Lord, abide with Mel

NB: there’s an update at the end

So this is the latest thing getting the American right excited on Twitter just now… Australia’s greatest export is allegedly making a big documentary about pedophilia in high places. This is fairly new news, the source of which appears to be this guy, who I’ll be charitable and call a crypto dickhead and right-wing fantasist, so who the fuck knows if it’s even true. Of course, right-wing Twitter doesn’t care, cos not only is he allegedly calling out Hollywood, he’s calling out (“the”?) Ukraine as well, and that’ll keep Glorious Leader Putin happy. (I remember when the American right hated Russia. That was within my own lifetime. How things change.) Admittedly they might not like “billionaires” also being targeted cos billionaires are just great, but if it’s the right billionaires (e.g. Bill Gates, George Soros) they’ll be fine with it. The net result has been nonsense like this:

They’re not joking, by the way; it’s a little bit premature, perhaps, to talk about Mel “suiciding” like Jeffrey Epstein for exposing kiddie fiddlers, but that’s the narrative they’re already trying to establish. The number of MAGAt accounts I’ve seen on the bird hellsite asking God to save him is ridiculous; someone really wants to spin the story that Mel is going to become a martyr over this thing, and never mind that there’s currently no proof that it even exists. Some of the “RIP Mel” tweets are a joke, it must be said, but the majority of the ones I’ve seen aren’t.

I did see one person ask a reasonable question…

…to which a few of the responses could be summed up as “well DER Brian, the authorities are part of the problem”. Which sort of begs the further question, if Mel was known by “them” to have all this evidence against them, enough to make a four-part documentary series, why is he still alive? Why haven’t “they” already “Epsteined” him? Of course, if I answered that, the conspiraclowns would just say something about how that just shows it benefits them to let him live or something but they’ll get around it to it when it suits their purposes…

UPDATE a couple of hours after posting: I removed the Gibson quote meme with which I originally ended this. Apparently it’s not real after all. Damn me for failing to heed Abraham Lincoln’s advice about the Internet…

Per Newsweek, the first actual news source I’ve seen discussing this business, it appears the news isn’t exactly as new as it seems, as Mel’s connection to this documentary was first mentioned in January by the guy actually making it, Tim Ballard, an alleged former CIA operative who runs something called Operation Underground Railroad, which may or may not be kind of problematic in how it does its anti-sex trafficking operations, but anyway, Ballard apparently claimed Gibson was involved in this documentary. Newsweek counter by claiming Gibson’s representatives have said “um… no he isn’t?”. There does appear to be some actual connection between Ballard and Gibson, but it also appears that the former has been caught lying about his collaborators at least once before.

SO… it appears that this documentary thing is indeed real (which is the thing I had the most doubts about), but Ballard is the real mover behind it and Gibson’s connection with it seems… tenuous. Almost like he’s just being invoked to hype the thing up and lend some sort of legitimacy to the work of an organisation whose credibility is… less than 100%? I don’t know, everything may actually be above board, but it also doesn’t look like Mel is making anything here. Looks like he’ll be staying alive for a while, anyway…

And look, I hate pedophilia, especially in high places, and I want it stopped as much as anyone. Which should go without saying but there’s always some bad faith cunt who’ll be like “ZOMG James! Why are you opposed to powerful people being prevented from fucking children?” if you don’t, so there you go, clear statement. It’s just that the idea that Mel Gibson would be the one to stop it is something I find faintly ludicrous. Let him start by cleaning up his own church and I might believe it then…