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What the Epstein Files Tell Us about the Right Wing [1]
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Date: 2025-07-21
Let’s go beyond the schadenfreude of watching MAGA having a conniption over Pam Bondi covering up the Epstein files. Instead of having a watch party hoping to see some kind of anti-Trump revolt, and breathlessly keeping score of every statement made by people about Epstein, Bondi, and Trump like its some kind of sick sports game, let’s dig a little deeper.
What’s behind all of this, beyond the reality that Epstein was, in fact, a sexual predator? Why does the reactionary right wing care about this affair? What led to this situation of open antagonism among right-wingers over whether or not to release the information about Epstein?
I ask because the Epstein files affair shows how the right wing is how I’ve been describing them for years. Understanding what the right wing is and why they do what they do helps us defend ourselves — because the right wing isn’t gunning for Epstein, they’re gunning for us.
The Right Wing Depends on Conspiracy Theories
The Epstein files is a conspiracy theory. The conspiracy theory isn’t about Epstein and what he did; its allegation is that there is a cover-up of the investigation into his criminal activities. The MAGA base and their handlers don’t care about Epstein or his crimes, much less his victims, not really. They care about the alleged cover-up by high-powered people to protect particular high-powered people. The bickering about the Epstein files lays bare the anatomy of conspiracy theories and why those theories are so important to the right wing.
I won’t go into deep detail about conspiracy theories in general because I did that in a previous article. Go read that, it will be very much worth your time. In short, for now, most salient to the Epstein files affair is that a conspiracy theory creates a club of believers in the theory who are united by a shared fear and their certainty that they know a secret that normal people and the authorities do not.
Conspiracy theories are believed by earnest meaning seekers who lean on their belief to manufacture a feeling that they are special because they’ve cracked a secret conspiracy. The conspiracy theories are pushed by con(spiracy) artists who exploit the needs and fears of the earnest meaning seekers. We see that in how the conspiracy theory about Epstein has for years been constantly pushed by right-wing podcasters and other talking heads. Fame and money are the motives for the con(spiracy) artists, including Dan Bongino who parlayed the Epstein conspiracy theory into not only a profitable podcast and Web site but a cushy government job.
“High-powered people are covering up the Epstein files to protect other high-powered people,” the con(spiracy) artists have screamed, and the MAGA earnest meaning seekers have lapped it up. It’s a business. The con artists sell a product to consumers. But the Epstein files affair is one of a particular strain of conspiracy theories that fulfills a political necessity beyond greed and psychological need.
The Right Wing Needs Enemies
The Epstein files is a political conspiracy theory. In this dark realm, the stories told are nastier and powered by bigotry against particular groups of people. These conspiracy theories can inspire violence, such as storming capitol buildings.
The right wing is defined by the desire to return to a two-tiered society that concentrates power into an “Us” opposed to a “Them.” The right wing sees politics as the fight between friend and foe and political action as fundamentally a struggle against enemies. Political conspiracy theories are useful tools to create and sustain an atmosphere of political hostility in which enemies are created and demagoguery poisons the political atmosphere. Political conspiracy theories often target gays, environmentalists, feminists, and basically everyone else more liberal than the con(spiracy) artist and who are branded as vile conspirators against “freedom” who are “out to get me, you, and your little dog too.” (Source)
MAGA is having its conniption over Pam Bondi covering up the Epstein files because the right wing needs enemies, and Bondi is trying to take away their preferred enemies. The Epstein conspiracy theory has a much longer genealogy than people realize. The current political environment becomes much clearer when we understand that history and how the Epstein files affair fits in with the identity of the American right wing.
Epstein is a crucial ingredient in the toxic soup of right-wing conspiracy theories because Epstein has been linked to one of its favorite targets: Bill Clinton. I have no desire to defend Clinton, but I’ve never understood the abiding right-wing hatred of him that goes back to the early 1990s. Maybe it’s because he dragged the Democratic Party to the right wing, muddying the simplistic “Us versus Them” political landscape that the right wing prefers. In any event, spinning conspiracy theories about Bill Clinton has been a dominant subject of the right wing’s conspiracy theory industry. Since 1992, standard fare of the theories has been portraying Bill and his spouse Hillary as leaders of an organized crime ring.
Yes, pizzagate — the 2016 right-wing conspiracy theory that the Democratic Party — now with Hillary Clinton as its figurehead — was running a child sex ring. The conspiracy theory was complete bullshit, but that didn’t matter. It fed the earnest meaning seekers’ psychological needs to believe they had one over on people they hate.
The pizzagate conspiracy theory led directly to the QAnon conspiracy theory that began in 2017 after Hillary lost the election (fair and square, by the way). Perhaps that was the con(spiracy) artists’ plan all along; we’ll probably never know. QAnon — a fake person(s) spewing fake news to stir up real hatred, adopted pizzagate and other anti-Clinton conspiracy theories in full and over the next three years kept adding to it.
Central to the QAnon conspiracy theory was that there is a worldwide satanic cannibalistic child sex ring with Hillary Clinton being a key figure in it. Plus, Donald Trump, now president, would, any day now, arrest the Clintons and many other top Democrats for their crimes. The conspiracy theory was complete bullshit, but that didn’t matter. It fed the earnest meaning seekers’ psychological needs to believe they had one over on people they hate.
QAnon became a focal point for the reactionary right wing. It soaked up elements from the Tea Party, white supremacy, and American nationalism, and it became a catch-all brand for nearly every right-wing conspiracy theory. By 2019, QAnon was a broad on-trend movement of earnest meaning seekers railing against everyone they hated and seeing Trump as their salvation.
By coincidence, in July 2019, Epstein was arrested (again) for sex trafficking and sexual activity with underage girls. It was a perfect fit for the QAnon mob’s conspiracy theories: a rich Jewish financier and convicted sex offender.
After years of MAGA being groomed to associate child sex rings with the Clintons, connecting Epstein with Bill Clinton was automatic. When Epstein killed himself in jail, the right-wing conspiracy theory industry reached back to the old Clinton Body Count conspiracy theory. Trump immediately endorsed the rumor that Bill Clinton had gone to Epstein’s private island, implying that Clinton partook in Epstein’s crimes. With Trump’s blessing, it was now “obvious” to MAGA that Epstein was murdered.
Trump lost the 2020 election (fair and square, by the way). QAnon’s prophesy that Biden would be arrested for election fraud failed to happen, and QAnon as a brand faded away. That was the brand, not the sentiment of MAGA nor of the mob’s hatreds.
Oops, Major Oops
Then in January 2024, newly unsealed legal documents named Bill Clinton as an associate of Epstein. The resurfacing of the Epstein files was perfect timing for the beginning of the presidential primary season and Trump’s run to return to the White House. If we were conspiratorially minded . . .
During the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly seemed to promise to release the Epstein files if elected. MAGA heard what they wanted to hear. Trump won the 2024 election (fair and square, by the way). The MAGA mob salivated over the possibility that so many of their pet conspiracy theories — from the JFK assassination to all the Clinton conspiracies — would now be proven. Trump was their savior; who needed Q anymore? When instead, Bondi buried the Epstein files, MAGA cried like a toddler whose candy had just been taken away. In a very real sense, it had been.
What the MAGA mob conveniently omitted from their consciousness was that among the high-powered people linked to Epstein in the legal documents was Trump. Not just Clinton, also Trump. Oops. This fact is not lost on Trump who, when you go through the history of all of his comments about the Epstein files, was always quite cagey about whether they would ever be fully released.
Covering Up the Big Oops
So, now Trump calls the right-wingers who want the Epstein files released “bad people.” Of course he doesn’t want full disclosure of Epstein’s criminal activities. Trump, a quintessential right-winger, sees politics as the fight between friend and foe and political action as fundamentally a struggle against enemies. Thus, anyone who wants anything that Trump doesn’t want is a foe, an enemy.
Trump, as a quintessential right-winger, now tries to use the conspiracy theory tactic to pretend that the Epstein files affair is a hoax invented by Democrats. He’s asking the MAGA mob, after eight years of “knowing” that the release of the Epstein files will lead to the downfall of high-powered Democrats, to now switch to believing that the whole thing was made up by Democrats.
That switch will require some serious mental gymnastics from right-wingers, but let’s be honest about one thing. Hate is a stronger power than reason. That’s why conspiracy theories work for the right wing, and it’s difficult to break up a conspiracy theory’s believers club.
You can’t reason with a conspiracy theorist. Because you are against their belief, the conspiracy theorists are not interested in what you have to say. You are only trying to deceive them. The conspiracy theorists are always correct, and you are always wrong. We are all “enemy” to them.
You’d think that with Trump now telling them they are wrong and bad people would make him their enemy. It’s not that simple. The right wing is defined by the desire to return to a two-tiered society of an “Us” opposed to a “Them.” MAGA hates too many people too much to turn on one of their own.
Conspiracy theories channel hatred with great effectiveness. Believing in conspiracy theories doesn’t require reason, only hatred. Earnest meaning seekers wrap their minds and emotions around what aligns with their prejudices. As I previously wrote, “Even if Trump is struck by a meteorite live on TV, the right-wing con(spiracy) artists will immediately try to blame it on a Leftist conspiracy to murder Trump. It’s what they do.”
Instead of the schadenfreude of hoping MAGA will revolt against Trump, open your eyes. Sure, Bondi is covering up the Epstein files on Trump’s orders. Sure, whatever is in there incriminates Trump. It doesn’t matter. What matters is a conspiracy theory about the Epstein files that implicates the Clintons and other Democrats. They covered it up or they created it — either way works for the right wing. Just you watch. Somehow the Trump cover-up of the Epstein files will be turned into a conspiracy theory with left-wingers as the enemy and melded back into the toxic soup of right-wing conspiracy theories. When people show you who they are, believe them.
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