The Justice Department and FBI have dropped their Jeffrey Epstein bombshell. Namely: a systematic review revealed no client list, no blackmail of the rich and powerful, and no jailhouse murder cover-up. Inveterate truth-seekers (so long as the truth is insane) like Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Alex Jones remain unconvinced. But readers of Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, the definitive book on conspiracy theories, wouldn’t have been surprised. As Eco’s Grand Cabalist confessed: “There are no ‘bigger secrets,’ because the moment a secret is revealed, it seems little. There is only an empty secret. A secret that keeps slipping through your fingers. . . . The universe is peeled like an onion, and an onion is all peel.” Actual conspiracies don’t remain theories for very long: people being people, word inevitably gets out. Thus the “true initiate is he who knows that the most powerful secret is a secret without content, because no enemy will be able to make him confess it, no rival devotee will be able to take it from him."1 The conspiracy theorist’s conspiracy is designed to provide meaning, not a testable hypothesis.
The Epstein conspiracy theory is an indictment of America’s elites, who were presumably bought and sold by the now-deceased (and obviously murdered) jet-setting sex fiend. As a political narrative, the client list is both more plausible than QAnon (according to which celebrities harvest children’s blood) and juicier than the deep state (which is more sociological than salacious). The baseless claim that Epstein was a Mossad agent also taps into a deep strain of Jewish—I mean, Zionist—conspiracy mongering. Of course, Epstein was a sexual predator who partied with America’s elite (including now-president Donald Trump). The notion that he blackmailed his powerful friends, one of whom had him murdered in his cell, isn’t so outlandish at first glance. But for MAGA conspiracy theorists to disbelieve Trump’s own FBI review—especially when the FBI is now headed by conspiracy theorists—shows that nothing would persuade them otherwise. The Epstein tale of globalist perfidy is just too useful to discard. (Never mind the bizarre faith that Trump, who could’ve been on the client list, was prepared to implicate himself.)
Facts are boring and depressing. “9/11 was an inside job!” is more exciting and, in a curious way, uplifting than “9/11 was made possible by institutional failures!” After all, it’s comforting to know that someone is running the world behind the scenes, even if that someone is evil. The alternative is to acknowledge the outsized roles of human fallibility and sheer chance in shaping events. Worse, abandoning conspiracy theories for rational analysis requires reading, thinking, and questioning prior assumptions. For example, mass migration can be understood as the unfolding of a universalist logic first articulated by the Greek Stoics and Saint Paul, later germinated in the American melting pot, and brought back to Europe to address the economic needs of aging welfare states. Or it can be blamed on the Jews. Which of the two explanations makes for a more crowd-rousing slogan? Which will generate more likes on X (or even Substack)? The truth is more challenging than any conspiracy theory, and so naturally less appealing.
As a hobby for the gullible, conspiracy theories seem harmless enough. Belief in ancient aliens and the Illuminati is the application of science fiction and fantasy to real life. In that sense, it’s just imaginative play for adults, another means to escape the disenchantment of the world. But when conspiracy theories achieve critical mass and influence society and government, we all suffer. At minimum, attention paid to fake problems means that actual problems are neglected. There may be no Epstein conspiracy, but there are certainly criminals and terrorists conspiring against our social order. Ipso facto, an FBI focused on fantasy isn’t focused on real threats. More broadly, democracies and nations start to fail when their foundation of trust is eroded. If one side of the political divide consists of Satanic pedophiles, then it’s surely worth canceling elections to keep them from power. If “the system is rigged,” then why bother participating or trying to improve it? Ironically, mistrust in consensus reality is usually coupled with faith in demagogues and grifters. You can’t rely on the banks, but surely meme coins are sound.
The opposite of conspiracy theorizing isn’t placid acceptance of the popular narrative. Rather, it’s a healthy skepticism. Yes, the “establishment” was wrong about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But the evidence doesn’t support the notion that the war was for oil, Israel, or any other secret cause. Instead, it was a bad decision made by misguided humans. As historian Melvyn Leffler writes, “Bush resolved to invade Iraq only after many months of high anxiety, a period in which hard-working, if overzealous, officials tried to parse intelligence that was incomplete and unreliable.” The Bush administration was unnerved by 9/11, preoccupied by a sense that America’s credibility was eroding, and led to disaster by a mix of fear, power, and hubris. Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein himself was done in by his own conspiratorial thinking. As Steve Coll writes, Saddam “confused himself with elaborate conspiracy theories about American and Israeli power in the Middle East.” Thus, when Bush “accused him of hiding weapons of mass destruction, he assumed that the agency already knew that he had no dangerous weapons and that the accusations were just a pretense to invade.” The idea that the CIA was “capable of making an analytical mistake on the scale of its miss about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was not part of his worldview.” Other literal victims of their own conspiracy theories include Michel Foucault, who died of AIDS after having unprotected gay sex. Foucault, the godfather of biomedical conspiracy theories, had discounted the disease as a myth meant to control male homosexuality.
We should be skeptical of our elites because they’re human, all too human, and thus capable of profound incompetence and idiocy, not because they’re Machiavellian supervillains.2 The March of Folly, not The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, is the secret guide to history’s inner workings. Perhaps more incriminating details will emerge about the Epstein affair. To be healthily skeptical is to acknowledge that possibility. But first and foremost, it’s to follow the evidence, and not be misled by the same paranoia that brought down Saddam and Foucault. There are indeed dark forces driving the course of history. But those forces aren’t Freemasons, Zionists, Knights Templar, Illuminati, Rothschilds, reptilian humanoids, or Satanic pedophiles. Rather, they’re pride, cupidity, fear, envy, stupidity, hatred, and lust for power. Like Epstein (allegedly), these dark forces also have a client list. But that list isn’t limited to the rich and powerful. It includes every fallen descendant of Y-chromosomal Adam and Mitochondrial Eve. You don’t need an FBI investigation to uncover history’s biggest bombshell. It’s right there inside you, and you were in on it all along.
Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum (1989), pp. 604–5.
If they were, the world would be better run.
Where would you recommend I read more about Foucault as progenitor of biomedical conspiracy theories? I've never heard that accusation before and would be interested in learning more.