Sex slaves, friends in high places, an island, oodles of wheeling-dealing – the Epstein files are unfolding the biggest scam of our times, unraveling a repulsive saga that transcends borders, political foes, business rivals, and includes even media persons, philanthropists and academics.
Released by the U.S. Department of Justice, the redacted tranche of over 3.5 million papers doesn’t reveal the entire truth; it just offers glimpses of e-mail conversations and photographs with no clear evidence of the role of some of the names mentioned as part of Epstein’s orbit.
Much about this horrifying and nauseating story is still fuzzy, but Jeffrey Epstein was the epicentre where everything converged. Golden handshakes, friendly punches, the exchange of dirty money, sex racket involving exploited minor girls: that’s how the shady political-business nexus and the peppering of personality cults with foreign policy operated.
The existence of such a shady nexus of the world’s powerful has long been known, at least suspected. But now that it is out in full public glare, it is not just the scale of this scam that should be of concern. How the world responds to it is more significant.
It is indeed about exploited women, especially teenage girls forced into sex slavery. But it’s more than a #MeToo moment. It is more than the appalling victimization of women and minor girls. It is about how the world around us exists and the conduct of the movers and shakers who shape it. The sex racket is part of a larger racket that dictates how money and political power interact and circulate, concentrated as they are in the hands of the elite clubs, creating a more exploitative, immoral, and unequal world.
It’s also not just about naming and shaming. Many of the names figured in the Epstein files may not even have known him or may have had some brief encounter. Others who knew him well may or may not have been part of his deep, dark world, but they can’t feign ignorance about what has been in the public domain for a long time. They knew, yet Epstein was indispensable, for whatever his worth in their lives or careers.
While a complete investigation is important to know the scale of this large nexus, complicity of those who exploited this elite club membership and how, and blanket denials or silences must be called out, but let’s not lose sight of the larger picture.
This may sound like a chicken-and-egg story, but it might be crucial to ask: is Epstein simply a creator or perpetrator of an immoral world order, or was he also a product of the existing immoral culture of manipulations, frauds, and exploitation, propelled by powerful connections - a culture which was somewhat known but hidden in its totality from the public gaze?
From his humble beginnings in a working-class family, how did this ordinary school-teacher climb up the ladder to the circle of the world’s largest elite? His end betrays that his means weren’t noble: it wasn’t a straightforward rags-to-riches story. News reports have revealed in the past that Epstein's fortune was built on systematic manipulation, fraud, and strategic exploitation of powerful connections. From his earliest days, Epstein lied about his credentials, abused expense accounts, and scammed investors.
Epstein weaponised young women as social currency, using romantic and sexual relationships to gain access to elite circles and protect his position. He leveraged each relationship to climb higher and embedded himself in prestigious institutions, cultivating relationships with the world’s top political and business figures. Mixing sexual abuse with influence peddling, he weaved a world of financial crimes and sex-trafficking operations in which many of the people he befriended were active participants.
Epstein’s world is not an aberration. It is an epitome of how the world has existed, and there may be many other big and small Epstein worlds all around us with their acidic pollution of immorality that are still hidden and tucked away under the patronage and facilitation of the powerful, where those vying for influence and wealth continue to shop for favours.
The full knowledge of the Epstein world, and many more like it, is important. But this knowledge would be worthless if we use this occasion to churn out more gossip, make potshots, and aimlessly gun for the sullied individuals.
We need a full-scale movement to cleanse a world where politics, business, and intellect converge to perpetuate an immoral culture of exploitation. Epstein’s victims deserve justice and an apology, but the true honour to their memory would be to envision a world without Epsteins and their inner circle of friends, and work towards creating it.
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