Conspiracist MAGA Influencers Are Posting a Lot Less About Human Trafficking These Days

For years, adherents of the pro-Trump QAnon movement and MAGA influencers in its orbit spread unhinged conspiracy theories about human trafficking and the sexual exploitation of children by powerful liberal elites. Many believed that Trump was engaged in a secret war with this cabal of predators and would eventually bring them to justice. But with Trump back in the White House, those known for sowing fears of a trafficking epidemic have significantly scaled back any mention of it.

A new joint social media study from Montclair State University’s Center for Strategic Communication and its Global Center on Human Trafficking reveals that from the start of this year through July 20, a selection of prominent MAGA accounts on X featured 64 percent fewer posts about trafficking than during the same period in 2023. That year, the paper notes, was “the highest volume year of trafficking posts among online conservative voices.” Authors Daniela Peterka-Benton, academic director of the university’s Global Center on Human Trafficking, and communications professor Bond Benton also tracked a “79 percent reduction in the total volume of human trafficking posts in the studied accounts between 2023 and 2025.”

It’s not immediately clear why trafficking peaked as an issue for the online right in 2023, though Peterka-Benton tells Rolling Stone that the hit movie Sound of Freedom, which pulled in conservative audiences, could have been a factor. “While the film overtly embraces a range of trafficking myths, it is not possible to say that it was overtly a QAnon movie,” she says. “That said, QAnon advocates and QAnon-adjacent accounts so completely embraced the film that the perception became that the movie was an endorsement of QAnon specifically and myths about trafficking generally.”

“The movie shows forced abduction as the primary route by which trafficking happens, when such cases are actually rare,” Benton says. “As QAnon-adjacent voices have spread fear that kidnappers are taking people from shopping mall parking lots and playgrounds, the film’s success presented an opportunity to amplify many such myths.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/conspiracist-maga-influencers-posting-lot-201847978.html