Power and Corruption: The Epstein Files - Part I
The disturbing realities behind the Complicity of the Rich and Powerful, and what the Epstein files reveal about Elite Male Networks, and men in general.
These men who run the planet, who affect the global economy, who pass laws, who teach at ivy leque universities, who create culture, who decide the future of World economies, and the Environment, and by that, everyone’s future, are bound together by something horrific and also, laughably predictable: their hunger for money and recognition, and their common desire to abuse women and girls with immunity. This is the big mystery, the sleazy, common denominator. The clandestine secret that binds them to each other, and which they have spent years protecting.
Conspiracy theorists have been warning us for years about the existence of a global “élite” of the ultra-rich. An undercover Illuminati-like, secret club of powerful men who protect each other from the consequences of their paedophilic activities and criminality. What the “Epstein files” - which were recently released by the U.S. Department of Justice - reveal, is that they were right all along. (Who knew?) It may not – as far as we know – involve secret handshakes and silly hats, but it definitely exists. Its banal, pedestrian tool, being the constant, relentless exchange of emails where favours are being asked and returned, philanthropy is used as a way to expand the net of influence, meetings are arranged, dinner parties, fundraisings, “seminars” and sex parties with girls and prostitutes are planned. These men send each other “funds” and donations to “causes”, offering legitimacy to possibly dubious exchanges and advice on seemingly ever-present tax problems, promise introduction to celebrities and island vacations, and by that earn access to girls’ bodies. If one of them speaks, they all fall. It’s a system that works as it makes them intrinsically bonded to each other by their mutual need to protect each other’s depravity and corruption. A net of secrecy, mutual guilt, favours and endless sycophantic emails.
Their shared knowledge of a code further implies a structure with common parameters and known rules. For example, “Message” allegedly stands for sexual acts, “Snow White” or “Disney Princess” for a young woman, while a “Present” for a new girl. There are thousands of mentions to “Baby/Babies”, “Designer Babies”, and one hopes that’s another code and not references to actual babies! But who’s to say? (“Cream Cheese and Baby” and “Jerky” stand for something trully horrific apparently, but I didn’t have the stomach to go too deep in that particular rabbit hole. Those who did, came out changed…) On the same note, witnesses have reported seeing “ritual sacrifices”, babies being taken away from teenage mothers, child murder, torture, babies being dismembered and other horrors. The official investigators “found no concrete evidence confirming such claims”. Even though child deaths are not verified, the files do track the deaths of over two dozen adults linked to the Epstein case. The list includes investigators, witnesses, and associates who died under suspicious circumstances. So there’s that.
What we do know from the sordid sifting of documents is that tech billionaires, politicians, bankers, royals, and academics are bound together by their pursuit of money, connections, and pleasure. And judging by the quantity of the blackened parts, eventually immunity. Even though not all those mentioned in the files are necessarily implicated in the sex trafficking ring, they still are guilty of the morally suspect act of associating themselves with a registered sex offender, a known paedophile, even after the 2008 revelations. Of course, the fact that Epstein managed to cut a lenient deal with South Florida federal prosecutors in 2008 that allowed him to escape severe federal charges must have endeared him to them: unchecked privilege and unaccountability are the catnip of the mighty. So they stayed in his orbit, seeking a chair at his table, asking him favours, and invitations, offering or taking money from him, asking or providing preferential treatment and so on. Sticking together. Avoiding accountability. Protecting each other in their shared guilt.
The whole thing offers a scary peek into the rarified world of the few, and what it reveals is in equal measures, expected, scary and a little sad: rich men are childishly desperate for the approval of other rich men. (That’s how you become rich after all: not by having a sharper mind or better skills than the average person, but by possessing a bigger appetite, an antagonistic streak, an unchecked by morality gigantic hunger for approval, status, power. This is what leads to wealth.) Starting each email with a brief mention of their travels. (Where they are, where they are coming from, where they are going). Little smug reminders that they are busy, important, doing big things. And then going directly into the asking of the favour. Introductions, tax issues, financial advice on this and that, a ticket, an invitation to a dinner or one of the “special” parties. With brief mentions of “girls”. Making casual comments or complaints about their degree of attractiveness. (Does any of these men own a mirror?) Referring to them as “pussy”, in hundreds and hundreds of messages! (What are they to them if not just that after all?) Wishing each other “Lots of P” again and again and again. Exchanging “funny” remarks about female body parts and the health “benefits” of sex. (Paedophilia and raping as a vitamin for the rich.) Women and girls being asked about nonchalantly. Not by name, but by kind. Mentioned collectively as “lists” (one of them being “victoria secret models”) Being promised and offered by and to powerful men. Being categorised by them as “pro or civilian”. Described as “harem”. Reduced to body parts and sex acts. Turned into the butt of crude jokes that they exchange among themselves ad nauseam.
Class solidarity (class being defined by money of course, the ultimate privilege), back-scratching, favouritism, bragging, and reminding each other what is owned. Hedonism, narcissism, by-passing of the rules that apply to the rest of us, and, of course, seeing women and girls as disposable objects. Being busy doing what these types of men do, in order to become and then stay rich: travelling constantly, making connections and moving vast sums of money around. And while on vacation, having some fun by raping girls. These men who run the planet, who affect the global economy, who pass laws, who teach at ivy leque universities, who create culture, and who have at times seduced us into believeing they deserve our admiration, our vote, our respect, our money, who decide the future of World economies, and the Environment, and by that, everyone’s future, are bound together by something horrific and also, laughably predictable: their hunger for money and recognition, and their common desire to abuse women and girls with immunity. This is the big mystery, the sleazy, common denominator. The clandestine secret that binds them to each other, and which they have spent years protecting. The reason their special clubs and secret societies were created, and the reason why these alliances were kept secret, and held together, airtight for so many years.
The women in Epstein’s world seem to fall into two categories: the helpers and the prey. Both exist to please and serve the men. The first are secretaries, personal assistants, organisers of their life, sometimes recruiters of more victims. Sorting the logistics, keeping their diary, making bookings and travel arrangements, reminding them of appointments, and smoothing over the mundane aspects of life, the everyday details they are too important to deal with. Taking care of the dietary requirements of guests. Wine lists, snacks, sugar-free desserts. There is nothing rich men fear more than sugar. And the inevitability of death, of course, which they believe they can somehow escape by never eating sugar. (The raping of teenagers is perfectly acceptable, but cake?!) The other category is the underage girls and young women who are there in order to be bought, possessed, used, abused, and discarded. They are ordered by Epstein to do “STD checks”, to lose weight, attend “tantric sex classes”, have plastic surgery “before they turn 23” (In short: do it NOW before you reach your expiration date and it won’t matter either way) Older than 23 is apparently the cut off point before a woman turns “disgusting”, and therefore unqualified to be included in the “harem” of the mighty.
Similarly, when hiring helpers or considering women for roles at the table, the key requirement is their perceived beauty and lack of ambition. Occasionally, their celebrity status. Older women are seen and described as “useless” and, behind closed doors, talked about with disgust. “Wrinkly old hag. Just because she is rich, she thinks she can talk down to everyone,” the rich predator says of an unnamed woman. Yes, it must have been unbearable to him to face a woman who is powerful, who has agency, and the guts to tell him off. Any female who was over 14 must have scared him shitless, I bet.
The US Department of Justice has identified over 1,200 survivors (many as young as 14) of Epstein’s abuse, the majority of whom are female. The newly unsealed documents have implicated high-profile men from at least 12 different countries. (USA, UK, Israel, France, Italy, Spain, Australia, Norway, Russia, United Arab Emirates, India, Slovakia) The list includes businessmen, royals, authors, prominent academics, “spirituality” gurus, health influencers, tech billionaires, ministers, at least three former Prime Ministers of European countries, and two US presidents. In the lists, there are name of both liberal “progressives” and uber-conservatives. Both Left-wing and Right winged politicians (greed, lust and the need to abuse girls being the one, the true equaliser among men!)
Some of the names included are anything but shocking, and some are every bit that. Among countless others, Woody Allen, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump (no surprises there…), Bill Gates, Deepak Chopra (who wrote to Epstein: “God is a construct. Cute girls are real. Bring your girls”), playfully adding a pseudo-spirituality angle to his depravity, why not? Richard Branson (“Bring your harem”), Elon Musk (”What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?”), and prominent intellectual Noam Chomsky! He, who famously criticised capitalism and class dynamics, is seen in multiple emails cosying up to power, ingratiating himself with Epstein, seeking guidance about his money, and offering sage advice about how this convicted sex offender/paedophile should navigate the new accusations against him. He is seen in the files as being very sympathetic towards Epstein regarding the media scrutiny about his sex trafficking allegations and showing empathy about the “horrible way” Epstein was being treated in the press (9 and months before his final arrest on federal sex trafficking charges), and expressing hope that the current “mood” would fade away. He also privately displayed his dismay about “hysteria that has developed about abuse of women,” (what a guy!), and for the fact that questioning an abuse charge had become treated “as a crime worse than murder”, revealing what “good” men do when in the company of other men. What they really think of women. (These comments were made in early 2019 by the way. Briefly after the #MeToo avalanche and 11 whole years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction about the abuse of 14-year-olds.)
The powerful men’s names in the three million pages released by the US Department of Justice are mostly redacted. Their wrongdoings are well hidden. Because these men deserve to be protected, obviously. Many of the girls’own names are not, however, as they are seen as not deserving the same. In the photos included in the files they are nothing but body parts: their faces are blackened. Not because they deserve protection, but so that the men who are with them will be protected. The girls are nothing but bodies after all. Disposable, expendable, interchangeable. Worthless.
This is what money and power has afforted them: the right to rape! They have created what millions and millions of everyday men only fantasise about but can’t afford, and so look for (obsessively, relentlessly) in porn: a place where all is allowed. A “club” where they are free from the limitations imposed by morality, humanity, decency, law - and the existence of radical feminism. Free from the societal requirements to publicly pretend women are human beings. A world in which they are free to pick female bodies like you pick apples at the grocery store, and just assault them without having to suffer any consequences. Even now that these documents have been released, they are still certain that they are not in danger. And they are of course, right. Nothing can touch them. For as long as those who should, are also complicit, what would?
All those men mentioned in the Epstein files are simply being (to borrow a word from the Transactivist vocabulary) their “true authentic selves”: predators. Aided by their billions and their status, they simply follow the apparently predominant male impulse: to prioritise their erections. To prey on the vulnerable and the helpless. To be finally completely free to be who they really are. Free from the need to pretend that women and girls have any other function than to be fucked. Free from the need to pretend women and girls have the right to consent, to not deny access to their bodies on demand. Free from the need to keep up the appearances of decency, or from the limitations forced upon them by laws, (and in the case of everyday men, lack of resources to buy the right to also ignore such laws.) Free from the need to pretend that women and children are anything other than disposable sexual props. Free to centre their own pleasure, their need to rape, humiliate, torture. This is the shared characteristic between the ultra-rich men and the rest. In porn sites, the most popular search is “teens”. And if you go into details, into the specifics of those searches, into what so many, MANY men from around the world, possibly from you life, want these teens to do, to have done to them, you’re probably going to lose your lunch, and your sleep for days. (If you are a woman, that is)
#NotAllMen is hardly comforting anymore, (it frankly, never was) because the devastating truth is that the predators are just #TooMany. And because those who aren’t, they want you to be impressed that they are not. Even though they could…
Isn’t it interesting that the most common thing that everyday men fantasise about, and rich men buy, is a girl’s body? A lack of agency, an inability to say “No!”?
My God! How stupid, how literally groomed are we all, that we ever thought they deserve our respect?
The important takeaway is that they must be brought to justice and punished. No impunity for rape.