The dark reason behind why so many people are suddenly posting about sex trafficking

TW: involves discussion of sex trafficking, anti-Semitism, violence, and child abuse.

You may have noticed an uptick recently on social media of people posting about sex trafficking. It could be for a good reason, that they’re now becoming aware of a systemic problem that many of us have been warning about for years. [I remember 10 years ago, many InterVarsity college fellowships ran awareness campaigns about modern-day slavery and trafficking. I’ve also learned from experts that sex trafficking is a major problem here in Central Pennsylvania, where a large number of truck stops create a demand for prostitution into which many vulnerable women are forced. There’s also evidence to suggest that ICE detention centers have become hotbeds of sexual assault by the guards, and that some children of immigrant parents have been trafficked after being separated at the border from their parents. And of course, many refugees seeking to come to the United States are fleeing sexual violence and human trafficking in their home countries, only to be refused entry and end up trafficked anyway! Human trafficking is truly a massive, global problem that many non-profits and agencies have been fighting for decades, often with little support or funding.]

However, the recent uptick in posts about sex trafficking may have a much darker background–many of these posts are implicitly or explicitly part of the ongoing Qanon conspiracy theory, which says that everyone in Hollywood and the Democratic party are actually secret satanic pedophiles who eat children. Qanon believes that Donald Trump is actually God’s messiah, and one day soon he will suspend democracy, arrest these Democrats, and have them all executed for treason-and that that’s a good thing! Anyway, in recent weeks Qanon was facing a crackdown on Twitter, and so decided to skirt the ban and spread their message by hijcking the hashtag “save the children” and lure well-intentioned people looking to spread awareness about sex trafficking into learning more about Qanon. Thus, a word of caution: before sharing that viral post about pedophilia or sex trafficking, you need to make sure that it is actually supporting a worthy cause and not unintentionally promoting a Qanon account.

Why is Qanon so dangerous? Read on below…

Qanon is just the most recent manifestation of an ancient anti-Semitic trope, one that has historically manifested itself during times of economic and social disruption. Early Jewish converts to Christianity were accused by the Romans of eating human flesh and blood when they partook in the Eucharist. During the Middle Ages, the ancient blood libel took on new root, as Christians accused Jews of kidnapping their babies and using their blood as part of ritualistic sacrifices. The hoax text, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, was written at the end of the 19th Century to further suggest the themes of blood rituals, as well as arguing that there is a secret Jewish cabal that controls the media, government, and society. None other than Adolf Hitler used these theories in his propaganda as he sought to overthrow liberal democracy in Germany.

In the 1980s, the accusation that people are kidnapping children and using them in satanic rituals became widespread in the United States as part of the panic around day care centers. Conservative/reactionary forces in American society didn’t trust day care centers, since they were a vehicle that enabled women to join the workforce instead of staying at home with the kids. A vast number of parents collectively made up stories about a literal underground series of tunnels built beneath day care centers; little children were coerced into confessing that they had been victims of heinous crimes. All of the accused were later proven innocent, and the mass hysteria subsided–but not before embedding itself in the American consciousness.

Enter Qanon. In the fall of 2017, a secret internet user known as Q introduced themselves as someone high in the US government with secret information. In a series of posts on the dark web, Q promised that within a matter of weeks, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and a large number of other leading government figures would be arrested, convicted of treason, and executed by Donald Trump. As weeks dragged into months, and then years, Qanon’s promises and timelines kept shifting, but not before spawning a whole new American religion centered around Donald Trump as a man sent by God to fight against evil. In an eerie resemblance to the arguments that Hitler made, Qanon believes that our entire country is secretly controlled by a cabal of Jewish and Democratic elites who use their power to commit satanic, ritualistic acts of pedophilia and child sacrifice. In addition to these core beliefs, Qanon believers pick and choose among a vast array of related theories. Some believe that there’s a video out there of Hillary carving a child’s face with a knife. Some believe that Obama, Clinton, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and others have already been executed and that the people we see today are just clones. Some Qanon believers promoted the idea that furniture supplier Wayfair was actually shipping children in its boxes (with the inevitable result that actual sex trafficking phone hotlines were overwhelmed by calls from people telling them about this fake story). Qanon followers have committed murders and acts of domestic terrorism in their misguided belief that they’re helping Donald Trump fight these satanic enemies. During COVID, Qanon believers thought that the NYC hospital tents in Central Park were just a cover-up to rescue children from sex slavery in underground tunnels. Other Qanon believers think that Michelle Obama is secretly a man.

What pisses me off in particular is that a large number of Qanon believers are conservative evangelical Christians who link Qanon’s wild theories into their (poorly developed) pre-existing theology. A whole cottage industry of self-proclaimed “prophets” exist who read Q’s writings side-by-side with the Bible, trying to find connections. In fact, I only started researching Qanon a couple of years ago once I discovered that a number of people I had grown up going to church with were following Qanon after getting sucked in by a man named Mark Taylor. Mark Taylor is a self-proclaimed prophet who believes Donald Trump is God’s chosen man to kill liberal evildoers and hold off the End Times for at least a few years. He has even started an online Qanon church, where people log on to hear him teach about Q and pray for Q’s will to be done in this country. At this point Qanon has stopped being just a conspiracy theory and has entered the realm of religion-the most “American” religion one can imagine.

And it doesn’t just end there–at this point over 32 self-proclaimed Qanon believers are running for political office this fall, including at least 20 members of the US Congress! (Donald Trump just tweeted his support for one of them, and in fact he’s re-tweeted dozens of Qanon accounts over the past 2 years). Thus Qanon is not just some fringe belief; this is bringing a deeply anti-Semitic, anti-democratic ideology into the very halls of power. I am not exaggerating when I say that if Donald Trump proclaimed himself dictator and arrested/executed all the Democrats, millions of Qanon-believing Americans would eagerly support him, grateful that at last some justice was coming to the people they think are satanic pedophiles. What a scary thought!

Now, given that sex trafficking really does exist and we should be raising awareness about it, how can one do that without unintentionally promoting Qanon? Here are a few suggestions:

First, don’t spread Qanon posts. There are a number of key words and phrases that Qanon followers use in their hashtags and rantings. If you see any of these phrases or hashtags, run far away! “Where We Go One We Go All” (abbreviated WWG1WGA), Pizza, Pizzagate, Pedogate, anything about “The Cabal”, The Storm is upon us, From Dark to Light, “Out of the shadows,” “Their symbolism will be their downfall”, Adrenochrome, Tom Hanks, Hollywood, “going down the rabbit hole,” being “red pilled”, George Soros, Rothschild, Globalists… the list goes on and on. In fact, I think for the next little while we should all be hesitant to share any posts about pedophilia or sex trafficking that does not come from a verified news organization or nonprofit. Of course, even if it’s a legitimate news story, Qanon believers find ways to spread their crap. Just last week, an Associated Press article about a $35 million Trump administration grant to organizations that house trafficking survivors became one of the most-shared stories on Facebook, after QAnon groups picked it up and cited it as evidence that President Trump’s secret crusade against elite pedophiles was underway.

Secondly, please tell your friends that real anti-trafficking activists hate the recent Qanon posts that are disrupting their activism. Interviews with these activists reveal that they’re angry because they had worked for years to expose facts about child trafficking, only to see them distorted and misused by partisan opportunists. Moreover, in addition to clogging anti-trafficking hotlines, QAnon believers threaten to infect the anti-trafficking movement’s bipartisan credibility by injecting it with a rabid version of Trumpism.

Third, know the facts about sex trafficking. Like most crimes in our world, the truth about sex trafficking is much less salacious than QAnon would have you believe. Similar to rape and murder, most sex trafficking victims are trafficked by relatives, teachers, romantic partners, or other people they know. Trafficking usually doesn’t involve kidnapping or physically forcing minors into sex. “This is not happening in some secret cabal. It’s happening in every single community,” says Lori Cohen, the executive director of ECPAT-USA, an anti-trafficking organization. “But it’s easier to focus on public figures than to think about the reality that trafficking is happening in our midst, among people we know, to children we know.” Of course, there are some examples of big name sex predators, like Jeffrey Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell. But even in that case, it wasn’t Qanon who broke that story, it was a mainstream media reporter for the Miami Herald. Qanon is just a cult seeking to cash in on people’s desire to protect children.

Fourth, don’t look to Donald Trump to magically solve the problem of sex trafficking. With the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist myself, Donald Trump is suspected to have quite a few skeletons in his closet, from his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, to his sending best wishes to sex predator Ghislaine Maxwell after she was arrested, to the inappropriate looking and touching he did in locker rooms with underage women at pageants, to the 8 abortions he’s rumored to have paid for, to the 19 women who accused him of sexual assault, to the covered-up lawsuit that he raped a 13-year old girl at Jeffrey Epstein’s house. Even if 0 of these accusations are true, it is still foolish to pin hope on any one president to end a social justice problem that has existed since the beginning of time. The actual hard work of fighting human trafficking is often at the local level and far less glamorous than Qanon theories might suggest.

Fifth, stop falling into performative allyship and instead supporting actual organizations who have doing the work of fighting sex trafficking for decades. Check out International Justice Mission (founded by an InterVarsity alum), A21, Shared Hope International, and Polaris Project, to name a few of the bigger ones. If you actually care about fighting trafficking, click on those links, sign up for their email lists, share their social media posts, and make a donation of whatever amount you can afford right now. Otherwise, just admit that you’d rather share unsourced posts on social media than do the actual hard work of fighting for social justice.

Sixth, support government policies and politicians who will actually do the hard work of fighting sex trafficking. Here’s a few concrete ideas: end the ICE detention centers that are hotbeds of sexual abuse. End Trump’s policy of child separation that has led many immigrant children to be trafficked after being separated from their parents. Massively increase the number of refugees and immigrants that are allowed in to the United States, as many of them are fleeing sexual violence and trafficking in their home countries. Increase government funding for transnational NGOs and efforts to fight human trafficking; instead of cutting funds to the UN, the US should strategically increase our funding to support efforts that fight child slavery and human trafficking in countries around the world. I could go on and on.

Finally, we need to do something to fight Qanon. It is actively tearing families apart, and there is now a 15,000 person support group on Reddit of people who’s loved ones fell prey to the evil ideology of Qanon. Their stories are harrowing: “No longer speaking with my mother,” one user wrote. “Thanks a lot, Q.” “My wife was arrested as a result of Q,” another posted. One user recounted how her husband had fallen deep into the QAnon rabbit hole. “I can’t talk to him because he just shouts over me,” she wrote. “I miss him so much and am so lonely now.” However, like any bad ideology, shaming and making fun of people who believe Qanon doesn’t actually work to lead people out of it. Instead of just making jokes or wagging our finger, there are a few concrete steps that we can take. On the preventative side, we need to be addressing these topics and making sure that people are loved and supported. If people are loved and cared for, and have a real hope that there is some good in this world, they are far less likely to fall into the Qanon cult. Next, don’t panic. If your friend or loved one posts something that sounds like it’s from Qanon, ask them first out what they believe exactly. It may be that they’re just exploring this ideology and haven’t yet been totally “red-pilled”. Next, we should support social media platforms when they ban Qanon and other fake information. If someone cares so much about free speech, they can start their own blog site like I have, but they should not be free to spout lies that promote violence on a site where it can be easily spread. Lastly, in the end, someone is deeply embedded in Qanon, the key is to set healthy boundaries for your own emotional health, but to otherwise keep asking questions, keep poking holes in the theory and its inconsistencies, and finally just pray that one day they will wake up and see the truth about Qanon. As I think back to Qanon’s ideological predecessors in Nazi Germany and in the Middle Ages, I shudder to think what could happen if this new cult is not firmly shut down, and soon.