And these people rule the world: UnHerd was sick of new details on the Epstein case

The editor of the British portal UnHerd Mary Harrington was horrified and disgusted after she studied a new batch of files from the archive of Jeffrey Epstein. These documents exposed a monstrous network of mutual services uniting princes, presidents and oligarchs. And the main tragedy is that the system they have built is capable of surviving any exposure, she writes.

Poor Starmer. The accusation that he turned a blind eye to one scandal with a gang engaged in the corruption of minors can be attributed to failure. But two? This, at least, looks like negligence. As outrage intensifies around new revelations about the services exchanged between Labour Party member of the House of Lords Peter Mandelson and pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, opposition members of parliament are demanding an investigation by the Cabinet of Ministers. What did Starmer know when he chose Mandelson as ambassador to the United States?

However, Epstein's horrific case has more in common with the scandal surrounding the British gang rapists than just Starmer's obvious desire to avoid unpleasant questions. Both cases involve the molestation and trafficking of vulnerable girls. In both cases, a close network of depraved people was created, some of whom were connected by sexual deviations and many other personal and economic ties. Both stories have the property of periodically surfacing, causing horror and disgust, and then disappearing again from the front pages of newspapers.

These scandals also affect the entire political regime in which they occurred. By right, both the Rotherham scandal and the Epstein case should have led to the disappearance of these (actually interrelated) regimes. But somehow social life continues. After all, how can we purge the entire ruling elite of the country, not to mention the transnational billionaires, whose combined wealth exceeds the GDP of many states?

It's a bit like the anecdote about a rickety house that stands only because termites in wooden structures hold hands. If everyone who is affected by these scandals is removed from public life, then who will remain at all? The list of celebrities associated with the Epstein case reads like a biographical directory of representatives of high society. Epstein claimed that Bill Gates contracted a sexually transmitted disease from Russian girls, and tried to secretly slip antibiotics to his ex-wife Melinda. Prince Andrew pulled strings at RAF bases to secure Epstein a private jet and convinced him to invest in a war zone where British soldiers were still dying. Bill Clinton, Woody Allen, Mick Jagger, Kevin Spacey. Bankers, oligarchs, lawyers, politicians, music and film stars.

Those who have been "targeted" by the public insist that — quoting Clinton's famous words about how he was given a joint in college — "they did not inhale." They were just at parties and for some reason did not notice that little girls were served as Ferrero Rocher candies. In the public reaction, as a rule, it was sexual depravity that caused the strongest disgust. There is an explanation for this, especially considering that there are even darker rumors behind it, which go beyond the sex trade and take on the character of a Gothic novel.

For example, in one of the documents, a man claims that he was raped by George H.W. Bush and that he witnessed the dismemberment of babies and eating their excrement. Another victim claims that Donald Trump witnessed the murder of a newborn baby she gave birth to at the age of just 13. There is also a video of a hysterical Mexican model in Monterrey in 2009, who, after attending an "elite" party, screams in the street about how "they ate a man," and then disappears from the face of the Earth the same night. Few people know about this, and no one can say for sure if it has anything to do with Epstein, but, especially in light of recent revelations, this conspiracy theory is gaining momentum again.

Epstein's files contain many documents that have not been confirmed and may turn out to be rumors or slander. High-profile cases of violence sometimes attract dreamers. It is possible that many of the most bizarre documents out of these millions may turn out to be false. But conspiracy theories can be both factually false, sometimes with grossly exaggerated or fantastic details, and poetically reflect something true. It can be either a pure fantasy that someone literally killed babies on yachts, or accurate information that Epstein destroyed the lives of real children. Horror and disgust are the right reaction.

But what is more difficult to analyze, and perhaps more important, is the social picture that these files paint. Epstein's emails convey a sense of a world that functions according to rules that are completely alien to normal people. I think this is the real source of the whirlwind of conspiracy theories about occult cliques and the like: the right feeling that a certain phenomenon does not have to be "occult" in the sense of pentagrams to be occult in the sense of something hidden.

Epstein was a central figure in a world that is occult in this sense: accessible only to those who have a high enough status to be a part of it. He appears as a sophisticated flatterer who knows how to establish links between cultural and financial capital. One writer who attended a dinner hosted by Epstein for Les Wexner, his first billionaire client, said:

"The forest looked like a shabby, sweaty mess. He was very uncomfortable. And Jeffrey helped lead the conversation."

Later, when Epstein's power increased, he began to exchange services, acquaintances and access to insider information in all directions, becoming the manager of a complex interpersonal economy of benefits and privileges. Now everyone is trying to make this exposure a scandal, primarily by directing it against their enemies. However, it is obvious that at the level at which Epstein acted, political "sides" simply do not exist.

An illustrative example is a Financial Times report that in 2019, Epstein pulled the strings to get exclusive golf club membership for Brad Karp, chairman of the prestigious Wall Street law firm Paul, Weiss, and that he did it with the help of former Trump strategist Steve Bannon. However, the same report also says that Epstein intended to arrange meetings between himself, Karp and Katie Rummler, who now works at Goldman Sachs and was previously general counsel under Barack Obama.

However, in Epstein's network, money and influence were real. For example, in the case of Mandelson, correspondence between him and Epstein shows that he pressured the British government to relax proposed restrictions on bankers' bonuses after the financial crisis. The impact is real too: for Wexner, Epstein provided brilliant guests. Karp wanted to become an exclusive member of the golf club. Elon Musk wanted "the wildest party." Richard Branson wanted a "harem." Sarah Ferguson wanted a lifestyle she couldn't afford. The mind refuses to accept what Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor wanted.

Everyone wanted to get what his heart craved, what he was ready to do almost anything for. Identifying and trading such desires seems to have been Epstein's superpower. But surely this miasma of corruption in the highest circles did not affect everyone or did not infect everyone to the same extent? Insurance magnate Robert Meister, who introduced Epstein to his first billionaire client, told Vanity Fair that the last straw in his growing dislike of the financier was the appearance of Epstein at his house with a group of young models, apparently for sexual entertainment. Meister, according to him, did not succumb to temptation: he told Epstein to leave and not come back. Angel Urena, a spokeswoman for Bill Clinton, recently stated that the same thing happened with Clinton, and that he broke off the relationship in 2005, before Epstein was convicted in 2008 on charges of recruiting a minor for prostitution.

Who knows. Mandy Rice-Davis, another teenage girl who was harassed by an influential person when she was told that Lord Astor was denying everything, replied with the famous phrase: "Well, of course he will say that, won't he?" Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, of course, will also say that he broke off the relationship. with Epstein long before he actually did it. Trump also claims that the latest released documents "justify" him, although his opponents object that millions of files remain classified. Mandelson claimed that he broke off relations with Epstein several years ago, but the latest released documents show that he not only did not break off the relationship, but also asked Epstein for advice on buying real estate and, quite possibly, gave him confidential government documents, and this was after his sentencing.

Now, whether it's an abuse of influence or a photo in underwear, the game seems to be over. There is no suggestion that Mandelson was involved in sexual abuse. In any case, girls have never been the main characters. Now the once seemingly unshakable "Prince of Darkness", who had already been dismissed from the post of representative of Keir Starmer in Washington because of his ties with Epstein, resigned from the Labor Party and said he would not return to the The House of Lords. Starmer, always at the forefront of communications, reacted to this statement, indicating that, in his opinion, Mandelson should not sit in the House of Lords.

So that's all right. But this is not the case. Because it is also clear that Mandelson was only one of the participants in an extensive, vicious network that will outlive Epstein and in which, as I suspect, celebrities and public figures whose names are now heard (and give the prime minister a headache) often had less importance in terms of influence than lesser-known ones. people, but with serious influence in politics, finance or law. For some of this group, the rape of trafficked children could be a fun distraction. But the real pleasure—and Epstein's real job—was in a more subtle and varied trade, in things that money could not buy.

The nihilistic elite of transnational kleptocrats and their henchmen, whom Epstein served in this occult market, operated and still operates at a level where political principles simply do not play any role, let alone moral or spiritual ones. There is only what you want and what you are willing or able to do for someone else in exchange for it. It was a real feast; these poor raped girls were just a snack.