Why do I feel like the only man outraged by the Epstein files?

The latest tranche of files has been greeted more like a ‘sexpionage’ thriller than the kind of broiling injustice that should make us riot, says Richard Godwin

“It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies,” wrote Noam Chomsky in a famous essay from 1967, setting out the moral imperative for people exactly like Noam Chomsky to intervene in public life.

Ever since, Chomsky has been all too happy to step beyond his specialism (linguistics) to offer critiques of neoliberalism, media manipulation and much else. After all, only intellectuals — a “privileged minority” — are able to “seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest.”

When it comes to the systematic abuse of women by men at the very apex of society, however, Chomsky seems to have come over a little quiet. As we now know, back in February 2019, Chomsky wrote to his friend, the billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, offering his advice on how best to deal with all the nasty press one tends to get for soliciting underage girls for prostitution.

“The best way to proceed is to ignore it,” Chomsky wrote. Such was the “hysteria” that had developed around the abuse of women, he lamented, that even questioning such a charge “is a crime worse than murder.” In another message, Chomsky tells Epstein he is “fantasizing” about his Caribbean island.

What the f*** is wrong with men? I’m sorry to break out of sober intellectual analysis mode for a minute but – what kind of moral monster can entertain such a ridiculous double standard? More than anything, this is a story about how men destroy the lives of women — and don’t give a damn about it.

“The way he viewed women and girls – as playthings to be used and discarded – is not uncommon among certain powerful men who believe they are above the law,” wrote Virginia Giuffre, the victim who did most to expose Epstein’s crimes, before she committed suicide last year. “Epstein not only didn’t hide what was happening, he took a certain glee in making people watch. And people did watch – scientists, fundraisers from the Ivy League and other heralded institutions, titans of industry. They watched and they didn’t care.”

So much tiresome hysteria; annoying to think about, really.

I should stress, I don’t think the author of Manufacturing Consent deserve singling out any more than the apex pussy grabbers exposed in the Epstein Files. Inclusion in the Epstein files does not suggest wrongdoing. But we know the names; and we probably long suspected them of being the sort of competitive men “who seek only to maximize wealth and power”, these being the basic qualities a man needs to thrive in a system that is “anti-human and intolerable in the deepest sense” (Chomsky on Anarchism, 2005)

The blindspot in Chomsky’s case is simply all the more glaring given his devotion to exposing these hidden structures — the ones that allow men to reframe cruelty as power; exploitation as acumen; a frightened, slightly dead behind the eyes teenage masseuse as kind of sexy.

Then again Chomsky has admitted to the blindspot in the past. He was once asked by an interviewer to respond to a comment by a female student of his who described him as an “old-fashioned patriarch” who never really got feminism. “How has [feminism] affected me? Hard to say. It probably has, but probably not as much as it should have." No s*** Noam. “The belief that women exist to be used by men is so old, so deep set, so widely accepted, so commonplace in its everyday application, that it is rarely challenged, even by those who pride themselves on and are recognized for their intellectual acumen and ethical grace".”

That was Andrea Dworkin, writing about porn, before it was free for every man with an internet connection.

In which context — it’s hardly surprising that this particular batch of files should have been greeted principally as a piece of entertainment, a “sexpionage” thriller, an occasion for groyper-esque memes, Westminster gossip and prurient Schadenfreude. (A usually sober-minded Substack just landed in my inbox with the subtitle “Plus: Epstein!”). Those of us who have failed to, say, float a tech company or gain an inexplicable power over Morgan McSweeney tend to enjoy the downfall of those who have. It makes us feel better.

It seems to me that the least one can do as a man is to try to care. Already, however, that seems to be asking a bit too much. It seems grimly appropriate in that the US Justice Department should have taken great pains to redact the names and words of many of the men involved — while apparently failing to obscure the identities of some of the underage girls compromised in the photos.

Indeed, the very act of telling men that maybe they should care seems fraught with risk. One of the most telling exchanges in the Epstein files comes from the photographer Andres Serrano, who emailed Epstein just as Donald Trump was facing flak in the 2016 Presidential campaign for . “I was prepared to vote against Trump for all the right reasons,” writes Serrano… “But so disgusted by the outrage over ‘grab them by the pussy’, that I may give him my sympathy vote.”

In retrospect, this was a turning point in the American context — the moment that the extremely minor discomfort caused by the MeToo movement rebounded into a counterrevolution far more vicious and far-reaching than the initial rebellion. It’s not too much of a stretch to see Trump’s appointment of Brett Kavanaugh — a man who at the time was similarly facing multiple allegations of sexual abuse and attempted rape — onto the Supreme Court as an act of vengeance.

Now, we’re deep into the vibe shift, and moral anarchy reigns. MeToo too prompts a yawn of boredom; the word woke is a punchline. Trump campaigned for reelection on a platform of vengeance and his second reign has been duly characterised by performative sadism. Forcing people to do things they don’t want to do. Forcing others to watch. A kind of political pornography.

I’m not sure what power we have other than to call out this kind of abuse for what it is.