It is not an exaggeration to say that the greatest political scandal of all time is unfolding before our eyes. The magnitude of the Epstein revelations is not only breathtaking—it is without parallel in the history of class society. Never before has the global ruling class had its dirtiest, darkest inner workings exposed publicly in this way. No scandal has ever implicated such a wide swathe of the world’s financial and political elite and their ruling institutions.

It’s not that the world is just now learning who Jeffrey Epstein was. Long before his alleged suicide in 2019, he held the distinction of being the world’s most famous and well-connected serial pedophile and child sex trafficker. The details of the atrocities revealed by the files are not the real surprise.

Rather, it’s the extent of his connections and the extent of the cover-up that has the world reeling. As it turns out, the “Epstein class” inhabits every corporate boardroom and strolls with impunity through all the halls of power. It spans the whole system.

Far from shining disinfecting sunlight on all the hidden secrets, the partial release has only confirmed that the greatest cover-up of all time is still underway. As one Financial Times columnist put it, “The Epstein files offer America the opposite of closure.” At least half the files—nearly three million more—remain hidden, in blatant violation of the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA) forced on Congress and the president under pressure from below.

While the Justice Department egregiously revealed the names of many victims, the names of many perpetrators were carefully redacted. Other than Ghislaine Maxwell, no one in the US has been seriously investigated or indicted, let alone brought to justice. And while the man formerly known as Prince Andrew is hauled off before the world, Maxwell sits in a minimum security facility resembling a country club, courtesy of Donald Trump.

In the years leading up to these revelations, the legitimacy of all the ruling institutions was already at record lows. Anti-elite, anti-billionaire, and anti-establishment sentiment was already at record highs. In this context, the fallout from this scandal, once it fully seeps into the consciousness of the masses, has potential implications that are nothing short of revolutionary.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll published this week speaks volumes: 77% of Americans say the Epstein files “lowered their trust in the country’s political and business leaders.” 68% of Republican respondents said this describes their views. 76% of Americans (and 65% of Republicans) believe “it is definitely or probably true that the federal government is hiding information about the alleged clients of Epstein.” 86% of respondents (and 85% of Republicans) say that the files “show that powerful people in the US are rarely held accountable for their actions.”

It is impossible to predict how this messy drama will unfold. It cannot be ruled out that, instead of calming down, the scandal will eventually escalate until it precipitates a full-scale social upheaval. No matter how things shake out, it is already having an extraordinary impact on public opinion and the class struggle. The true colors of the ruling class have been revealed; nothing will ever be the same.

Reasons for the delayed impact

It will take time for the full impact of these revelations to sink in, and for their effect on mass consciousness to reach its logical conclusion.

To begin, there’s the sheer quantity of files released so far—not only innumerable emails, text messages, bank statements, and receipts, but some 180,000 images and 2,000 videos. To physically comb through 3.5 million records one at a time would take several lifetimes. If they were printed out and stacked one upon another, the files would reach the height of the Empire State Building.

As a result, scores of journalists from every major outlet are devising their own AI search tools, working around the clock to parse through the documents, make sense of their contents, and dig up relevant names and connections. This is yielding a daily drip feed of fresh revelations, which could fix public attention on the scandal for months, if not years.

However, it’s not only the number of files that makes it hard to process what we’re seeing. It’s also the number of institutions and individuals implicated, either through direct association with the world’s most famous creep, or through the effort made to cover-up the vast web of co-conspirators and enablers.

Countless presidents and other heads of state, royal family members, Wall Street CEOs, Big Tech billionaires, media figures, Ivy League academics, and political figures of every ideological shade—with the notable exception of communists—were tangled in Epstein’s web. From the Clintons and Bill Gates, to Elon Musk and Richard Branson,  the list of his affiliates reads like a “who’s who” of the ruling class, leading some to call his social network “an MRI of the establishment.”

The “us-versus-them” conclusions that flow from this are inescapable. The “us” are the millions of ordinary Americans just trying to make ends meet while keeping their children safe. The “them” are a debauched and entitled billionaire elite, covering up for child rapists.

As a result, the term “Epstein Class” has stormed seamlessly into the public vocabulary. Along with it, use of the term “ruling class” has been transformed from “radical jargon” to a matter-of-fact description of the social layer involved in the scandal.

Even The New York Times, which never used to print words like “ruling class” without scare quotes denoting a condescending sense of irony, is now compelled to use the phrase unironically.

There are no other words to describe it. These are the people at the very top of society. Nobody sits above them. Nobody has more wealth or decision-making power than them. It’s not just their luxurious penthouses and mansions, private islands, private jets and yachts. It’s their system.

The darkest suspicions of the most cynical conspiracy theorists as to the depravity of the elites turned out to be pretty spot on. And what has been revealed so far is only the tip of the iceberg. The damage this will do to the collective image of the rich and powerful will never be undone.

But that’s not all. The scandal also deeply undermines the legitimacy of the “justice system” and much of the federal government, stretching back to at least four presidential administrations. Though plenty of people suspected the worst when it came to government corruption, this is yet another bitter pill for many millions to swallow.

It goes without saying that Marxists are not in the least surprised that the entire state apparatus had a hand in covering up some of the sickest crimes imaginable committed by many of the richest people on Earth. What is remarkable about these events is not what we have to say about the Marxist theory of the state, but what we don’t have to say. Events are teaching the working class in the spirit of Lenin’s State and Revolution far more effectively than we ever could have.

There is a lot to take in, and the hourly revelations make it hard to wrap our minds around its full meaning. It’s not unlike the detonation of a nuclear bomb. A powerful explosion in the distance first appears as a blinding flash of light and a massive mushroom cloud. After a brief moment of delay, the impact of the blast levels everything around it. In this case, it’s the political authority of the ruling class and the legitimacy of its institutions being reduced to rubble in the minds of millions.

The impact on Trumpism

It won’t be lost on students of Marxist philosophy that the topsy-turvy way this scandal has unfolded is deeply dialectical.

On the campaign trail, Trump boldly promised to release the Epstein files. When he reneged on that promise, he momentarily lost control of his congressional majority. Under pressure from the MAGA grassroots—and facing political suicide if they refused—they voted for a discharge petition to force him to release the files.

Realizing he had a mutiny on his hands and would lose the vote, Trump changed tack at the last minute. Suddenly, he was calling on lawmakers to vote in favor of releasing the files—something he could have done himself through an executive order. Releasing the files had become a rallying cry for a significant portion of his base. But the way Trump did it implicates his administration in the cover-up.

Far from benefitting politically from his newly discovered love for “transparency,” the entire saga has been another nail in the coffin of MAGA’s cross-class electoral coalition. And not just because of his “TACO” U-turns. This has the potential to unravel the entire “populist” ploy at the heart of his political career.

Trump bent over backwards to cast himself as an anti-elite, anti-establishment figure—despite being a Manhattan real-estate billionaire who partied with Epstein and his entourage of young women for years. Being an outsider was at core of the entire political phenomenon of Trumpism. As it turns out, Trump has always been very much on the inside.

Many of his former supporters can now see what clothes the emperor is wearing. Last month, while stumping at a Michigan auto plant, Trump was heckled by a union worker who shouted: “You’re a pedophile protector!” The president, visibly enraged, responded by repeatedly mouthing “fuck you” and flipping the worker the middle finger. The footage that went viral, and symbolizes Trump’s true attitude toward his base.

Then there’s the ignominious downfall of Steve Bannon—one of the most “authoritative” spokesmen for MAGA’s populist wing, perhaps second only to Trump himself. It turns out that the “anti-elite” champion of populism fits right in with the luxurious circle of billionaires he often railed against. Not only do the files reveal that he and Epstein were the best of friends, but they’ve surfaced 15 hours of “documentary footage” which the two referred to as “media training.”

Only two hours have been made public so far—with no explanation why—but they provide fascinating insights into the mind of a psychopathic parasite. Despite Bannon’s fawning questions and persistent prodding, he fails to get Epstein to say anything relatable, humanizing, or self aware. But he does manage to peel back the curtain to show how decisions like the 2008 Wall Street bailouts are made—decisions that affect the lives of the entire population. Epstein was giving advice to the presidents of the nation’s top banks and to the Treasury Department …from a jail cell in Palm Beach while doing time for child prostitution! A remarkable lesson in the mechanics of bourgeois democracy.

Shortly before Epstein’s final arrest in 2019, Bannon was committed to rehabilitating his friend’s image in the public eye. He knew it would be no easy task, writing to Epstein: “we must counter ‘rapist who traffics in female children to be raped by worlds most powerful, richest men’—that can’t be redeemed.” He was right—none of this is redeemable.

What happens when the regime of bourgeois rule loses all credibility?

Not only has Trump’s reputation been tarnished by his close association with the Epstein class—so has his entire administration. It’s plain to see that the US Justice Department, which includes the FBI, is a co-conspirator in this scandal.

The files that have been made public are so heavily redacted that many pages have more space taken up by blotches of black ink than they have white space or text. And the public Judiciary hearings proved that the FBI had redacted the names of perpetrators and co-conspirators, while failing to redact the names of victims.

Kash Patel, the head of Trump’s FBI, was once a particularly vocal champion of releasing the Epstein files. But when the time came to turn words into actions, he changed his tune, testifying before the Congress that there was “no evidence of any co-conspirators,” and that Epstein “trafficked to no one.”

Trump’s Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, initially distanced himself from Epstein, whose $250 million Manhattan penthouse was next door to his own for many years. Lutnick claimed that he cut off ties with his neighbor back in 2005, after realizing he was a serial child predator. Not so, according to the recent revelations. Lutnick was forced to revise his story under oath, explaining that he did travel to Epstein’s notorious private island in the Caribbean, years after his prosecution for sex crimes. Documents also show that the two partnered in various business deals.

This was topped only by the scandalous performance of Trump’s Attorney General, Pam Bondi, who will go down in history for her brazen deflections during the televised Judiciary Committee hearing. Replying to questions from members of Congress as to why Epstein’s co-conspirators were not being investigated, she launched into an unhinged tirade:

[No one] asked Merrick Garland over the last four years one word about Jeffrey Epstein. How ironic is that? You know why? Because Donald Trump, the DOW, the DOW right now is over, the DOW is over 50,000 dollars—I don’t know why you’re laughing… The DOW is over 50,000 right now, the S&P at almost 7,000, and the NASDAQ, smashing records. Americans’ 401ks and retirement savings are booming. That’s what we should be talking about. We should be talking about making Americans safe. What does the DOW have to do with anything—that’s what they just asked, are you kidding? Are you kidding? … The DOW has shattered 50,000 for the first time. This is crazy. They said it couldn’t be done in four years. Yet, President Trump has done it in one year. National median rents have fallen to a four-year low thanks to Donald Trump. That’s why they want to focus on Epstein and our most transparent president in the nation’s history. The murder rate, as I said, has plummeted to a 125 year low thanks to Donald Trump. For an unprecedented nine straight months, there were zero illegal border crossings at the southern border. That’s what we should be focused on. All the great work that this president has done and will continue to do to keep America safe and to make Americans safe.

The exact words of the question Bondi was answering were: “How many co-conspirators have you indicted? How many perpetrators are you investigating?”

This snippet is a faithful reflection of her testimony throughout the nearly six-hour spectacle. She refused to apologize to, or even acknowledge, a dozen Epstein survivors who were standing in the room right behind her, and who had offered to give testimony to Bondi’s DOJ, only to be denied or ignored.

Not once did she give a straight answer to a single question posed. Instead, she responded with non-sequitors and culture-war talking points. If anything, the performance offered a profound lesson in the purpose of culture-war rhetoric, which is to turn workers and the poor against each other to distract their attention from the real criminals at the top.

The thing is, for this to work, the charade needs to be done skillfully. By using Trump’s playbook so crudely, Bondi likely helped raise the class consciousness of workers watching the proceedings.

The scene was reminiscent of the surreal interview given a month earlier by another Trump official. The disgraced former “Commander at Large” of the Border Patrol, Gregory Bovino, also lied through his teeth on national TV, likely motivating many to take part in the country’s first city-wide general strike in 80 years.

Trump’s method of responding to criticism—“deny, denounce, deflect”—has all but run its course. The fact that ordinary people no longer trust what comes out of the mouths of top government officials will have far-reaching consequences.

The Epstein class cannot bring itself to justice

Since last summer, the White House has upheld message discipline whenever the uncomfortable subject of Epstein came up: move along, nothing to see here. But there is actually quite a lot to see, and the country is nowhere near ready to move along.

In a letter to Congress on February 15, Bondi announced that the DOJ is done releasing files. The show is over, she says. In reality it’s only the beginning.

In the short term, members of Congress from both parties—particularly Democrats—are scrambling to posture and profit politically from the fiasco. Two congressmen co-sponsored the EFTA legislation that set off this entire revelation: Kentucky Republican, Thomas Massie, and California Democrat, Ro Khanna. Former MAGA champion Marjorie Taylor Greene also backed it, before coming under attack from Trump, breaking publicly from his version of MAGA, and resigning from Congress.

The truth is, both parties are entirely beholden to the Epstein class. Both Republicans and Democrats have protected this human scum, going back at least to Bill Clinton, who was a regular fixture in Epstein’s circle.

There can be no justice within this system, because the Epstein class is inextricable from the ruling class. They are one in the same. The inevitability of that conclusion is deeply alarming to the more astute strategists of capitalism.

“How can you throw the bums out when they span the system?” Edward Luce of the Financial Times asks nervously. The natural answer to his rhetorical question is clear: you must overthrow the whole system.

In the same paragraph, he solemnly warns that a budding Lenin “might see the files as kindling awaiting a revolutionary spark.” He has no idea just how right he is.