[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...