Who’s Really Behind the Atlanta Massage Parlor Murders? The American Taliban

Aaron Long may have pulled the trigger on Tuesday night’s massage parlor killing spree, but in many ways, he was just a hired hand. The real culprit? The American Taliban.

That’s what me and my friends in the sex biz call them: the politicians, the cops, the media, the anti-sex work feminists and the religious extremists that oppose rights for prostitutes and migrant workers. They invented a century-long morals war on sex trafficking, and left the lives of countless immigrants and prostitutes in their wake.

I got my start in the massage parlor system in the 1980s, and I’ve seen first hand how alleged concern by the FBI, Homeland Security, countless legislators, regulators, cops and anti-trafficking groups like The Polaris Project came together to demonize our work and make us less safe.

Take the raid at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa, the high-profile FBI “sex trafficking” sting operation that ensared Patriot’s owner Robert Kraft in 2019. Kraft was ultimately released with no charges, and no evidence of trafficking found, but the employees — the ones supposedly being saved — were arrested and fined tens of thousands of dollars.

The criminalization of prostitution and immigrants is fueled by both xenophobia and fetish for sexual purity a hundred years old. Religious organizations, with their fear of sexual desire, have long co-opted an immigration system that sees non-whites as a threat. (In this regard, anti-Asian sentiment is particularly strong, going back to Chinatown vice raids and brothel busts in the early 1900s.)

I listened to the 911 recording from a worker at the Golden Spa, calling for help as she hid from what she thought was a robber. That’s because the American Taliban has worked to force financial institutions like Visa/Mastercard to stop doing business with us. All cash businesses make easy targets, and a beacon for criminal activity like burglary.

They use the fear of sex trafficking to pass laws like FOSTA-SESTA, which helped shut down sites like Backpage, and removed the safer online sex spaces that we used to meet clients. We’re booted from banks, we’re banned from online platforms, and forced to live on the margins.

To say these efforts have detrimental effects on the lives of sex industry and migrant workers is an understatement. For all their concern about vulnerable women in the sex trade, their goal seems to be to make our lives unlivable, make us seem unlovable, our skills despicable.

Is it any wonder that the killer, brainwashed by religious zealots to believe his need for release was an addiction, a dangerous and foreign temptation emerging from a criminal underworld, staffed by the untouchable, would turn his selfhate on the women themselves? After all, sometimes you have to destroy the village in order to save it.

While the American Taliban soaks up millions of dollars in anti-trafficking grants from Congress, supported by millions more in taxpayer funded prostitution stings, the family of Hyun Jung Kim has to crowdfund for housing, funeral expenses and legal issues.

People come to this country trying to run businesses that sustain themselves and their families. But instead, the American Taliban pushes them to the margins, where they can easily be harassed and targeted, where they live in fear of government, where protection means prosecution, and where they are responsible for violence against them.

The killer in Atlanta might appear to be a lone gunman, but those in the sex biz know he had a massive organization behind him providing a map, the ammunition and the targets.