The case of the wretched celebrity circle surrounding billionaire investor Jeffrey Epstein, with all their criminal exploits, is one of the issues that is intensely preoccupying the American, European and global public sphere [...] And the issue reveals many, very important things, about the global situation in the field of sensitivity, political ethics and personal ethics in general, of those social groups that are called by the term “the elites”. Economic, political, media, artistic and, last but not least, scientific elites. The term elite is now infamous, as is the label of the alleged persecutors of the elites, the populists; the leaders of the latter are very often flesh and blood of some of these elites, mainly the special elite of former investors or financial advisors.
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| © Politico - Illustration by Claudine Hellmuth/Politico (source images via Getty and AP) |
Especially the involvement of so many “seekers of scientific truth” (Katha Pollit of Nation magazine)
in such a quagmire of lies, fraud and misanthropy, is shocking. Equally
spine-chilling should be the crude transformation of the female, minor
or not, human being (as body and as spirit) into a tool. We also see the
inseparable connection of sexual degeneration and plutocratic opulence
with fascist or proto-fascist ideologies, which is already documented, see women - “tools” and other things, in one of the two darkest, “truly nihilistic dark thinkers of the bourgeoisie”, the Marquis de Sade. Now postmodern libertarian fascism has been added.
However, historians and sociologists with clear vision, may draw a more sober conclusion: “Our wise men had it in mind, we knew well where we were going.” The accumulation of financial resources combined with third-world-style social inequality, and the obsessive turn of cutting-edge technologies towards utopianism, towards the unattainable complete liberation from natural and moral-social limits, may have already brought the United States to that late, demonically decadent phase of capitalism that Max Weber predicted; and its Weberian “Last Man,” the Janus-like two-faced one, is present:
However, historians and sociologists with clear vision, may draw a more sober conclusion: “Our wise men had it in mind, we knew well where we were going.” The accumulation of financial resources combined with third-world-style social inequality, and the obsessive turn of cutting-edge technologies towards utopianism, towards the unattainable complete liberation from natural and moral-social limits, may have already brought the United States to that late, demonically decadent phase of capitalism that Max Weber predicted; and its Weberian “Last Man,” the Janus-like two-faced one, is present:
“Experts without spirit, hedonists without heart (Fachmenschen ohne Geist, Genussmenschen ohne Herz). And as if that were not enough, these trifles will be imagined as having risen to a level of human civilization that no one has reached before.”
You had a lot of money, late gallant Jeffrey. Even more was the glamour of your company, of all sorts of great people, of the hospitality on your private island, of the shared flight on your Liar jet. And the “elevation” that every miserable old man or mentally empty advanced middle-aged man feels, surrounded by bought girls, was great. For some experts in genetic engineering, artificial intelligence or other technological trends driven in orbits of dubious scientificity, “nerds” with “tunnel vision” as one of them says (or ten master's degrees but a hillbilly's Bildung, as a common mortal would say), this glamour may have been blinding. They did not see, they did not understand; they only commited. At best they played blind.
What can give us hope? Even if many people once liked Woody Allen as an actor, even if Chomsky was once considered in some circles to be a sacred monster of knowledge and of political value labeled “leftist,” and because a Nobel Prize always deserves a certain amount of admiration, even if in vain, those who are now surprised are not all necessarily and lifelong idiots. People often do not lose the ability to learn throughout life; that is precisely why they can be intelligent, rational, and moral beings.
What can give us hope? Even if many people once liked Woody Allen as an actor, even if Chomsky was once considered in some circles to be a sacred monster of knowledge and of political value labeled “leftist,” and because a Nobel Prize always deserves a certain amount of admiration, even if in vain, those who are now surprised are not all necessarily and lifelong idiots. People often do not lose the ability to learn throughout life; that is precisely why they can be intelligent, rational, and moral beings.
George B. Ritzoulis
See:
Katha Pollitt: Why Did So Many People in Epstein’s Circle Look the Other Way?, The Nation, 25.11.2025
Timo Lehmann, Marc Röhlig: Chats mit Trump-Vertrauten - Auch Angela Merkel und die AfD tauchenin den Epstein-Files auf, Der Spiegel, 2.2.2026
Landon Thomas Jr.: Jeffrey
Epstein, International Moneyman of Mystery - “Terrific guy,” Donald
Trump booms from a speakerphone. “He’s a lot of fun to be with”, New York Magazine, 28.10.2002
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