of Freedom” was filmed in 2018, before QAnon gained widespread momentum, and the film never mentions the movement. The story’s traffickers are common criminals, seemingly not part of a shadowy global cabal. Nonetheless, the movie has been celebrated in QAnon message boards for awakening “normies” to the conspiracy.
“The movie is for normies. Done in a way not to be revolting and push newbies away,” said one member of a message board called Great Awakening.
Mike Rothschild — who researches QAnon — said he was not surprised that the film took off with QAnon supporters, who see a global cabal of child snatchers as funded by Jewish money.
“It plays on the same fears and conspiracy theories embraced by that community — that child trafficking is rampant and massively underreported, that the traffickers have connections to high-level people, and that only a few brave patriots are willing to stand up to it,” Rothschild, author of “The Storm is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything,” told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Caviezel attended a QAnon-affiliated conference in 2021. During the event, he said that Ballard could not join because he was “saving children as we speak, because they’re pulling kids out of the darkest recesses of hell right now, in dumps and all kinds of places. The adrenochrome-ing of children.”
The adrenochrome theory has roots in a blood libel canard leveled at Jews since the Middle Ages, said Rothschild. The myth that Jews use the blood of Christian children in rituals was used to justify the torture, imprisonment and murder of Jews for centuries, even taking a role in Nazi propaganda, before it was adopted by QAnon.
Caviezel has also appeared on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast several times, calling QAnon a “good thing” and indulging in antisemitic conspiracies while promoting the film.
In one circuitous interview with Bannon, he said, “It’s like an octopus with arms, many many arms, but you got to go after the head of the octopus. Who is it? The central banks, the [International Monetary Fund], the [European Central Bank], the Rothschild banks? We have a Rothschild pope.”
Rothschild, who is unrelated to the Jewish banking family, said these claims line up with QAnon conspiracies that posit that the Rothschild family owns all of the world’s central banks and controls the Vatican.
“These are conspiracy theories based on centuries of myths and hoaxes about the Rothschilds, which have been shared by some of the most prominent thinkers in the right-wing conspiracy world,” he said.
Ballard, who abruptly exited Operation Underground Railroad shortly after “Sound of Freedom” premiered, has also been scrutinized for his organization’s claims and practices. In 2020, a Vice News investigation found a gap between OUR’s operations and claimed successes, reporting “a pattern of image-burnishing and mythology-building, a series of exaggerations that are, in the aggregate, quite misleading.” According to a Foreign Policy report, after a 2014 OUR sting operation in the Dominican Republic, 26 rescued girls did not receive aftercare and were released in less than a week.
In Utah, the organization was investigated by the Davis County Attorney’s Office for alleged communications fraud, witness tampering and retaliation against a witness, victim or informant, according to Deseret News. The two-year investigation was closed without charges in March.
Ballard has also flirted with conspiracy theories, once entertaining the false viral notion that children were being trafficked through Wayfair, an online furniture retailer.
“I want to tell you this: children are sold that way,” he said in a 2020 video.
Regardless of these controversies, “Sound of Freedom” has found no shortage of high-profile promoters. Donald Trump shared its trailer on his Truth Social platform and hosted a screening of the film on Wednesday. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has pushed QAnon rhetoric online, both praised the movie. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said on Twitter, “Wow. Wow. Wow. GO SEE #SoundOfFreedom.”
Meanwhile, Twitter owner Elon Musk encouraged the film’s free promotion on his website, tweeting at its distributor: “I recommend putting it on this platform for free for a brief period or just asking people to subscribe to support (we would not keep any funds).”
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(New York Jewish Week) — For many generations of New Yorkers, eating a Nathan’s Famous hot dog from their Coney Island flagship location is a staple of summer. The iconic hot dog stand just celebrated its 107th season at the city’s iconic beachside destination.
Nathan’s Famous — which started as a nickel hot dog stand and grew to a franchised business that today has over 350 locations in 12 countries — may be most famous today for its annual Fourth of July hot dog eating contest. It is named for its founder, Nathan Handwerker, a Polish Jewish immigrant who, along with his wife, Ida, opened Nathan’s Famous in 1916, when he was 19.
“It was his life,” Handwerker’s grandson, Lloyd Handwerker, who made a 2014 documentary and wrote an accompanying book about his family history, both titled “Famous Nathan,” told the New York Jewish Week
“He had brilliant instincts about running a business — basic ideas which seem simple, but they work well,” Lloyd said. “Which is keeping the price low, having the quality be great, being a stickler, paying people well and caring about the customer.”
On Sept. 24, 2016, the 100th anniversary of the founding of Nathan’s Famous, New York City co-named the corner of the Surf and Stillwell Avenues Nathan and Ida Handwerker Way.
“Nathan and Ida Handwerker worked together for over 50 years and were part of the few generations who formed the rich Coney Island culture that is now renowned throughout the nation and all over the world,” Lloyd Handwerker’s cousin, William, said at the unveiling event. “It is an honor to celebrate their legacy by memorializing their names on the street corner that houses the original Nathan’s.”
(Lloyd was supposed to give a speech alongside his family, but his father, Sol, died just days before the ceremony.)
Also present that day was Eric Adams, who at the time was Brooklyn Borough President, and Mark Treyger, the Jewish city council member for District 47, which includes Coney Island. “The corner of Surf and Stillwell Avenues in Coney Island is now known as Nathan and Ida Handwerker Way, after the husband and wife team who grew a hot dog food cart into a brand that is known worldwide,” Treyger said at the ceremony.
“The inspiring story of these two immigrants, who came to this country facing an uncertain future, working hard to create a product that means so much to so many, is what the American Dream is all about,” he added.
Handwerker arrived in the United States from Poland in 1912 and took a job as a delivery boy during the week. On the weekends, he sliced rolls at Feltman’s German Gardens, a restaurant in Coney Island — where he met a waitress who would become his wife.
By 1916, the couple had saved $300, enough to open their own, competing hot dog restaurant. They used Ida’s secret spice recipe to make their hot dogs, for which they charged 5 cents — half the price of a dog at Feltman’s.
Considering the low price of the product, customers were skeptical at first, so Handwerker allegedly hired men to wear white coats while eating his hot dogs. The image would lend his business credibility, as customers figured that if doctors were eating the hot dogs, they could, too.
The business grew steadily over the next half century, with Handwerker working 18-20 hours a day cooking food, selling it and running the business. When the company went public in 1968, Handwerker was elected chairman of the board.
“As a grandfather, he was a very sweet, soft guy. I had no idea what kind of boss he was,” said Lloyd. “It’s different for different people, but I found out he was pretty tough. He was a stickler, and he was clearly a perfectionist about everything — about the quality, about the workers.”
As for Ida Handwerker, in addition to creating the recipe for the hot dogs, she was often in the back kitchen, peeling and chopping onions, garlic and potatoes, Lloyd said. “My grandmother, too, my dad said, was also pretty tough in her own way,” he said. “She worked in the business for many, many years alongside [Nathan], especially in the early days. She was a great grandmother, warm and wonderful. But I guess they both came up hard and tough.”
By the time Nathan Handwerker died in 1974 at 81, Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs was a household name. Over the years, the hot dog stand became a favorite for celebrities like Barbra Streisand and Regis Philbin. In 1936, the hot dogs were served at a lawn party hosted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in honor of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.
The Coney Island location was also an essential stop for politicians from City Council members to the president of the United States. “No one can hope to be elected to public office in New York without having his picture taken eating a hot dog at Nathan’s,” former New York Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller once told Handwerker during a campaign visit to Coney Island, according to the New York Times.
Handwerker retired to Florida in 1972, with his son Murray taking over and expanding the business. Nathan’s first hot dog eating contest was that same year.
Lloyd Handwerker, grandson of Nathan Handwerker, founder of ‘Nathan’s’, standing in front of ‘Nathan’s’ restaurant in Coney Island, New York, NY, June 29, 2016. (Johannes Schmitt-Tegge/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Lloyd Handwerker, who was 17 when his grandfather died, began working on his film in the 1980s, and over the course of 30 years he interviewed some 75 friends, family members and associates of Nathan’s Famous. “My grandfather was always telling stories around the dining room table at the holidays and dinners,” he said. “By the time I took a video class and had access to a camera, my grandfather and my grandmother had passed away, but I still thought ‘we should be preserving this history.’”
Though he never worked at Nathan’s Famous, Lloyd, who grew up in a Reform Jewish household in Long Island, said that he has fond memories of visiting his grandparents’ office in Coney Island, as well as celebrating Jewish holidays at their house in Florida. “My grandmother cooked amazingly, so I have a lot of great memories of Passover in particular,” he recalled. Lloyd said that though his grandfather grew up traditionally religious in Poland, he didn’t keep many traditional customs by the time he came to the United States.
And yet, some tenets of Judaism were deeply ingrained in the entrepreneur: Though he didn’t hire a rabbi to certify the kitchen, Handwerker coined the term “kosher-style” for his restaurant, because his hot dogs were made with 100% beef and therefore could be kosher.
Plus, “the one day that the restaurant was closed out of the whole year was Yom Kippur, so it still obviously meant something to him,” Lloyd said of his grandfather.
Nathan’s Famous is now owned by Smithfield, a subsidiary of the Chinese meat and food processing company WH Group. However, the family still owns the original Coney Island building and is the landlord for Nathan’s Famous there.
“As far as his legacy, he was obviously very proud of what he created,” Lloyd said of Nathan. “He was a pretty humble guy, but look at what he did: He came from starvation in Poland, without an education. He didn’t know how to read or write, he was basically illiterate and he built this institution that everyone has a story about. It’s amazing.”
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(JTA) – The Biden Administration’s new point person for combating book bans at school districts and public libraries across the country is a gay, Jewish progressive activist who has served as a government liaison to the Jewish and LGBTQ communities.
The appointment of Matt Nosanchuk comes as the thousands of book challenges nationwide have focused on books with LGBTQ as well as Jewish themes, in addition to works about race. Nosanchuk was named a deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Education’s civil rights office earlier this month. In that role, he will lead training sessions for schools and libraries on how to deal with book bans — and warn districts that the department believes book bans can violate civil rights laws.
An Education Department official recently told the 74, an education news site, that the bans “are a threat to students’ rights and freedoms.”
“I am excited to return to public service to work on behalf of the American people,” Nosanchuk posted to LinkedIn earlier this month. “There is a lot of important work to do!”
The Education Department declined to make Nosanchuk available for an interview. He has already taken heat from conservative outlets, which have pushed the narrative that the books being removed from schools and libraries are too sexually explicit for children. Kayleigh McEnany, the Fox News host who served as Donald Trump’s press secretary, called him a “porn enforcer” on-air.
But his appointment has been celebrated by librarians and book access activists. “This is a step forward for the Biden Administration, who has heard the concerns of parents and taken action, but it is just the beginning,” the National Parents Union, a progressive parental education activist group, said in a statement.
Nosanchuk’s career has largely focused on working with the LGBTQ and Jewish communities. In 2009, after serving in a number of roles in Washington, D.C., Nosanchuk was appointed as the Department of Justice’s liaison to the LGBTQ community — a position he held while Obama was still publicly opposed to same-sex marriage. He later worked on the Obama administration’s opposition to a law barring same-sex couples from receiving federal benefits.
He subsequently served as the White House liaison to the Jewish community during Obama’s second term, and in 2020 was the Democratic National Committee’s political organizer for Jewish outreach and LGBTQ engagement. That same year, he cofounded the New York Jewish Agenda, a progressive policy group that he led until earlier this year.
Nosanchuk’s first webinar in his new role was held Tuesday in partnership with the American Library Association, an organization with which a number of Republican-led states have recently cut ties. He begins his work after a year that has seen several school districts take aim at books focused on Jewish experiences or the Holocaust.
Two weeks ago, a Texas school district fired a middle school teacher reportedly for reading a passage from an illustrated adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary to eighth-grade students. Other schools’ removals of “The Fixer,” a Jodi Picoult novel about the Holocaust and other texts have been likened to Nazi and Stalinist book burnings — comparisons that proponents of the book restrictions reject.
Democratic politicians, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, have accused Republicans of wanting “to ban books on the Holocaust.” A recent Senate hearing on book bans included testimony from Cameron Samuels, a Jewish advocate for access to books, along with numerous references to “Maus,” a graphic novel by Art Spiegelman about the Holocaust that was pulled from a Tennessee middle school curriculum last year.
PEN America, a literary free-speech advocacy group, welcomed Nosanchuk’s appointment.
“Book removals and restrictions continue apace across the country, as the tactics to silence certain voices and identities are sharpened,” the group said in a statement. “Empowering the coordinator to address this ongoing movement is critical.”
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(JTA) — A high school football coach in suburban Cleveland has resigned after his team used the word “Nazi” in addition to racial slurs in its play calling during a game on Friday against a team in a heavily Jewish town.
Tim McFarland, the coach of Brooklyn High School in Brooklyn, Ohio, submitted his resignation Monday and apologized via a statement written by the district, the Cleveland Jewish News reported. Local Jewish groups have also reached out to district officials, who have indicated a willingness to work with them.
Brooklyn was playing the team from Beachwood, a suburb with the second-highest rate of Jewish residents in the country.
The offensive play calls were first flagged by Beachwood’s head coach, Scott Fischer, at halftime, the school’s athletic director told parents in an email after the game.
“During my discussion with Coach Fischer at halftime, we agreed that if these actions continued we would pull our team off the field,” wrote the school’s athletic director, Ryan Peters, as reported by the Cleveland Jewish News. Peters said that McFarland admitted to using the “Nazi” play and agreed to change the name of the play for the game’s second half. The mother of a Beachwood cheerleader told the Cleveland Jewish News they couldn’t hear the offensive language in the stands.
The language was also condemned by the mayor and city council of Beachwood.
It was not the first time in recent memory a high school football team employed antisemitic language in its play calling. In 2021 a Boston-area school was found to have used terms including “Auschwitz,” “yarmulke” and “rabbi” in its own plays for at least a decade, part of what an investigation revealed was a long history of antisemitic and homophobic behavior. That school’s football coach was also fired, and the state of Massachusetts soon passed new laws to require genocide education in high schools in response to that and other antisemitic school sports incidents in the state.
In recent months, Jewish high school sporting events in Miami and Los Angeles were home to alleged antisemitic taunts. Both were alleged to have come in response to antagonistic or even racist behavior by Jewish students, according to local reports. Another high school in the Sacramento area is investigating reports that four students made Nazi salutes on social media earlier this month.
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