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https://newrepublic.com/article/160488/nick-kristof-holy-war-pornhub
This is a good rundown of the role dull and noxious pompous pundit Nick Kristoff has played in laundering religious right efforts against porn and human sexuality. Pornhub itself is bad, but there's no excuse for bringing the RR closer to power.
This is a good rundown of the role dull and noxious pompous pundit Nick Kristoff has played in laundering religious right efforts against porn and human sexuality. Pornhub itself is bad, but there's no excuse for bringing the RR closer to power.
These are the kind of people engaged in work agains "sex trafficking", and their entire project is less about that and more about looking for backdoors in the power and influence by exploiting an emotionally charged issue.
This is a covert rebranding, these groups downplaying their far right, fascistic beliefs. To an extent it's little more than a huge publicity stunt to further their actual goals of outlawing abortion and eradicating LGBTQ people from existence.
And as has been pointed out numerous times, to them all queer expression IS obscenity and porn. This all builds towards eventually pressuring websites to forbid things like sex ed under the guise of "trafficking". Which itself would lead to everything from pride flags to the-
-term LGBTQ itself being targeted as "pornographic". That may not succeed but that's certainly the goal.
All you need to do is look at the kind of people behind groups like this. Kristof should be asked if he's really okay with aiding the broader efforts of this sort of person.
All you need to do is look at the kind of people behind groups like this. Kristof should be asked if he's really okay with aiding the broader efforts of this sort of person.
They reject the connection despite what's in front of everyone's face. If nothing else that's cause for optimism, as they know their actual major goals are massively unpopular, which is why they're pretending to care about trafficking.
As an aside, I've been of the opinion for a while now that democrats could do some more political demagoguing on these issues. Choice and LGBTQ issues are fairly popular, politically, and the right framing could be a sledgehammer against the vital backbone of the right.
You can see evidence of this dynamic in everything from the GOP fear of openly campaigning against LGBTQ people the way they used to to the pitiful Ross Douthat column against Biden's selection of Xavier Becerra for HHS, in which he's hesitant to admit WHY he opposes him-
-and instead equivocates about "experience" and things like that, while mostly alluding to it with lines like "I know most Americans aren't social conservatives".
They know that most of this stuff is, broadly speaking, a political loser for them.
They know that most of this stuff is, broadly speaking, a political loser for them.
We've seen this in everything from the faux anti-trafficking movement to (perhaps) some dubious people inserting similar talking points in to online discourse about fanfiction, art, etc. See the phenomenon of "antis", "puriteens", and "age gap" discourse about consenting adults.
This is a good incident to study and emulate. Hold people to account for being involved in the religious right shell companies Make them politically and SOCIALLY radioactive. Any involvement should merit scorn and backlash.
Don't let this pathetic rebranding succeed.
Don't let this pathetic rebranding succeed.
As I've noted before, one huge mistake the left made over the past several years was to focus so much of it's energy entirely on the online components of the alt-right, while giving comparatively little attention to the religious right.
Going after the alt-right was good, but it should have been part of a much broader project, especially since we now see the religious right in particular transforming in to the potentially far more dangerous form of QAnon.
Anyone, that's my initial take on this topic/incident.
