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.”
The sharp decline in feverish content about trafficking, some of which sucked people into the QAnon misinformation ecosystem with seemingly well-intentioned but exploitable slogans like #SaveTheChildren, began last year, before Trump’s second term. But the remarkable shift comes into focus as Trump continues to fend off questions about his association with the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, after his Justice Department and the FBI released a short memo announcing that no new disclosures about his trafficking of underage girls was forthcoming. The president, when asked on Monday about potentially pardoning Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted for sex trafficking, said that he was “allowed” to do so. Maxwell has appealed to the Supreme Court to overturn her conviction, with her attorney also directly calling on Trump to act. She has also offered to testify before Congress about Epstein in exchange for clemency.
Even as right-wingers clamor for the release of more material on Epstein, they seem to have turned a blind eye to the broader topic of trafficking. Of the far-right accounts Peterka-Benton and Benton analyzed, including those of Pizzagate promoter Jack Posobiec, conspiracist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, anti-LGBTQ podcaster Matt Walsh, and Donald Trump Jr., not one mentioned this month’s cuts to the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, which made headlines throughout the mainstream press. It’s an indication, the authors say, that this group has never addressed the problem of trafficking in responsible or realistic terms, instead using it to whip up panic and grow their audiences.
“Domestically, programs for prevention and support for survivors have been defunded under the guise of stopping DEI and ‘woke’ programs,” Peterka-Benton says, noting that marginalized groups are at the greatest risk of being trafficked. “This would appear to confirm what we have argued for a number of years — that there’s no real interest in engaging with the problem of human trafficking from these voices. They appear more interested in fake and artificial messages about trafficking that incite panics but do little in relation to the problem.”
The study also revealed a possible reason for the disappearance of trafficking as a concern discussed on major MAGA accounts: the posts don’t the same traction they once did. For example, Greene’s most viewed post on human trafficking in 2023, compared to her most recent post about it, reflected a 97 percent decrease in visibility, Benton and Peterka-Benton found. The effect was similar for posts from Posobiec and conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich, “suggesting reduced interest/engagement from their audiences on the subject,” they wrote.
Another possibility, Benton points out, is that the panic over trafficking led to destructive personal feuds, diminishing its appeal as a weaponized idea. “Accusing opponents of trafficking has been a unifying message among the influential accounts we evaluated,” he says. That tactic can lead to individuals on the same side of the political spectrum using the smear against one another. That may have “reduced interest in putting out content related to trafficking” over time, Benton says. “When calling everyone you don’t like a ‘trafficker,’ the context can become a circular firing squad very quickly.” X owner Elon Musk, who temporarily revived the Pizzagate sex trafficking conspiracy theory in 2023, demonstrated as much following his public blowup with Trump when he claimed that the president was named in documents related to the Epstein case and was therefore blocking their release.
Peterka-Benton says that even if MAGA has moved on from its paranoid and “absurd” fantasies about white children being snatched from public spaces by a cabal of traffickers, lasting damage has been done. “Trafficking is typically the result of broader injustice, and QAnon has greatly hindered efforts to remedy and combat those injustices,” she says. “Instead, we’ve been given a version of trafficking that looks much more like the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. Trafficking is about the real experiences of vulnerable people. The self-serving approach whereby trafficking becomes a cudgel to be used against enemies will have unfortunate consequences for many years to come. And victims will experience those consequences most acutely.”
