War Propaganda: The Anti-Porn Misinformation Machine Hits A New Low

The anti-porn campaigner Julie Bindel is making outrageous, untrue claims about the monstrousness of adult entertainment – and not for the first time.

We’ve previously discussed the way that the war in Ukraine is being used as an opportunity for self-aggrandisement and narcissistic attention-seeking by the sort of people who like to make everything about themselves. That’s bad, but at least there is some weird honesty involved – even if they are using it for their own ends, I’ve no doubt that most of the people grifting on it really are appalled by the war and believe that they are making some sort of worthwhile contribution. What, though, do we make of veteran anti-porn/anti-sex/anti-trans campaigner Julie Bindel and her claim that “Pornhub has a new category: ‘Ukrainian girls and war rape videos'”? It would be horrific if true – but if it’s something that has been made up, then that seems even more horrible. And indeed, that would seem to be the case.

There is – you won’t be surprised to hear – no “Ukrainian girls and war rape videos” category on PornHub. In fact, if you search for ‘rape’ videos of any sort on PornHub, you’ll get the following warning:

But don’t take my word for it – go ahead and visit the site, check the categories, do a search of that term if you care to (or simply look up ‘Ukrainian’ if the thought of entering that phrase into a search box makes you queasy, as well it might) and see what you get. We might also note that PornHub blocked access to the site for Russian users at the start of the war, which might have been a performative move but one that would surely be rather undermined if they were then so determined to exploit the misery of the situation and the use of rape as a weapon of war by not only listing clips but actually giving them their own category. Given that PornHub is desperately trying to clean up its act in the face of equally dubious claims against it that led to the loss of Mastercard and Visa support, this would seem a very weird move for the company to make.

It is, however, the sort of thing that you’ll believe if you are coming from a position that all porn is abusive and non-consensual and all porn producers, distributors and consumers are morally bankrupt. If Bindel – who likes to use a seemingly endless collection of media outlets to constantly talk about how she has been silenced – is just parroting something that she has been told by fellow anti-porn extremists without checking the facts, then what does that tell us about her journalistic credentials? If, on the other hand, she knows very well that this is not true but is saying it anyway, knowing that it will strike a nerve with people who don’t know any better and who think, naturally, that no one could make something like this up, what does that make her?

Of course, she has some form here. As recently as 2018, she was still claiming to have seen a real snuff movie, even though she has been told time and time again that the film she saw was the entirely fictional Snuff. It’s not a matter of debate that Snuff doesn’t actually show real murder – the entire making of that movie, everyone involved in it and how it was ruthlessly hyped by a cynical distributor is now a matter of record (it has also been shown by FilmFour in the UK and passed uncut by the BBFC). To continue to claim that it shows real murder and then to use that as evidence that the porn industry is routinely killing women for profit is beyond cynical – but as with the Ukraine story, it will resonate with people who want to believe and who will never actually question or do any further research.

Bindel’s latest article appears on the website UnHerd, one of many outlets and individuals that claim to be liberal free speech supporters but which have lurched to the religiously motivated far-right during the pandemic.  This is now her demographic as her more traditional supporters on the left began to distance themselves from her. She’s now She’s a beloved figure amongst reactionary right-wingers and while you might think that it would give her pause for thought, she apparently happily allies herself with these supposed ‘free speech’ warriors who seem increasingly driven by old-fashioned Christian morality and bigotry and who have rather specific ideas about what sort of speech should be allowed. These are the people who have now taken to calling anyone who disagrees with them – on pretty much anything – ‘groomers’ or ‘nonces’, the far-right’s equivalent of left-wingers calling everyone Nazis (and as an aside: perhaps this war shows us what the end result of labelling anyone you have a beef with a Nazi actually can be). It might seem an odd alliance, but then we’ve long argued that the extremes of both sides of the political divide have a lot more in common than they like to believe, including a bloody-minded determination that they know everything and that if you are not with them, you are the enemy and must be treated with the same sort of ruthless aggression that dictators have always treated dissenters and opponents. The RadFem movement – which for years did a good job of positioning itself as the voice of mainstream feminism rather than the extremist fringe movement that it actually is – has always been a reactionary one that is propelled by anger and hatred – and Bindel has been one of its most active voices.

Bindel is an odd choice for anyone who seriously claims to support free speech to support. She has spent her life trying to shut down and silence anything that she personally disagrees with. Demanding that lad’s mags and porn mags alike to pulled from newsagents, supporting an increase in censorship of erotic images, leading protests against the porn industry, campaigning for the outlawing of all forms of sex work… her entire raison d’etre is to shut down ideas and activities that she disapproves of, often using fatuous, unproven (or, worse, disproven) claims to do so. This isn’t a past incarnation – as the Ukraine story shows, she’s still doing it now, and the people who praise her as a free speech champion not only don’t question it, they actually facilitate her and back her – because, of course, they too draw the line for individual liberty at anything to do with sex.

I don’t doubt that she is outraged by the recent turn of events that has seen her labelled as persona non grata because, for decades, her dubious and evidence-free claims about the dangers of sex shops, porn movies, strip clubs and sex work have been accepted without question by everyone from The Guardian to local and national government. It doesn’t seem unfair to say that she is someone who believes herself to be jolly important, and it must be quite a shock to find yourself no-platformed – by younger women at that – after having gone unchallenged for so long. While the very idea of no-platforming and cancel culture makes us instinctively queasy, there is nevertheless some amusement in seeing one of its most vocal proponents finding herself on the receiving end.

DAVID FLINT

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