Its not that talking about the sex trafficking ring is antisemitic. Its the phrasing of the ruling class as "the pedophile class" when antisemitism has long depicted the source of societal problems as a shadowy Jewish ruling class which preys on innocent children. and also that defining the ruling class around pedophilia is simply not conducive to getting people to understand how capitalist patriarchy is directly responsible for this.
i'm not saying don't talk about Epstein or the sex trafficking or Mossad. i'm saying don't call the ruling class the "Epstein pedophile class" out of concern for leftist causes being co-opted to promote blood libel and that distracting from what should be our actual goals. it is such a small decision we can make to ensure that we can talk about the ruling class without contributing to antisemitism and creating opportunities for antisemitism to hide behind plausible deniability and become normalized.
additionally, we really do need to be careful with how we talk about Epstein because people do focus more on the disgust reaction of "these individuals are perverted monsters" instead of the social causes of sex trafficking and child abuse and the exploitation of society at large. people have been making this criticism for a while. that's part of my problem with this language as well: "Epstein pedophile class" communicates very little about the actual power structures at hand, compared to "ruling class" or "the rich" which at least point more in that direction, instead of pointing at "pedophile" when "pedophiles" have long been used as a vague boogeyman that distracts from talking about real issues. this was exactly what happened in the Satanic Panic; while the feminists of the 60s had pushed for child sexual abuse to be understood in a social context of patriarchal family dynamics and emphasized that abuse came from within "normal" families, the Panic emphasized foreign, evil pedophiles who attacked "normal" families from the outside.
its not that the Panic wasn't "moral outrage based." there was obviously moral outrage. moral outrage and disgust are not mutually exclusive; in fact, they often go together. the reason i say it centers disgust is because it puts the emphasis on the idea of "pedophile" as this dangerous, deviant Other that people have a visceral disgust response to, rather than putting the emphasis on the systems which allow this violence to occur and thinking critically about how the normal, comfortable, familiar status quo directly led to and justified the sex trafficking, rather than it arising from the intrinsic evil of these select perverted individuals.
back on antisemitism, see this article:
In the many emails between Epstein and his Jewish friends, we see them swap chauvinistic myths about Jewish superiority alongside intimate secrets, corrupt favors, and advice on finding Jewish lawyers to help navigate sexual misconduct allegations. The emails can read like an antisemite’s fever dream, seeming to validate their most sinister fantasies about the financial influence, depravity, and insularity of the Elders of Zion. The fallout has been hard to ignore; one popular social media account has dubbed Epstein “part of the satanic global elite that pull the strings from the shadows,” while the right-wing influencer Candace Owens tweeted that “we are ruled by satanic pedophiles who work for Israel” and, in case anyone missed the point, added “This is the synagogue of Satan we are up against.” For all the moral panic about resurgent antisemitism over the past several years, much of it aimed at Palestine solidarity activists on the left, nothing has encouraged the real thing quite like the Epstein files.
^ this is what i'm concerned about. this is what you sound like when you talk about - and in contexts that aren't even directly about Epstein! - the "Epstein pedophile class" instead of just fucking saying "the ruling class."
Faced with this old antisemitic trope of a wealthy, sexually perverse Jewish cabal that controls the interlocking worlds of finance, media, academia, and politics, we can bring a corrective clarity by pointing instead to capitalism itself as the conspiracy; we can also locate Epstein within a much broader and not distinctly Jewish elite network that is bound together not by a shared identity but by a deep misogyny and desire to protect powerful men from accountability for sexual misconduct and crimes. [...]
[T]his is where conspiracies are always useful: to protect capitalism, and to protect rage from going up and looking at systems. When a multi-ethnic, multiracial working class alliance is forming, one of the most effective ways you can blow it apart is with an antisemitic conspiracy theory. [...]
You know, I’m seeing this everywhere, and I guess what I just want to put a flag down for in this conversation is the fact that our job on the left, on the Jewish left, for the last couple years, has basically been to turn the volume down on the antisemitism discourse. To basically say: The things that you think are antisemitism are not antisemitism. Jews are relatively safe. Being pro-Palestine is not antisemitic, being anti-Zionist is not antisemitic, blah, blah, blah. And now, we are in this totally new reality where there is just an explosion of anti-Jewish sentiment, such that I have never seen in my lifetime, coming from all over, that is connecting to things that I don’t think are being interpreted correctly, but they also have some basis in reality.
this is what i am talking about when i say we are missing an opportunity. this is such a crucial moment to push people further towards socialism and building a socialist political consciousness. people are already more willing than ever in the US to openly criticize capitalism! "capitalism bad" is not a super fringe point to make! we can do so much better than "Epstein pedophile class" while still talking about Epstein, while still talking about Israel! i am just asking for you to be a little bit more concerned with how easily and readily this discussion is co-opted by antisemitism, and to simply not to use that phrase. we do NOT need to use it in order to talk to Americans about capitalism and the ruling class, and we particularly don't need to use it in already leftist spaces like this website.
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