BUDAPEST, Hungary — One of Europe’s leading right-wing publications, the European Conservative, published an editorial this week claiming that “anti-porn activists have essentially won the public argument that pornography is poisoning our society” and calling for a total porn ban.
The editorial titled “Porn Culture Has Our Girls by the Throat,” was penned by right-wing Canadian author Jonathon Van Maren, who serves as communications director for the anti-abortion Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform. Van Maren writes that he has been “speaking to students about pornography” for over a decade.
Most of Van Maren’s argument hinges on his beliefs that only cis straight men watch pornography, and that a supposed epidemic of sexual “choking” — based on anecdotal evidence and similarly sensational editorials — is exclusively the result of these men imitating what they watch.
Van Maren also cites counselors working for transphobic author J.K. Rowling’s Edinburgh charity, Beira’s Place, who reported that “sexual violence has become normalized” and that strangulation and “breath play” have become “ubiquitous” in porn and in real people's sex lives. One counselor asserted, “We have allowed pornographers and the porn industry to write these sex scripts for us.”
Van Maren’s proposed solution is the same as that of the architects of Project 2025 in the United States: criminalization of all adult content.
Over the past decade, he states, “anti-porn activists have essentially won the public argument that pornography is poisoning our society. Legislators on both sides of the Atlantic agree that something must be done about this while disagreeing strenuously on what that might look like. The reality, however, is that nothing will change if we do not consider bold steps. After reviewing mainstream pornography, a government-appointed French commission advocated prosecuting pornographers. The time has come to begin discussing how we can ban pornography.”
Van Maren’s message to conservative libertarians concerned about state censorship is the following: “When the stories of young girls being strangled by their porn-fueled partners cross your TV screen, don’t look away. Turn up the volume. You might not like the story, but you helped write the script, too. We accepted pornography as a cultural norm, and now porn culture has our girls by the throat.”
The Budapest-based European Conservative regularly publishes extravagant praise for Hungary’s strongman Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who is widely characterized as anti-democratic, anti-free-speech and dictatorial. The publication also has close ties to the far-right Italian think tank Nazione Futura, which is connected to the neofascist Brothers of Italy party of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.