Jeffrey Epstein’s corrupt overclass: How do you purge a ruling elite?

Jeffrey Epstein’s corrupt overclass: How do you purge a ruling elite? By Mary Harrington at UnHerd.

The Epstein horror show has [much] in common with Britain’s rape gang scandal … Both involved the grooming and trafficking of vulnerable girls. Both convened a close-knit network of depraved insiders, some bonded by sexual degeneracy and linked through a host of further personal and economic ties. Both have a way of bubbling to the surface at intervals, triggering horror and disgust, then disappearing off the front pages again.

Both scandals also implicate the entire political regime in which they occurred. By rights, both Rotherham and Epstein ought to be extinction-level events for these respective (in fact, interlocking) regimes. But somehow, public life staggers on. After all, how would we go about purging an entire national ruling class, let alone a transnational billionaire one with a combined net worth greater than many nation states? …

If you booted everyone touched by this corruption from public life, would there even be anyone left? The list of luminaries connected to Epstein reads like a Who’s Who of the overclass….

How deep does the depravity go?

In the public reaction, it’s generally been the sexual depravity that has elicited the most visceral disgust. This is understandable, especially when this comes with a backbeat of still-darker rumours, that shade from sex trafficking into Gothic horror.

Buried amid the files, for example, is one in which a man alleges he was raped by “George Bush 1” and that he witnessed babies dismembered and faeces eaten. Another alleges that Donald Trump witnessed the killing of her newborn baby, whom she birthed aged just 13. Then there’s the video footage of a hysterical Mexican model in Monterrey in 2009, screaming in the street after attending an “elite” party about how “they ate a person”, only to vanish off the face of the Earth that very night. No one knows much about the context, or if it’s even related to Epstein, but especially in the light of the latest revelations it’s doing the conspiracy rounds again.

The Epstein files contain many documents that are unverified, and could be hearsay or libel. High-profile abuse cases sometimes attract fantasists. It is eminently possible that many of the more baroque papers in these millions of documents may be untrue. …

Our ruling globalists:

But what is harder to parse, and yet is arguably more consequential, is the social picture that emerges from these files. Epstein’s emails convey the sense of a world that operates on terms completely alien to those by which normal people live. …

As Epstein’s power increased, he’s revealed as bartering favours, introductions, and insider access in every direction, majordomo for an intricate interpersonal economy of perks and privileges.

Everyone is now trying to make the revelations a scandal for their enemies in particular. But it’s clear that at the level on which Epstein operated, political “sides” are not real….

Money, though, was real, in Epstein’s network; money and influence. In Mandelson’s case, for instance, emails between him and Epstein show him putting pressure on the British government to water down proposed curbs on bankers’ bonuses, in the wake of the financial crash.

Geopolitics is real, but can be transcended if you know how: Sergey Belyakov, a Russian FSB officer, wanted Epstein’s advice on evading sanctions.

Clout is real too: for Wexner, Epstein provided glittery guests. Karp wanted an exclusive golf-club membership. Elon Musk wanted “the wildest party”. Richard Branson wanted the “harem”. Sarah Ferguson wanted a lifestyle she couldn’t afford. The mind recoils from what Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor wanted.

For everyone, their heart’s desire; the thing they will do almost anything to get. Identifying and trading in such desires seems to have been Epstein’s superpower.

But surely this miasma of upscale corruption didn’t touch everyone, or did not taint everyone to the same degree? The insurance mogul Robert Meister, who introduced Epstein to his first billionaire client, told Vanity Fair that the last straw in his mounting dislike of the financier came when Epstein turned up at his house with a bevy of young models, apparently for his sexual entertainment. Meister was, he said, not tempted: he told Epstein to leave and never come back. …

The girls were just an amusing diversion — power was the real game:

For some in this group, raping trafficked children may have been a fun diversion. But the real frisson — and Epstein’s real work — lay in the subtler and more varied trade, in things that money can’t buy.

The nihilistic overclass of transnational kleptocrats and their hangers-on Epstein catered to in this occult marketplace operated, and still operates, at a level where political principle simply does not feature, let alone the moral or spiritual kind. There’s only whatever you want, and whatever strings you are willing or able to pull for someone else, in exchange for it. This was the real feast; those poor violated girls were just the amuse-bouche.

 

 

UPDATE: Stefan Molyneux:

The Epstein files reveal to all but the most ignorant and ideological why governments don’t listen to voters.

They can’t.

They’re mostly held hostage by blackmail….

And:

All the powerful people who enforce morality partied and happily hung with a convicted child sex trafficker … We are ruled over by evil.

And:

The Epstein file release teaches us for the ten millionth time that power not only corrupts, but attracts the most corrupt.