We’ve waited a long time for the release of the Epstein Files. Women especially have petitioned and demanded to have the horrors exposed to the cold light of day.
It felt untenable to know that influential people had been in a circle (and indeed on an island) with two convicted human traffickers and abusers and yet we were not being told who they were or what, exactly, they had done. What were the Me Too and Time’s Up movements about if this open secret allowed predators to stay in powerful positions where they could offend again, without any justice for victims?
Finally, the US Department of Justice released millions, but not all, of the files -lawmakers and survivors claim that millions of files are still being withheld and that the redactions on the released files are protecting powerful men, rather than Epstein’s victims.
Yet, what we have seen so far has laid bare the systemic abuse of very young women and actual children amid a horror show of sickening codes, crimes and connections. It has been shocking and frankly, I worry what seeing all of this has actually done to us.
There is a real risk that the tranche of information has made us so overwhelmed and numb that women’s rights could end up taking a step backwards.
For years now, as the host of The Guilty Feminist Podcast, I’ve been consistently asked to “raise awareness” for various issues and causes. Sometimes, in fact, if I don’t post on social media about an issue for a few days, someone pops into my inbox to explain that “silence is violence” and that I must “use my platform” to make others aware.
My reply is always the same: “What action do you want my followers to take once they become aware?” Awareness without action leads to depression. If we can support survivors or take action to get justice, then there is a purpose in witnessing the trauma in a social media post. If we do not know how to make change, we permeate a “what can you do?” kind of attitude and almost accept that nothing will change. That landscape could very easily spiral into women and children’s rights being stripped away without much resistance.
Take the Epstein files, dumped unceremoniously into the world. I believe they are shifting the global psyche – and not in a good way. We are reading page after page of horrific crimes and cover-ups, including highly disturbing photographs and videos (some revealing the identities of the victims and survivors) and nothing is being done about it.
Earlier this week, Vermont US Representative Becca Balint, who has access to unredacted versions of the files, was asked what she’d learnt in a walk-and-talk interview with Drop Site News. She replied: “They’re all a bunch of sick f**ks. I think the part that is just so disgusting is that so many people knew.”
And yet, we are seeing no perp walks or arrests. No outcry among the American political class or global leaders of industry.
In the UK, we have seen Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor lose his title and be downgraded to a five-bedroom house. We have seen the Prime Minister appear to do the Hokey Cokey with his own resignation and his chief advisor leave for his part in appointing Peter Mandelson as US ambassador.
Mandelson himself is being investigated by the Met Police for alleged misconduct in a public office, but just before that he had been granted a folksy front cover of a Sunday supplement and interview to explain his regretful association with Epstein.
This reaction is what we might expect from a very low-level political scandal. Not from an investigation as serious as this.
If there are no significant consequences, we all have to live with the fact that the elite now know that the worst things imaginable can be released – and they remain invincible.
What will some of them be emboldened to do next? How do we go on paying taxes, doing our bit for society, going to the movies, raising children and obeying laws when we know what they can get away with, knowing they can plead the fifth or avoid the soft ball questions they’re given, if any at all? Even if a few individuals are made an example of, the whole point is that the system must be rotten to the core to have allowed this, and it is clear that nothing will be done about that.
So why have we been shown the files at all? US trial attorney, Daphne Delvaux, who is experienced in cases of trafficking and sexual exploitation, explained on her Instagram account (@themamaattorney) this week, that the method with which the files are being released is deliberately designed to put us into a psychological trance.
She writes: “In trial practice, when there are exhibits involving violence, children or extreme harm, we do not simply dump information in the room… The judge guides the process. Experts contextualise it. It is a container equipped to hold this content. Courts understand that when the brain is flooded with horror, your system gets hijacked by the primal brain… This strategy is not allowed at trial.”
It seems that the US DOJ want us caught like rabbits in a headlight, unable to move, feeling unable to create change and just accepting that this is the kind of depravity that the obscenely wealthy and well-connected should be entitled to deliver.
It’s easy to think that if the outcome is everyone knows and nobody pays, they’d have been better releasing nothing. Because emboldening a criminal elite and paralysing society shifts us further into a dystopian future.
But I do not believe we have to go along with this conditioning. We can choose not to.
In 2013, Harvard Professor and political scientist, Erica Chenoweth, formulated the 3.5 per cent rule: when 3.5 per cent of the population of a country protest non-violently against an authoritarian government, that government is likely to fall from power.
Chenoweth and their colleague, Dr Maria Stephan, studied the success rate of civil resistance efforts from 1900 to 2006 and discovered that non-violent resistance attracted about four times as many participants as violent resistance – and was about twice as likely to be successful. It is also more likely to bring about the kind of government the people are wanting, rather than another violent administration.
While I am not suggesting we live under an authoritarian government yet – it is important to note that this week the UK and US sunk to new lows in the global index of corruption. Corruption and authoritarianism are closely linked.
We can use the 3.5 per cent rule as motivation that we do have power to create change. 3.5 per cent of the British population is under two and a half million people. That feels very doable, doesn’t it?
There are many people who feel that democracy no longer works for them and that they are too busy and tired to do anything that would make a change. We can reach them and create an environment where connection and action gives us all energy.
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I have been in the activist space for 10 years and never before have I felt the desire for real world change and action that I am experiencing now.
Artists, community leaders, religious leaders are coming together to create grassroots projects that draw people together to resist authoritarianism and corruption. Many are in their infancy and are nothing I’ve seen before. Professional writers using their skills for campaigns. Book clubs reaching out to people who have given up on democracy. Community craft projects to connect with young people who have become lonely through screens and turned towards the manosphere.
We, the people, are ready to put democracy to work. We cannot stop at awareness. We have to decide to act.
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