He might be dead, but it sure seems like Jeffrey Epstein won.
Sure, Epstein was arrested on charges of sex trafficking minors. Sure, he died in jail. (I am not going to wade into the debate about how.) But he subscribed to a racist, misogynist ideology that meant rich white men like him could do whatever they liked. And it seems he took measures to spread it.
The latest tranche of Epstein documents made it obvious. Consider all the “contrarians” and “anti-woke” warriors who show up in the latest dump: Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Larry Summers, Steve Bannon, and of course, Donald Trump. With apologies to George Carlin: It’s a big club, and the worst people are in it — because their interests are all aligned. Pushing back on social justice, it turns out, was coordinated.
Being able to see their emails makes something very clear: The “anti-woke” movement was not a genteel intellectual inquiry, made by disinterested parties who cared deeply about free speech. It is a social circle of powerful people who feel threatened by #MeToo. Reading through the emails, it’s possible to see that Epstein himself coordinated pushback against #MeToo. Looking back, it seems obvious that sinking #MeToo also led to where we are now: a place where laws simply don’t apply if you have enough money and power. The same players are involved.
How did all these people know each other?
It is more accurate to understand the “anti-woke” “iconoclasts” as a group of loosely affiliated people with the same goals. This isn’t an abstract intellectual movement about free speech — or we’d be hearing more from these people about the recent DHS actions to hunt down critics of Epstein’s old friend, Donald Trump. Besides Trump, there are two key ringleaders: Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. They both appear extensively in the Epstein files, and have good reason to want to remain untouchable.
How did all these people know each other? Epstein’s influence campaign started in the sciences in the early 2000s, with the help of John Brockman, a powerhouse literary agent, and his Edge Foundation, to which Epstein was the largest donor. “Foundations associated with Epstein provided $638,000 out of a total of almost $857,000 received by Edge” between 2001 and 2017, without which “the nonprofit’s full range of exclusive events would not have been possible,” according to BuzzFeed News.
“john the old conferencess did not care about diversity I suggest you not either. the women are all weak ,and a distraction sorry, .”
Brockman, who got his start with underground movies and Andy Warhol in the 1960s, wanted Edge “to serve as a forum for big, intriguing and/or disturbing ideas advanced by intellectuals who have a track record of major achievements in their fields,” according to The Guardian. The obvious idea was to influence culture by disseminating those ideas.
The group was, of course, mostly men. The demographics are somewhat explained in the current email dump. In 2018, Epstein wrote to Brockman, “john the old conferencess did not care about diversity I suggest you not either. the women are all weak ,and a distraction sorry, .”
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