Predators & DealMakers

With more revelations regarding the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his vast network of relationships with people of power, Trump included, the chapter on masculinity, with its analysis of how the mania for possession and plunder extends to female bodies, will be of interest.

Bringing justice to the victims of sexual predation is paramount, and uncovering the truth of what women in such situations suffer is a way of supporting them and honoring the memory of those who can no longer speak for themselves.

It’s also important to understand that, for predators, women are just one link in a larger chain of assets and pawns to manipulate, threaten, and if necessary, silence for good.

When powerful men and women are drawn into the master predator’s web of relationships, just having knowledge of the predator’s activities makes them into elements to blackmail and manipulate. As the emails we are now seeing between Epstein and luminaries from many areas of society suggest, those entering into contact with Epstein either were part of the action, or they put up a fictive firewall so they could pretend that Epstein the behind-the-scenes diplomat and mediator, or Epstein the associate of Israeli intelligence, was not also, at the same time, abusing girls and using those girls as currency with the powerful.

A similar pattern of behavior may be seen in the relationships of many elites from politics, finance, media, religion, etc., who have supported Trump for a decade now by engaging in this same compartmentalization. Trump the person who they are entering into deals with cannot be the same person who is said to be engaging in financial fraud, money laundering, sexual predation, promoting malign foreign influence, and also tried to overthrow the government. Remember that?

Trump, his future wife Melania Knauss, Epstein, and Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, FL, 2000. Davidoff Studios/Getty Images.

Following the logic of corruption and Kompromat, among the most fervent enablers are individuals who may have their own secrets to hide and were given power in part because of this. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, whose private life activities, including living without a bank account, invite scrutiny, could be an example. Johnson essentially shut down the government, causing mass hardship for federal employees, to protect his leader’s secrets from entering the public domain.

That is where the history of sex abusers and predators who were also heads of state is instructive. Authoritarianism is about taking away the rights of the many to give freedoms to the few to plunder the economy, the environment, the labor force, and female bodies.

Here are two essays on how sex predator systems fit into larger authoritarian mentalities and practices. The first focuses on Benito Mussolini and Muammar Gaddafi, and the second on Silvio Berlusconi and Trump.

Predatory Strongmen: Epstein’s Kindred Spirits

And if you have just joined Lucid, here’s my essay on authoritarian gender politics.

Hypermasculinity, Misogyny, Homophobia: The Toxic Triad of Authoritarian Gender Politics

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