Podcast: Broken Jeffrey Epstein

This is a fascinating and heartbreaking podcast about two of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s victims.  The choice of these two victims in particular illustrates the class nature of the exploitation.

The stories also illustrate another crucial point about the media coverage of the Epstein case.  Journalists are presenting the Epstein/Maxwell story as if it exists outside of the context of the international political blackmail scheme of which it was a part.  The host of the podcast even talks about Epstein’s “pathology” as if this is a story about mental illness.

The Epstein/Maxwell story is not only about sexual exploitation, it is about political power.  It seems to me to be perfectly obvious that Bill Barr’s father, himself with a history of clandestine activity, saw early on the potential Epstein had to advance the goals of compromising political enemies.

What Epstein and Maxwell ran was a ruthless systematic, methodical  recruiting, grooming, and utilizing business.  They recruited, groomed, educated and placed the right young women in strategic places to compromise and secure the complicity of important people for political purposes.

To discuss this operation as the raging mental illness of one man, or a man and a woman is to completely distort the nature and purpose of this operation.

The stories of two victims are talked about in this podcast – Melissa, a talented cellist and Michelle, a high school student in Palm Beach.  Michelle fits the profile of the hundreds of girls the pair lured into Epstein’s property, abused and then discarded.  Melissa is an example of a young woman who was recruited, groomed over a period of years and then discarded partly due to her own lack of willingness to comply.  Even though a substantial amount of time and money was spent on the long-term grooming of Melissa, she was never sexually assaulted.

The host of the podcast explains the long-term investment in Melissa as an example of Epstein’s “pathology” of power.  She argues that Melissa illustrates Epstein’s obsession, indeed “addiction” to power games.

The host, however, completely ignores what is the more obvious explanation for Melissa’s experience.  Epstein and Maxwell were not just sexually exploiting young women for their own sexual gratification.  They were methodically grooming young women and placing them in strategic positions to compromise political targets.  You don’t just send a lower class little girl into a high society environment and expect her to seduce Prince Andrew.  You groom, make beholden, and place a Julliard cellist in the room with Prince Andrew and then use that young woman to compromise the target.

That is exactly what they tried to do with Melissa.  They spent years supporting her financially, working her into a pseudo-family situation with them and then even demanding that she attend the higher status school, Julliard, to make her a more attractive lure.  Epstein’s “pathology” didn’t prevent him from spending years cultivating this girl.  But, the journalist here, doesn’t even discuss this.  Instead she launches off on a discussion of Epstein’s supposed power mad psychology.

The issue here is not psychology.  That’s not even what’s interesting or significant about the case.  But, the corporate media will turn the story into a lurid tabloid narrative to avoid talking about this massive, international kompromat ring.  That is not only a shame.  It is yet another example of the corporate media distorting reality, maintaining a delusion which protects powerful people who are aggressively pursuing an authoritarian agenda.