17/02/2026
Agreed!
We don’t necessarily agree with everything in this article by Kathleen Stock, but we like what she says at the end:
“But perhaps the biggest lesson to draw from the publication of the files concerns the reaction to them. The basic elements in the Epstein story that make his behaviour abhorrent are, in fact, depressingly mundane. I have seen online outrage at child-like p**nographic images in the files that would cause mere shrugging, had they been found on a different browser — not because they aren’t disgusting (they are), but because they are everywhere. And if you ignore the private jets and the Caribbean islands, every awful thing that ever happened to a girl or young woman on an Epstein property would be just another day to many of those stuck in prostitution. Grooming, pimping out, coercive control, s*xual exploitation, an insatiable appetite for extreme youth and novelty: all fall under the respectability cover of “s*x work”. There was nothing unusual about Epstein’s perversions. He just had the means to indulge them to the max.
Yet it seems that onlookers can only get really offended about these sorts of events when there is another element to keep it spicy: for instance, if the perpetrators are billionaires. And even then, the topic cannot stay interesting for very long, apparently requiring further injections of drama to maintain fascination: tantalising rumours about new names, or fantastical tales of murder and cannibalism. Before you know it, the discourse has run away with itself, and yet again the conspiracy theorists have failed to join up any actual dots.
The depressing fact is that s*xual behaviour like Epstein’s is absolutely standard in our society, in the twin forms of prostitution and the po*******hy industry. Not only that, but they are mostly tolerated. You can either take this as a defence of Epstein or as an indictment of society, and I do the latter. It’s great that we are all tough on Satanic cannibal billionaires now, but it would be good to channel all that outrage into something real.”
Read more: https://unherd.com/2026/02/the-hypocrisy-of-the-epstein-panic/