Tennessee Antifa influencer, actor arrested on child sex crime charges

A man in East Tennessee was in court on Thursday after he was charged with child sex crimes and conspiring to sexually abuse a young girl. Joseph Brandon, an actor in film and television, saw his home raided amid accusations that he had partnered with a Michigan man to create sexual abuse material. Brandon is also an Antifa influencer who sells t-shirts emblazoned with the words "I am Antifa mother f*cker."

The alleged plot involved posing "as a young girl on social media to trick another young girl into sharing nude photos," per WBIR. Accused co-conspirator Michael Bledsoe's home in Haslett, Michigan, was also searched by the FBI. Court documents reveal that the duo used the messaging app Kik to coordinate their plan to "befriend a girl on Snapchat by pretending to be a girl around her age, and he would use the friendship to try and get sexually explicit images."

Brandon, who wrote a book on parenting, is also revealed to have admitted, per court documents, "to pulling this same scheme for other men he met online." He also said "he had success in getting child pornography from other minors." He was linked to five separate Snapchat profiles, which were used to talk to minors. It was during the search of Beldsoe's Michigan home that Brandon's involvement was discovered. 

Brandon is an Antifa activist and leftist social media influencer, Andy Ngo writes, who has made videos against Christians and has urged others to kill Proud Boys. He's also called for direct actions against churches that do not affirm trans and queer ideology and believes that being friends with a Republican is equivalent to being a Nazi.

He spoke out against child exploitation on TikTok and also hosts a YouTube channel. He describes his show "Overthinking Everything" as being about "exploring [his] journey through Toxic White Southern Culture."

"We should be protesting at churches," he said in a video, "we should be protesting at churches who will not pledge to be open and affirming." In that video, he says that "We need to look at churches who will not make a pledge to welcome and love everyone. I don't care what faith, doesn't matter, this is not a thing against Christianity, this is a thing against religion, all religions. And if they can't be open and affirming to all of their creator's people, then those churches, those religions don't need to exist they all need to evolve out.

"In fact," he goes on, "religion itself needs to evolve out but not everybody's ready for that. Because some people can reject religion but embrace their spirituality. Abnegation from religion brings about a stronger spirituality." 

"Look for the churches in our communities that fly an American flag," he states, claiming that "those are not churches or religious institutions, they are nationalist organizations. What do you worship? God or a flag? In a civilized society, we decide, we the people, what is sacrosanct, what is the holiest of holy, and in America that has become flags, songs, poems, ideals of blind loyalty, people. Sacrosanct, to me, are ideals. They're ideals that no matter how bad we want to abandon our humanity, we don't."