Actor Jim Caviezel, best known for playing Jesus Christ in Mel Gibson's controversial The Passion of the Christ, drew widespread ire online for promoting a bizarre antisemitic QAnon theory at a conference over the weekend.
The actor delivered an online address at the Health and Freedom Conference, a convention for pandemic deniers and QAnon conspiracy theorists.
During his remarks, Caviezel promoted the ludicrous antisemitic QAnon theory "global elites" are harvesting children's blood to create a drug called adrenochrome.
"Globalists" and "global elites" have been used for decades by White supremacist, White nationalist and antisemitic hate groups to refer to Jews.
The adrenochrome claim is one of the central conspiracy theories that animate QAnon adherents, who believe the world is run by a cabal of Satan-worshipping, child sex-trafficking elites whom Donald Trump is working to eradicate.
Adrenochrome is the chemical name for the oxidized form of the hormone adrenaline, used in some countries to treat blood clots. QAnon followers, however, believe it is a psychoactive drug used by elites for Satanic rituals and for its anti-aging properties.
As Caviezel explained in his rambling comments at the Health and Freedom Conference.
"When you're scared, you produce adrenaline..."
"If a child knows he's going to die, his body will secrete this adrenaline."
Therefore, QAnon devotees claim, global luminaries, from Hillary Clinton and French President Emanuel Macron to Hollywood stars like Tom Hanks and Madonna, torture and murder children in order to harvest the adrenochrome created by their terror.
The claims are baseless and preposterous, and rooted in ancient antisemitic tropes about world domination by child-eating Jews, called "blood libel," that originate from the Dark Ages.
Nevertheless, Caviezel is a true believer in the conspiracy.
After promoting the upcoming QAnon-themed movie in which he is starring, Caviezel went on to decry the practice of "adrenochroming" while claiming to have both witnessed and never witnessed such practices.
"It's the worst horror I've ever seen, screaming alone, even if I never ever, ever saw it, it's beyond, and these people that do it, there'll be no mercy for them."
His truly bizarre comments left many on social media somewhere between slack-jawed and angry.
"Adrenochrome" isn't Caviezel's first dalliance with ancient antisemitic tropes.
The Passion of the Christ is widely considered to be an antisemitic film which blames Jews for Christ's execution. Its writer and director Mel Gibson has been at the center of several antisemitic rants and scandals.
