You don’t have to be a fan of wokeism to see in the Epstein files the archive of its antithesis. The Epstein archive is the Cloaca Maxima of the contemporary American empire, a vast sewage system that underlies and enables the triumph of gilded misogyny. The scale of the demand was vast: the US department of justice estimated that Epstein sexually abused more than a thousand girls. [ Noam Chomsky’s wife apologises for their ‘grave mistake’ in Epstein tiesOpens in new window ]But the backlash is against much more than the immediate threat of the #MeToo movement. The grammar of wealth meets the vocabulary of the brothel.

Source: The Irish Times February 10, 2026 20:30 UTC