Radical Right-Wing Lawyer Fights With Revenge Porn Site On Twitter -- Everyone Wins

It's a legal conflagration that makes you want to cast a pox on both houses and curl up in the fetal position and pray for humanity.

Winston Churchill once said, “If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.”

This quote springs to mind when confronted with the ongoing legal tussle over the “revenge porn” site Pinkmeth.com. As vile as that business may be, the intrepid attorney battling to shut it down has an ally with a reprehensible past of his own — like fronting an organization recognized by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a bona fide hate group. It’s a legal conflagration that makes you want to cast a pox on both houses and curl up in the fetal position and pray for humanity.

But in the wake of the latest lawsuit filing, the two sides took to Twitter to lower the debate with public sniping.

Just like that, it’s the rest of us that win….

UPDATE (7/10/14 4:37 p.m.): The attorney involved in this suit, Jason Lee Van Dyke, has drafted a response to my post, which you can read on page 3. If you’ve already read this post, you can jump directly to page 3 here.

If you want to check out Pinkmeth yourself, (1) you’re awful and (2) you probably can’t. Pinkmeth resides in the so-called “dark Internet” — the world of Tor. Tor was originally sponsored by the military for stuff like spying and democracy promotion in oppressive regimes. Now it basically just lets people do all sorts of illegal s**t on the Internet — from kiddie porn to hiring hitmen. It also protects the anonymity of Pinkmeth’s majordomo.

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Attorney Jason L. Van Dyke is intent on bringing down Pinkmeth, which is an awesome idea. He’s also a commenter at Above the Law, so we support our loyal reader in this endeavor. He filed a lawsuit in Texas in June naming both Pinkmeth and Tor itself.

Without further ado, here’s the Twitter fight between Van Dyke, whose handle is the descriptive @MeanTXLawyer and whose profile describes him as “quite possibly the meanest and most right-wing lawyer in Texas,” and PinkMeth:

Glorious. The lawyer standing up for aggrieved women is calling the other side a “pussy.”

This isn’t the first battle the two had over Twitter:

So maybe “never… been accused” was a bit of a reach. Still, the charges were dismissed. And how can we doubt the good and respectful intentions of someone who tosses around “pussy” as an epithet?

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What lawyer would represent Pinkmeth?

Hmmm. That doesn’t sound right. And indeed it isn’t. You see, the recent lawsuit was served on Pinkmeth — who operates anonymously, remember — via the address they list on their website: Bristow Law PLLC. Except Bristow Law probably isn’t their real lawyer since its principal, Kyle Bristow, is a recognized leader in the anti-revenge porn movement. In fact, Pinkmeth is using a picture of Bristow as its avatar. And he’s good friends with Van Dyke. Here’s a review of Bristow’s book written by Van Dyke.

So what does Pinkmeth mean about “their lawyer” only respecting requests from white, blonde women? Well, Kyle Bristow has a bit of a past, what with the whole fronting an organization recognized as a hate group. You see, in his younger days, Bristow ran the Michigan State chapter of the conservative Young Americans For Freedom, and they smooth disowned him over his actions, which included stunts like inviting a famous Holocaust denier to speak.

Now he’s at the forefront of this movement. I guess his plan to retire via GoFundMe failed.

Why would the radical right care so much about revenge porn? Well, according to Bristow:

Most victims on revenge pornography websites are young, white, blonde, middle class, American women. Women who the pornographers can link to conservatism or Christianity are especially targeted for harassment.

That’s right, revenge porn is defiling white blondes in an effort to undermine Christianity. Ugh.

But when it’s all said and done, Churchill’s words ring true. Good luck in this fight, Jason! I may disagree with your motivations for shutting down revenge porn — and probably most everything else you think — but this is one of those times where we all have to recognize our common goal.

Porn makes strange bedfellows after all.

If you want to check out the full filing against Pinkmeth, it’s available on the next page….