Jim Caviezel drops in on right-wing conspiracy theorists to spout a lil' conspiracy theory of his own
For most people—i.e., those who didn’t enjoy the actually quite excellent Person Of Interest—Jim Caviezel is probably still best known as Jesus from The Passion Of The Christ. Now, though, Caviezel is apparently launching a dramatic and ambitious career reinvention, seeking to wrest the coveted title of “Worst opinion held by someone involved in making The Passion Of The Christ” from his old friend Mel Gibson. Specifically, Caviezel popped in this weekend to the Health Freedom Summit in Tulsa Oklahoma, a right-wing meeting of the quote unquote minds designed to super-spread a whole lot of really terrible ideas about vaccines, COVID, etc. to everyone involved, in order to add his own particular semi-famous spin to the proceedings. (And, re: the conference: If you want to get a handle on its politics and factual rigor, you don’t have to look much further than the fact that Andrew Wakefield, the man who pretty much single-handedly crafted the old “vaccines cause autism” lie, is one of its most prominently listed speakers.)
Talking to host Clay Clark, Caviezel was ostensibly discussing his new movie about Tim Ballard, the former Department Of Homeland Security agent who’s spent the last decade or so investigating child sex trafficking rings. While talking about the film—including the fact that Ballard was so moved by Caviezel’s performance as Christ himself that he thought he might have the chops to play Ballard, too—Caviezel dropped a delightful little nugget of PizzaGate-style rhetoric into the conversation when he mentioned “the adrenochroming of children.”
For those unfamiliar with this particular expression of dog-whistle-heavy persecution complexes, first: Congratulations! Second: You can check out this primer from Wired on the “theory”, tracing its roots back to the old Jewish blood libel, one of the all-time most persistent bits of paranoid bigotry in human history. The short version is that Caviezel is now convinced that children are being kidnapped and then tortured to death so that a crew of presumably pizza-loving “elites” can harvest their adrenal glands to turn them into drugs.
Obviously, the crowd at the conference absolutely loved this, cheering as Caviezel promised justice for all these people who’ve apparently never heard of, like, cocaine. (It grows out of the ground! No child harvesting required!) Meanwhile, we’re pretty sure Kevin Sorbo and Dean Cain are watching this from some distant and cross-bedecked bunker, muttering “Fuck” as Caviezel’s name immediately jumps to the top of the casting lists for the sort of people who usually make movies with Kevin Sorbo and Dean Cain.