• SorosFootSoldier [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Shit like this really does lend a lot of evidence to Epstein making his riches off blackmailing other rich pedophiles, there's so many of them, it's like any man who gets a taste of wealth and fame becomes one.

    • CetaceanPosadist
      ·
      2 years ago

      im of the mind that epstein was cia and part of the machinery built by the "deep state" or whatever you want to call it to ensure the rich, famous, and powerful tow the party line. i would not be surprised if a culture of pedophilia was cultivated and aggressively expanded in the halls of power by the cia for purposes of control -- we know they do this exact shit to control powerful figures in foreign nations and with the whole epstein thing it seems so very likely to me that this is going on domestically on a much larger scale

      • Commander_Data [she/her]
        ·
        2 years ago

        It would make sense. Rising cultural acceptance of homosexuality in the west meant that blackmail around sexual orientation was being closed off to them, and we know how much they loved that little trick.

        • Dr_Gabriel_Aby [none/use name]
          ·
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          Im not sure from memory of all details, but the book Jakarta Method discusses sex blackmail being used and how it wasn’t successful in Indonesia and made Sukarno seem cooler to people.

          Edit: sex blackmail done by the CIA

    • KobaCumTribute [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I think it's even bigger than that: until comparatively recently (the past few decades) it seems like the mainstream view on like middle age suburbanite men creeping on teenage girls wasn't meaningfully different from the view on adultery from them in general. That is, negative because it's adulterous sex and not because they're preying on a child. Hell even as recently as a decade ago the "well, it's legally not porn" lewd shots of underage girls were still considered as respectable and normal as porn in general: reddit built its name on subs dedicated to sexualizing teenage girls, among worse subjects.

      So you've got generations of men socialized to see teenage girls as acceptable objects of lust, with an obvious intersection with the general culture of men feeling entitled to any and every treat they want even when that treat is control over someone else's body. Throw in how many men are sex pests in general and how this gets worse the more untouchable and powerful they feel and the scope of the problem starts to become clearer.

    • SaniFlush [any, any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      At a certain level of wealth people stop saying “no” to you, or rather you can just ignore the “no”s.

    • Leon_Grotsky [comrade/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      There is truth to this, even outside of Epstein. Blackmail of this type is a very old idea. Stuff like Bohemian Grove isn't the cannibalistic sex-murder-orgies the conspiracy theories make them out to be, but it is a place where the excessively wealthy go to perform rituals to dispel any notions of immorality in or... culpability? for their actions, like confessional for a catholic (I assume, as a non-Papist.) More like communal sin-eating now that I think about it.

      This spring I plan on digging into Whitney Webb's One Nation Under Blackmail: The sordid union between Intelligence and organized Crime that gave rise to Jeffrey Epstein because this stuff exists today outside of the Epstein/Maxwell Network. Dick Durbin, a former representative from my home state got caught up in a similar scandal. Franklin Credit Union is another good example.

      Basically our whole society exists on a bedrock of extortion and coercion at different levels and intensities at different social strata, sexual blackmail like this scratches the surface

      • TerminalEncounter [she/her]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I can't remember who said it, but being blackmailable is apparently good for your career. If you're clean, no one trusts you with power.

        • Leon_Grotsky [comrade/them]
          ·
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          Exactly, even in my own work it is "unbecoming" for "young professionals" to not go to bars after work with suits etc. and work parties and stuff like that. International interns are placed in precarious situations and suggested to ingratiate themselves within the power structure at the company. Not that there is necessarily anything sexual involved as implied referencing Epstein etc. but it gives opportunities for people to get leverage over one another.