[RajT88]

I am not Jewish, and must be lucky to hang out in the parts of the internet where I haven't seen it. (Except for Breitbart comments - I pop in there when I want to know the subtext of what right wing politicians are saying. There's plenty of anti-semitism there.)

> Every big city in the world has it and it is even legal in some countries, not to mention that Pedophilia as the term is being used in the Epstein case is basically legal in most European countries with the age of consent at 15 and even 14 in some cases.

I have no interest in dying on this hill, but there's 3 different technical terms which describe distinct kinds of attraction people have to children in relation to puberty, and that term does not describe 14-15 year olds. For whatever that is worth, with regards to the legality in parts of Europe indeed age of consent can vary widely across nations, and even states within nations. But let's be clear - what Epstein did was illegal even if it was done to adults. That's human trafficking.

[fromMars]

I am not trying to rehabilitate Epstein. He was a vile and disgusting sex trafficker, rapist, pedophile, whatever you want to call him. I am all for going after anyone else who can be proven to be involved.

He is also dead. I just don't think there was anything particularly exceptional/unique about him as a story other than his wealth as human trafficking is a global problem.

[krapp]

You aren't taking into account all of the effort the Republicans spent ginning up conspiracy theories about Satanic pedophile cults within the Democratic Party and how Trump's base made that and "releasing the Epstein files" their entire identity, or the absolute clownshow debacle of the Trump administration trying to stall, prevaricate and memory-hole the entire thing after it became clear how implicated Trump himself was.

Also the number of celebrities and powerful people (including the sitting President) involved makes it a bigger story.

That said, yes the antisemites have come out in force around this, just as they did around Palestinian activism, and just as they always do. But I think most people's outrage is focused on systems of privilege and power and on the Trump administration in particular, not anything about "the Jews."

[fromMars]

Thanks for the perspective. It could be that I am being overly sensitive to the discourse around this.

As someone who avoids forums where these ideas are promoted, it's hard to know when people are talking about things like "Satanic cults" whether that is some code word for Jews.

[krapp]

> it's hard to know when people are talking about things like "Satanic cults" whether that is some code word for Jews.

That came straight out of /pol/ so it definitely was, although I suspect that as with "cultural Marxism" it got diffused enough within the right wing that the antisemitism got obscured for most people, but the roots are still there. Trump tweeted this image of Hillary Clinton in 2016, after all[0].

But I think that it's important not to mistake online discourse for societal norms. All of that is intentionally engineered by social media platforms and political interests to maximize the effect of radicalism and extremism, and Twitter explicitly for right-wing ends. I think in the real world, most people don't fall in for that sort of thing.

[0]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/02/donald-trump...