Ok, so I was watching some conservatives talk about how epstein manipulated the alt right and they also thought the left was manipulated to cause conflict. My first thought was to roll my eyes. The left was always the group pointing out how the right was always focused on stupid bullshit instead of how min wage hasn’t gone up in 20 years. But then I thought about it for a while. What the conservatives mean was stupid, but they might have been semi correct about the cultural influence on the left.

So think about the increase of people that call themselves rad queer/ pro Para/ maps (and I think that last term even originated as a “joke” from 4chan.). Through the 2010s and 20s, hordes of people suddenly started going around advocating for predators rights while calling themselves leftists and thinking that people who dont fight for rapists are fascists. That’s weird, right? I know that I’ve seen a few people go from “it’s ok if it’s fictional” to “who cares as long as they aren’t touching someone” to “you’re traumatized by you’re own sexual assault because society taught you to be puritanical about sex”. I’ve seen that enough times that it could be manufactured in some dark corner of the internet.

Epstein and his fellow pedos had their hands in a lot of things that were a staple of American culture. The life touch school photos, fashion stores aimed at tween girls, Victoria’s secret, 4chan, probaby more we dont know about. It wouldn’t be impossible for them to also influence some lefty spaces. If they did something to tumbr who would even know?

Like, sure, the culture before and during the 10s wasn’t the most progressive and misogyny/ patriarchal worship was still an issue. But you weren’t supposed to blatantly go around advocating for rapists to do whatever they want under the guise of “freedom”. People would think you were a looney if you went around acting like that. And I’m not saying the culture wasn’t there, just that it’s clearly gotten more overt and bold. I don’t think epstein and his buddies introduced a new thought into left and right culture. They just made the more unhinged stuff more socially acceptable to say out loud with your whole government name attached with no consequences for it.

But this is all just my speculation based of observations I’ve made from being on the internet for many years. Maybe I’m totally off here. Maybe it has nothing to do with epstein and people are just Like That now. Ether way it only help them create a culture that downplayed the horrible shit they were doing.