Back in 2017, during the heady days of the Trump-Russia “collusion” accusations, the release of the Steele Dossier supercharged the story. A former British spy had been very clearly duped by the Russians into putting together a file of colorful and compromising tales about Trump. The main effect this had was to turn the American political discourse into a conspiracist circus.
And when that happens, it’s only a matter of time before the sleuthing public finds a way to make it about the Jews.
Sure enough, in April 2017 Politico ran one of the wackiest articles about Jews to appear in a mainstream publication in years. Under the headline “The Happy-Go-Lucky Jewish Group That Connects Trump and Putin,” the article intimated that Chabad-Lubavitch institutions were the link between Trump and Putin’s oligarchs. The piece never establishes this, of course, because it’s nonsense. But it conjured a false picture that many people, eager to get Trump on collusion, bought into.
It is an iron rule that conspiracy theories find their ways to Jews if left to fester in the public’s imagination. So while the dossier’s intent had nothing to do with Jews, the irresponsible collation of rumors inevitably ended up there.
So it is with the Jeffrey Epstein files. Led by the bipartisan duo of Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie, Congress forced open the files relating to the well-connected financier who was convicted of sex offenses. Epstein has been the subject of endless but groundless speculation by conspiracy theorists that he was working for Israel.
The Times of London provided a perfect example of the type of conspiracy mongering enabled by the mass release of the Epstein files. “Was Epstein a Mossad agent? New files deepen mystery over Israel links,” the headline promised. Several paragraphs into the story we get this: “An FBI report from the Los Angeles field office written in October 2020 said the bureau’s source had become ‘convinced that Epstein was a co-opted Mossad agent.’”
So now the reader has imbibed this rumor along with terms like “FBI report” and descriptions of certain messages as Department of Justice documents. Which they are—technically. But the “source” is a Holocaust denier and all-around disgraced kook—the report protects his identity, but it is not a secret. Still, the Times gets to play games by painting them as official documents coming from the feds.
From the beginning of Epstein-mania, the Israel- and Jewish-related conspiracy theories were prominent. The release of the files, sans context, added fuel to the fire. Just look, for example, at Carrie Prejean Boller. As I wrote last week, the former beauty queen and her ally, Sameerah Munshi, both of whom were involved in the federal religious freedom commission, have been explicitly conflating Israel supporters with Epstein’s web of alleged perverts.
Khanna and Massie have been test-driving the phrase “Epstein class” to describe a moneyed elite above the law. In an unsurprising turn of events, the phrase is being given elasticity by bad faith activists on both sides. Gabby Deutch has put together several examples. Here’s one from her story: “Matt Duss, who has served as a foreign policy advisor to far-left lawmakers Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), accused the ‘Epstein class’ of being warmongers seeking a confrontation between the U.S. and Iran.”
This influential part of the progressive movement was already far from subtle; now they seem poised to replace past smears of Jewish Americans, such as “Israel-firster,” with “Epstein class.”
That isn’t necessarily Khanna and Massie’s fault. Indeed, I feel certain that Khanna had no such intent when coining the phrase “Epstein class”—he doesn’t dabble in anti-Semitism, and he doesn’t dehumanize Israel supporters the way the Squadlings do. Regarding Massie, I have no idea what his intentions were, but while he loves the occasional Jew-baiting, he’s probably not clever enough to intentionally hit a bank shot like this.
The irresponsible misuse of this information by members of Congress is bad enough. Khanna’s no anti-Semite, but he is relishing his role as a conspiracy fire-starter. “Epstein class” is in the process of being hijacked by anti-Semites. Khanna will never get it back—and I fear Jewish Americans will never hear the end of it.
