CW: This piece includes passing references to the concept of child rape along with other disturbing topics found in the Epstein files.
I enjoy a good conspiracy as much as anyone, and have written about the ontology of conspiracies before. At their core, they reflect an utter disillusionment with society’s core institutions, and what better example of fundamental disillusionment than this? Q-anon and Pizza Gate walked so the actual Epstein files could run.
So as my algorithm led me down increasingly conspiratorial rabbit holes, all of this had me wondering: What are we as leftists to make of the way the files have been released? What about their sudden virality and inundation of commentary on platforms known for their censorship in line with the ruling classes?
Impacts of the file release
In case you missed it, on 30 January, the US Dept of Justice released 3.5 million files related to the investigation of convicted pedophile and child sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein. Many are heavily redacted and reports abound of them disappearing from the database. Still, they allegedly contain details of heinous acts of the rich and powerful—from princes to politicians to academics and public figures. The acts, which legal experts say constitute crimes against humanity, are ineffably horrifying, including rape, torture, and child slavery.
Notably, my feed has also been flooded with online pontificators basically just free-associating that every unsolved mystery and crisis of the 21st century—from 9/11 to the 2008 recession— was singlehandedly caused by Epstein himself. And the evil of monsters is, in a sense, more comforting. It’s easier to imagine a handful of particularly wicked ghouls are behind everything than to question the system that allowed them to accumulate the power to act with impunity.
We get caught in our siloed rabbit holes dissecting the files, while nothing is being done and no one is being punished. It can even leave you with a sense that those featured in the files don’t even care—or are proud of their heinous crimes. In emails rife with typos they quip about pizza and grape soda (many speculate to be code for child rape), and videos have been circulating of Bill Clinton laughing during a deposition hearing as he looks through incriminating photos of him and his cronies in the Epstein files as if he’s looking through a scrapbook.
With each new suspected scandal and act of depravity, we become desensitized and begin to expect more. Pedophilia and trafficking are no longer enough to shock, so now the ruling classes have morphed into a cabal of satan-worshipping cannibals. Our desensitization then cultivates in nihilism: nothing means anything and everything starts to feel pointless.
What is a psyop?
Now, let’s examine some of the hallmarks of psychological influence operations, as disseminated on the internet and social media. There is no single definition of such operations but they are generally implemented with the objective of shaping the attitudes, emotions, beliefs, and behaviors of a target population. You can find some of their core characteristics as follows:
- Emotional flooding: Content that elicits disgust, rage, or fear instantly when you see it.
- Narrative compression: Simplifying the narrative so that it fits neatly into an easily-digestible story format.
- Authority fog: Lack of informational transparency and a proliferation of theories that are difficult to trace.
- Time pressure: A sense that one must act now or that access to information might be revoked.
- Isolation language: Cultivating a sense that those engaging in the conspiracy theory are ‘awake’ while everyone else remains ‘asleep’.
Taking these characteristics, now let’s connect them to the release of the Epstein files.
We are exposed to over 3 million documents containing extremely distressing contents. Many are heavily redacted, and reports indicate that incriminating evidence keeps on getting deleted. This produces a sense of urgency to inundate oneself with disturbing emails, videos, images before they are gone. In order to make sense of things, it becomes simpler to believe a small cabal of inhuman monsters—rather than banal systems—enables the widespread perpetration of crimes against humanity.
In turn, this produces a sense that everything can be traced back to them—from 9/11 to the 2008 financial crash to famous celebrity murders. This is bolstered by a saturation of random content creators online pushing theories with no basis, that become increasingly far fetched amidst a state of growing disillusionment (e.g. Jim Carrey was killed for speaking out about the files and what you see now is just a clone). People of conscience who have immersed themselves become siloed from those who haven’t, as they simultaneously become desensitized and conditioned to believe ever crazier conspiracies.
Class analysis of the files
The ruling class has pretty advanced techniques for propagandizing and narrative control through mass media. As Gramsci puts it,
…crisis creates situations which are dangerous in the short run, since the various strata of the population are not all capable of orienting themselves equally swiftly, or of reorganizing with the same rhythm. The traditional ruling class, which has numerous trained cadres, changes men and programmes and, with greater speed than is achieved by the subordinate classes, reabsorbs the control that was slipping from its grasp.
The way that the files have been released corresponds to other psyops. (Read more about recent ones like the propagation of online culture wars in the US and Pentagon-backed influence operations). On behalf of Trump and his cronies, it appears that the Department of Justice’s release of these files has taken what could be a powder keg for radicalization and neutralized their impacts. Perhaps worse, in repeated violation of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the DOJ has manipulated the files in their favor by desensitizing us and making us feel powerless in the face of the horrors the ruling classes enact upon us. This is what they have decided will be normal.
Thus, we must view the release of the files—and their contents—not only as brazen patriarchal violence, but as acts of class warfare: the rape and torture of poor and working class children on a mass scale. Participating in such acts seems to be the price of entry to the inner circles of the elites: enacting the most depraved crimes against our own, and the most innocent and vulnerable among us. As if these horrific acts are ways of asserting they don’t abide by the most basic norms of decency practiced by us lowly plebians, and that they are powerful enough to get away with anything. And aside from the shock and disgust there hasn’t been any kind of uprising to speak of.
Conspiracies divert people from reaching class consciousness. They take people who are so close to the point—so close to being radicalized, and diverting their focus to specific, moloch-worshipping individuals, rather than a ruling class upheld through specific material relations of capitalism. In truth, reality is even scarier than conspiracy.
Anti-capitalists have long pointed out the wicked and parasitical nature of the capitalist classes. As Marx put it in Das Kapital published in 1867,
Capital is dead labour, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.
We don’t need conspiracies to explain away the horrors perpetrated by the ruling classes because they are baked into the system. To quote Gramsci, now is the time of monsters.
