Notes in the Margins: On Nathan Robinson's Failed Prophecies and the Imagination of OnlyFans
In the ninth installment of "Notes in the Margins", R.C. Robert discusses the debacle surrounding Nathan J. Robinson and the recent ban on OnlyFans
The first time I had any crossover with Mr. Robinson's work was in his article How to End up Serving the Right. It was sent to me in response to my article Wearing Your Sunglasses at Night: Being a Radical in America, where I made the mistake of having included Glenn Greenwald as one of the few radicals we had in America, according to the sender. And thus, Nathan J. Robinson was evoked, like a poltergeist; a favored demagogue of this particular person. But as Karl Kraus said, "The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so they believe they are clever as he." And boy, did this sender think they were clever.
I am a rather aural reader; that is, as I read words, I hear the words in a particular way, like people who play music hear the notes that they see on the page. And when I first read Robinson's article, I heard a sound much like the screeching of a rabbit as it is being torn apart by an owl. From the beginning hook to the ending paragraph, I got a sense of someone who uses their writing as advertisement; to yell hineni, hineni!, rather than tell us anything.
The fact anyone takes Nathan Robinson seriously is beyond me. Exempli gratia, when someone, at the old age of 28, decides to write a memoir, we should be wary. Only overgrown egos get that tired, that soon in life. But that the premise of that memoir is--apparently a firmly believed conviction of the author--that a 'future self' came back and told his 'present self' of these things, suggests the haze of unearned arrogance. You can read it yourself, if you have time to waste. I would only want a physical copy for the satisfaction of throwing it into a fire.
But the drama surrounding Mr. Robinson, known by some as NJR, has both everything and nothing to do with his writings. I will not recount the chronology of events, from the first Tweet from the disgruntled to Robinson's recent statement. You can look at those things on your own. I want to look at what this means, Robinson's entire debacle; why is it we reacted to alleged--oh, the word of lawyers--hypocrisy so swiftly and so coarsely? In a society that lives on an almost sublime, Victorian sense of janus bifrons, what makes us on the Left so sensitive to it? Where are the people like Glen Greenwald, Adolph Reed, and Noam Chomsky, who sang a paean of praise for Robinson, which he still displays on his personal website?
One could relate this directly to Mr. Robinson. One might argue he is a bit too aggressive, a tad too mean and polemical; a friend of mine said he was "often mocking" others. And this would be true, if it weren't for the far better practitioners of polemics that exist. This may be a personal delusion, though--after all, if someone as sheepish as Robinson is too mean, I must already possess a troupe of dancers, waiting to dance on my grave when the time comes.
Rather, I would relate this child-like hostility--akin to a playground bully--to the fact that the Left is in a state of dependency; that is, it believes in its representatives more than itself. They are not a movement with leaders, but rather followers in need of a leader. Every time one of these representatives contradicts themselves, acts in a ridiculous manner, or 'disappoints' the digital illiterates, they get stupid. They are army ants, walking in a circle until they die, because they don't have a queen. The Left, when it is not cannibalizing, is in a death spiral, awaiting the smell of comforting pheromones. Their pupils are either constricted with blood lust, or wide with fear.
Robinson's fall has left this 'mocking' writer with blood on his lips, and the sharks have been alerted. We fear harm to our lèse-divinitè, these practitioners of homiletics, because we are reminded that the opinions we accept--without thought--are mere hot air; the only thing that gives them power is us.
As for the situation itself, I have only two thoughts: one, the observer ought to hold to H.L. Mencken's definition of evil; namely, "It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake." When looking at Robinson, and his statement about the situation, one ought to be wary. He is, after all, trying to save his career. Given his statement oscillates between proclaiming a 'good' intention of trying to hire a woman of color, only to then say he then was firing people merely to 'reorganize', to then say that all of this was "not a good idea", to then saying that he was removing people to have "a full refresh"...you see it, I hope. My rule is this; if someone gives you multiple reasons, they are searching for the one you want to hear. Robinson's account is verbalizing that he is squirming under the pressure.
On the other hand--hypocrisy or not--one must ask if this creature of poor argument--and poorer éclat--is obligated to give in to a worker's cooperative. I could plead with you for a forgiving relativity; to suggest people must have room to change their minds, and thus Robinson has. As I am not even sure people can change, however, I want to take a more prejudiced position. Personally, I think seeing an anarchist betray themselves reveals that a little bit of intelligence is left. I do not see any obligation by someone, having begun an organization, to turn it over to a cooperative. A cooperative, mind you, is not a union; it is not about the protection of the rights of the worker. It is about sharing power within an institution. It is about ownership. As Robinson noted, in a footnote, he doesn't "...believe that the admin and business side should be able to outweigh me on stuff related to the editorial content of the magazine…" And I sympathize with this; being the editor of Ferocia Animi, I would never share power with a cooperative in the area of editorial decisions. This has been my project, my vision, my beliefs. Hypocrisy or no, Robinson ought not give up his power.
I must say, though, I am still surprised that Robinson ran into this debacle; after all, you would have thought his future self might have warned him about this.
Right?
***
A funny misanthrope is a beautiful gem, and I hoard them like a dragon; one such comic hater of we homo sapiens is Karl Kraus. In one of his many quick-witted observations, he wrote that sexual intercourse with a woman was sometimes a good substitute for masturbation. The only issue--he adds--is that it requires an awful lot of imagination. Such an observation can be applied, I am sure, to all people, be they ladies, gentlemen, or fluids, and so reflects the appeal of pornography. Since the beginning of civilization--and not a moment before--we have had pornography. In its more recent form, as literature and entertainment, pornography was once a pleasurable verboten of the middle class. As time passed from the Victorians to now, pornography has found itself a recurring symbol of the lower classes, of the disgusting, depraved, and deplorable.
In our postmodern era, pornography is more a pillar than the moss stuck to it. It is the staple of dunamis of cyberspace. Every discussion of the Internet up until about the 1990's by the likes of Alexander Cockburn, Christopher Hitchens, and others, was something almost idealistic; everyone thought the Internet would subvert the hegemonic discourse they believed crushed their beliefs. Now, any discussion of the Internet must include references to pornography; perhaps cyberspace did not just subvert hegemonic discourse, but all discourse. And it did it dressed in the most low-budget manner.
This brings us to the situation we have today; the platform OnlyFans has announced it will not allow pornographic content after October. To the popolaccio, this will inevitably set off one of two reactions; the first, which we are seeing now, is humor. Everyone from Stephen Fry to your local neighborhood podcaster has made a joke about being 'unable to post pics of [insert explicit fetish here] anymore'. After about the fifth rendition of this joke, I felt I had earned the right to start smacking people upside the head with anything heavy.
The second reaction is just as predictable, and has yet to begin; we will see a fight between various puritans over the function and morality of pornography. And this will, invariably, lead to a moral panic. Some people will say the rights of sex workers are being infringed. Others will say the platform is respecting the rights of women to not be objectified. Libertarians will crawl out from their basements to talk in defense of porn in the name of free expression, and *not* because they enjoy this particular commodity. The libertines, a slightly more bearable group, will evoke the long-lost age of 'free love', to everyone's collective groan. And the conservative will find themselves in a dilemma. They can support the godless libertines and the god-damned libertarians in the name of 'free speech'. Or they take up arms with the equally godless TERF feminists and god-damned social justice warriors and agree with them that women ought not be doing porn. Their motive, of course, is different; they think women ought to be mothers and in the kitchen.
While the political wires are being crossed in America, most people will become hysterical; they're coming for the porn! Most people lack any grasp on history, and so do not realize that porn has yet to ever actually be banned. As Gore Vidal wrote in his article titled Pornography:
"Ever since our Puritan republic became a gaudy empire, pornography has been a big business for the simple reason that when freedom of expression is joined with the freedom to make a lot of money, the dream of those whose bloody footprints made vivid the snows of Valley Forge is close to fulfillment and that happiness which our Constitution commands us to pursue at hand."
Free expression has a place in America when it can make someone money, and never beyond that cross-section. And there, the real fear comes forth. For those paying attention, this change by OnlyFans was made by Mastercard and Visa; 'banks', as the media calls them in their reports. The intersection of money and puritanism has made its first appearance on our stage; to make people obey, money will be offered. The soul will be bought, dirty and tarnished as they might be, for the sake of an indulgence. I must say, it is an odd change in atmosphere of our late stage capitalist market; no one would expect a business to pay another business to restrict itself.
What this means for the fate of OnlyFans is hard to speculate; part of this seems, to me, to be a charade. Mastercard and Visa had withdrawn support for PornHub recently due to accusations of videos of underaged, disturbing, and non-consensual videos being allowed. Purchasing OnlyFans, or giving them capital, would seem like a slap in the face to their PR move. Given the nature of OnlyFans' content, it would seem that they are merely finding a new revenue stream of a pornographic nature. They might implement these changes, and then 'in response to market forces'--as the saying goes--change back to how it was, appease the horny but lonely youth. I assume this will be so, or at least they will allow it later, in slow increments.
Part of this might be genuine; that is, as genuine as a dog chasing cars. They genuinely want to follow this trend, if only to indulge their desire to follow the money. As social justice discourse becomes a more permanent aspect of our culture, it is finding itself embedded in our economics. People want their products to mirror their cultural tastes, be they inherited tastes or popular tastes. How does the youth view pornography? In one word, 'problematic'. That which blatantly expresses domination, degradation, or degeneracy bothers the youth of the Fidélean Republic, and pornography is derived from the human imagination. All that is domineering, degrading, and degenerate has come from our imagination.
And sex requires an awful lot of imagination, doesn't it?