The basic theory of the Epstein file and similar operations (whether you think they’re intelligence or not) seems at first glance to be blackmail. Get the big names and the big money to do really heinous deeds (though, note, they’ve got to have at least some interest in said heinous deeds), film them, and threaten. This explanation, however, does not quite satisfy me. In this short article, I’ll try to explain why and offer some alternatives, all borrowed from other people to some extent, like the best ideas usually are. What other purposes are present in the operation besides blackmail?

Insufficiency

Blackmail is undoubtedly part of the operation. I don’t find it to be a sufficient explanation for the whole, however, because of how the supposed blackmail material was developed. The atrocities committed by Epstein and his cohort were too entangled to serve well as blackmail.

Think about what happens if Person A releases the material on Person B, upon Person B refusing to obey Person A’s orders. The blackmail goes out, and, if it is substantial enough to truly hurt Person B, evidence of cannibalism or pedophilia or financial malfeasance, it is also substantial enough to imply other participants. Now, in today’s governmental landscape, this does not mean the other participants will actually go down (see: the lack of substantial prosecutions of Epstein’s clients in the US). But it does mean those other participants are being threatened by the Producer, and he has less control over them. He will, in all likelihood, die fairly soon, because these sorts of people don’t balk at assassination.

In point of fact, Epstein’s murder exhibits this. He was a threat to reveal more of what he knew; he was silenced. If he was the blackmailer, he was playing a very, very dangerous game, even a stupid one- particularly as the blackmail thoroughly and directly implicated him, giving those he blackmailed an excellent way to bring him down if they so desired.

I must clarify here again: in the current governmental climate, this problem of collateral damage does not make the blackmail unusable. But it does make it awkward and un-ideal; if you want to make really good blackmail to control specific people, you don’t get 50 people together for an atrocity; you figure out how to get one person on camera, doing something vile. Then you blackmail that one person. If you want to blackmail 50 people, you repeat this 50 times; if you try to blackmail them all for the same event, you run the risk that one person refuses to play along (unlikely, given their moral character, but possible, particularly given their narcissism), in which case you choose between weakening your hold over the other 49 (which partially consists in their surety that obedience prevents reveal) or revealing the blackmail attempt was a paper tiger all along. Once again, not unworkable, but awkward and unideal. In my opinion, too much so to be the prime purpose.

Foreign agents would have less difficulty here. A nation like China or Israel might not mind the possibility of a release tainting more people in the West, so long as their power-elements were kept out of it sufficiently.

The sum is: blackmail really is a probable and significant component of the operation. But, as we’ll see, it’s far from the only good explanation, and it neither excludes nor is excluded by the other two models I’ll lay out. In fact, it synergizes quite well with them both, becoming one of several purposes, conscious and unconscious, rather than the complete.

Known Others

Public record is clear on the fact that Epstein served not just as the center of an atrocity-mill but as a major facilitator for financial malfeasance and information sharing. He brought very powerful people together and made it easier for them to go into business with each other, even apart from his role supplying vice. The trials for Prince Andrew (Lord Mountbatten) and Baron Mandelson in England confirm this; they are on trial for being information leaks to Epstein and his network, not for being pedophiles, rapists, or the like. Similar forced resignations and trials are popping up around the world, moreover. We must acknowledge that the operation had a money-and-information brokerage purpose as its front-foot purpose at the very least. More plausibly, we should assess this trade in secrets and money as a primary purpose of the network, for which the vice served as an asset, assistant, and continuation.

Intelligence and Addiction

Thomas Massie proposed an alternate theory that slots in well with reality and with making blackmail a subordinate or partial purpose of the operation. He proposed that Epstein’s real role was not the supply of compromising material but the hybrid job of supplying vices and getting intelligence. As I already noted, Epstein’s work in information supply is essentially public record. This just takes that a step farther, adding a little bribery and a little spying.

Epstein supplied the materials for vice: kids, drugs, human meat, slaves, and the like. This serves, obviously, as a garnish and attraction for people to come and join his network (and, as we’ll see, as a seal to keep them loyal to the network). It serves as a form of bribe, too; as people develop a taste for the truly horrific and find Epstein the easiest way to get their fix, they will start being willing to give Epstein better deals, more money, and access to more information. Further, it lures them to a location in order to allow access to their electronics, making the unwitting, negligent, or wilfully inactive intelligence assets; while they enjoy the amenities (rape, etc), their electronics and sensitive documents/ identifying information (which they naturally bring along, because they aren’t going to let go of their levers and symbols of power) get ransacked.

Of course, material discovered in this way can be useful blackmail, and blackmail can be useful in facilitating this vector. The parts of this crime are collaborators, not rivals.

Collective Murder

So far, I’ve been concerned with personal motivations: why Epstein and his cronies did what they did, what gain they got out of it, besides the kicks of indulging their own horrendous vices. Now let’s consider a different angle: what sociological role does this operation play? How does it serve to unite the class of people participating in it into a power bloc generally self-loyal and generally capable of acting in its collective interests against the rest of society? (Because, let’s be honest, that’s what it looks like, nowadays.)

I propose that what we’re dealing with here is a species of ‘collective murder,’ a term coined by French writer Rene Girard. Girard posited ‘collective murder’ as a mechanism of social cohesion, wherein a group (society) engages in a transgressive act of literal or symbolic murder (often with other crimes attached) in order to bind themselves together.

The process provides unity in a number of ways, by:

(1) Asserting that every fault of the society was committed or integrally caused by the person or persons murdered, so that nobody else can be (openly) blamed;

(2) Making everybody guilty in a common horror;

(3) Making everybody guilty of a unique-from-the-exterior crime;

(4) Implicating everybody in each other’s eyes, so that nobody can plausibly consider himself greater or lesser than the others;

(5) Implicating everybody in each other’s eyes, so that everybody can plausibly consider himself greater or less than the others (sin is self-contradictory)

(6) Making everybody guilty, which reduces resistance to manipulation, crowd effects, peer pressure, and the like

(7) Providing a common secret

(8) Providing a common object of veneration (the victim)

(9) Providing a common base experience;

(10) Dehumanizing the other and emphasizing their otherness;

(11) Emphasizing the in-group’s special status and power;

(12) Threatening those who might join the victim in being outside the in-group, of making them the scapegoat who is blamed for all the problems of the group; and

(13) Limits sharply the capacity of an individual to defect to the other who find his crimes atrocious.

Other mechanisms could be listed, most likely, but these form a good start. Examples of a collective murder in history include: woke’s attempts on white people; the Third Reich’s purges; the periodic purges of non-Muslims in 1800s Algeria; the anti-German sentiment in 1910s America; the anti-Japanese sentiment in 1940s America.

The atrocities thus would help cement the ‘inner circle’ (which has already a great allure to man, as C.S. Lewis shows in That Hideous Strength). They would forge the societal bonds to keep men in ‘loyalty’ to each other, in place of the true loyalty which requires covenantal faithfulness, requires love of God and His image (Gen. 1:26). Having no virtue, men turn to vice to bind themselves together, with spiritual manipulation and ritual rather than integrity. Such manipulation plays well, of course, with the addiction to extreme vices (drugs, sex, and pain), operating through, enhancing, and coordinating with them, with the physical and psychological urges; it constitutes in itself a subtle, societal form of blackmail. The possibility is coordinate with the other theories, not a rival.

Conclusion

Blackmail, vice supply, intelligence gathering, networking, and social cohesion: the atrocity-operation perpetrated by Epstein, and its ilk, serve many evil purposes. But still God reigns in heaven, and we should not think that because vice serves so well it is in the slightest bit capable of winning. There is no force save the Lord which will triumph. Isaiah 24:1-5 puts it simply: “Behold, the Lord will empty the earth and make it desolate, and He will twist its surface and scatter its inhabitants.And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest; as with the slave, so with his master…. The earth shall be utterly empty and utterly plundered; for the Lord has spoken this word….. The earth lies defiled under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant.” So let the Psalmist take you out into the day, crying, “Who is this King of glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle!” (Ps. 24:8).

 God bless.