Staying Rational When the Conspiracies Are Real (Part 1)

When there's actually something going on, it's easy to fall down rabbit holes.

I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t expect the US Justice Department to ever release the “Epstein Files.” I made a snide comment about it right here on on Substack literally two days before they dumped a trillion of his emails onto the internet without warning.

Pictured: Me, January 28, with my famous last words. The emails were dumped January 30.

The instant result was like dropping a scoop of ice cream on top of an ant’s nest while they’re all just milling about doing everyday ant shit. It doesn’t matter what side of politics you’re on, everybody across social media and journalism are either furiously winding red string around corkboard pins or else just running down the street naked and cracking each other’s heads open. The density of conspiracy theories on the internet has just increased to the supernova point.

Here’s my problem: I like to debunk conspiracy theories. That’s easy when the conspiracy theories are complete bullshit, or even when they’re just mostly bullshit. With the Epstein stuff it’s harder to unpack. There is actual conspiracy here, but frustratingly, it’s not the stuff that the media and y’all are actually focused on, and the stuff that you are focused on does contain some amount of bullshit.

So let me try to unravel this with the knowledge that I’m navigating a minefield, here, because misspeaking about Epstein is the fastest way known to mankind to get five million people calling you a child molester on Twitter.

There are two main conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein to address, and two accompanying conspiracy facts that I think are way underreported due to these theories. This article is going to be a two-parter—I was going to write the whole thing up this week but I banged on for too long and ran out of time, so you’ll get the second part next week.

First up:

Every single person named in these files is not necessarily a you-know-what.

This is the most prevalent and largest misconception about what the Epstein revelations actually reveal about the American aristocracy. In the days since their release, social media has thundered with lamentations of “we are ruled by a cabal of pedophiles” and any concrete evidence that somebody spoke to Jeffrey Epstein in his entire adult life, from his best friends down to his dentist, is ipso facto proof that that person is an active child molester.

To prove this is a bipartisan position, here's an X screenshot and a Bluesky screenshot. The X screenshot is, of course, also antisemitic.

I am in no way defending or minimizing child sexual abuse, but considering the sheer scale of Epstein’s network, this is a terrifying thing to believe, and I don’t want you to have terrifying beliefs. So let’s drill down here.

With full knowledge that this will sound like I’m the one who’s bonkers: We don’t actually know that Epstein was running or was involved in a large sex trafficking ring, let alone a pedophile ring. That’s a general suspicion that has developed out of the frustratingly vague, limited, curated, and incomplete information that the US government will allow the public to see. The suspicion has grown over time into just a fact that everyone knows. This breeds conspiracy theories because it feels like the only possible explanation for there not being mass arrests is that everyone who would do the arresting is in on it.

Here’s what we know about Epstein:

Here’s what paid subscribers are reading right now:

Why the Right Will Never Dominate Entertainment

Jeffrey Epstein was convicted in 2008 for molesting a 14 year old girl (edit Feb 16: I think I misinterpreted this and that his actual conviction was related to an older, still minor, teenager), but for bullshit reasons was sent to a minimum security prison that was, in fact, so minimum security that he was basically allowed to leave whenever he wanted, and after a few months the government decided “what are we even doing here?” and straight up let him go. That’s what being filthy rich gets you.

He immediately went on to molest a bunch more kids because, of course he did.

“I don’t know what I expected.”

Now, to the best of my knowledge, we don’t know how many. His second indictment and arrest, which did not reach trial before he died, alleged that it was “dozens.”

But then a memo released by the Kash Patel FBI last year claimed “Epstein harmed over one thousand victims,” which is a couple of decimal places to the right of “dozens.” This is one of the key pieces of evidence that people point to as proof that he was the ringleader of a huge trafficking ring, because obviously Epstein couldn’t molest a thousand people. No amount of money gives you molestation superpowers.

I’m skeptical about this memo, and not just because it was written or dictated by Kash Patel. Well, actually, yes, that is a large part of it. I’m skeptical because of how carefully it’s worded. It doesn’t say he raped or molested one thousand people or facilitated other people doing this, it says he “harmed” a thousand people. You see the difference—the indictment claims he groomed or molested dozens, while the memo says he harmed over a thousand. We don’t know what kind of broad umbrella they might be using to call someone a victim of Epstein’s “harm.”

You should also notice that the same document also says “We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties,” so that’s kind of that. If you’re citing evidence to prove that Epstein was running a trafficking ring, you can’t really use the document that explicitly says he wasn’t.

I know the next thing people will say is “but Ghislaine Maxwell is in prison for child trafficking!” But that’s kind of misleading too.

To assuage your fears at this point, what I’m not going to do here is pull out some kind of “acktually it’s called ephebebebephila” card. I have 14-year-olds in my family, I’m happy to call Jeffrey Epstein a pedophile. I’m not about to die on the same hill that’s currently driving Richard Hanania fucking bananias.

But I don’t think Epstein’s operation was that large or sophisticated. People are misled by the definition of “sex trafficking.” The reckoning that Epstein was facing, and what Ghislaine Maxwell is now in prison for, was that the two of them conspired to groom minors and coerce or force them into performing sexual acts on... Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

Because they were billionaire jetsetters who might be in a different state or country any given week, this involved putting victims on planes for the purposes of Sex Abuse DoorDash. This, the transport of people for the purpose of committing a crime, is, by legal definition, human trafficking. It doesn’t require any participation beyond these two rapist pieces of shit.

I obviously don’t know if other men in Epstein’s circle were getting up to some stuff on that island, and I would not be shocked if they did—there are extraordinarily suspicious individuals in the mix here like Alan Dershowitz, Woody Allen, and Prince Andrew, or Andrew Mountbatten Christopher Yaxley-Lennon or whatever he’s called now. But this is all much more speculative than the mainstream narrative seems to realize.

You hear from media sources like Ryan Broderick’s popular newsletter Garbage Day that Epstein was “the most prolific sex trafficker in human history,” but I don’t see, on the metric of child sex offenders, how Epstein ranks as high as Jimmy Savile. And seriously, people never scream about releasing the Savile files, but have you read about Jimmy Savile? Because holy shit. On second thought, do not read about Jimmy Savile.

For some reason nobody knew this guy was up to no good and he died peacefully in his sleep before it was revealed that he [redacted]

The real conspiracy:

The files reveal that there are a hell of a lot of rich guys who were pretty okay with overlooking Epstein being a child molester. That’s really bad too.

All the stuff that comes out about Epstein’s relationships with rich, powerful, or otherwise public individuals is from after his 2008 conviction and quote-unquote “incarceration” for sexually abusing a 14-year-old. Everyone who knew Epstein, worked with him, or was friends with him after 2008 knew that he’d raped a child and decided that this was not a dealbreaker when it came to the immense benefits that come with being in Epstein’s circle.

You might think that this is a distinction without much difference, or that I’m not saying anything very useful. If so many important and powerful people are okay with a child molester circulating among them then how much does it matter whether or not they themselves are pedophiles? Isn’t this similar to that saying about how, if ten people go to dinner with a Nazi, eleven Nazis are having dinner?

This type of thing isn’t without recent historical precedent. Specifically, those who have continued to maintain personal and professional relationships with Roman Polanski.

Frantic star Harrison Ford had to accept Polanski’s 2003 Oscar on the director’s behalf. He couldn’t attend in person because, in 1977, he [redacted]

Everyone who has known or worked with Polanski since 1977 knows that he raped a 13-year-old. We’re talking all your faves: Harrison Ford, Sigourney Weaver, Ben Kingsley, Johnny Depp, Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Adrian Brody, Jodie Foster, I could go on. Nobody much cares. Even the general public don’t care very much.

Jack Nicholson enthusiastically celebrating Polanski’s Oscar win. Polanski raped his victim inside Nicholson’s house.

To be clear, Polanski famously fled the United States to avoid punishment for a rape that he acknowledges he committed and has never shown remorse. He says that he regrets having done it, because it has caused him a lot of problems, but that’s not really the same thing.

Nobody accuses all of those actors of, themselves, being pedophiles for supporting him and working with him, and partying with him—a man who once said he did what he did because he “likes to fuck young girls” and furthermore “everyone likes to fuck young girls.” Roman Polanski is a very good director, and being associated with him is very good for your career.

Maybe they should be criticized more than they are, because, like with Epstein, they comprise something of a conspiracy of hypocrisy. If your condemnation of this kind of thing is qualified or dependent on what any particular monster might be able to do for you personally, and so a bunch of important people decide to agree not to make waves among your group by attacking that person—don’t shit where you eat, more or less—then that is a conspiracy and I think it should be recognized and called out as such.

You can say that what Polanski did was very long ago, and as far as we know, he only did it once. To that I say, guess what, I looked up Polanski in the Epstein files and he’s in there.

Actually most of the references to him are Epstein’s people trying to brainstorm how they can work the public acceptance of Polanski in Epstein’s favor. But here’s a fascinating email from 2009 in which Epstein tells New York School of Visual Arts Chair David A. Ross about meeting with Polanski’s lawyers to discuss the possibility of funding an art exhibition entitled “Statutory,” which would have featured dressing children up as adults to make the case that sometimes you just can’t tell whether a kid is legal.

As multiple Epstein Files participant Elon Musk would say: “Concerning.”

This email is dated October 1, 2009, which was days after Polanski was arrested in Switzerland to be extradited to the USA (the extradition request was ultimately rejected). I don’t know how they thought this exhibition would have helped him (I can’t find evidence that it took place) but in any case, add Polanski to the pile of rancid sex pests who sought council with Jeffrey Epstein about how to get away with molesting people. Epstein would go on to become a sought-after coach for such people during the MeToo era.

If you wonder why I’d bother going to any effort to counter the idea that Epstein’s friends are all rockspiders, and maybe question my motives for doing so: I don’t defend anybody who maintained a rapport with this guy, personally or professionally. But I do think that resorting to the “all rich people are pedos” explanation for his influence is a quick dismissal that fails to attack the root of the problem. That might also require some uncomfortable introspection, which isn’t required at all under the “they’re all pedos” hypothesis. (Unless you are one.)

This concludes part 1 of this unusually epic essay from me. Next week we'll visit how Epstein is probably not the architect of the Alt-Right, QAnon, and Trumpism, despite frantic speculation about his puppet mastery of recent world political events, versus the real conspiracy about this that we're not discussing.

The Epstein emails are probably going to force some revisions (and fill some gaps) in the book that I'm writing about toxic masculinity, misogyny, and the libertarian-to-fascism pipeline that has bubbled up on the internet in the first quarter of the 21st Century. The working title is How Geeks Ate the World and I’m going to be dropping parts of the draft into this very newsletter as the project comes along—but only for paid subscribers. So if you want to read along in real time, please consider subscribing. Otherwise I’ll be keeping you in the loop. Check it out here: