Elina Xenophontos
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I.
Managed Outrage Under Capitalism: The Epstein Files and Class Power
The fact that the files released highlight Trump and seemingly exclude Democrats who were affiliated with Epstein — is not a coincidence.
Ideally, the ruling class wanted the Epstein files to be a forgotten part of history.
However the innate contradictions of capitalism and its liberal institutions made that impossible, as people demanded the release of the Epstein files. Those contradictions became all the more sharpened via the liberal mechanism of electoralism, as Trump capitalised on the American people’s desire to expose the Epstein files so as to come to power.
Consequently, it became impossible to avoid the Epstein files, which is why the ruling class realised that the timing, context and content of the release would need to be strategized, so as to preserve the system at large. The partial release of the files was thus a necessary concession in order to uphold capitalism – so far as is possible – and it does so, in several different ways.
Firstly, by releasing some of the Epstein files that target Trump — this is part of the broader ongoing plan to portray Trump and his administration as the sole root of the current chaos in the US and the world.
As a result, the American masses will flock to vote for the Democrats under the false belief that they shall absolve them of the criminality of the Trump administration – thus restoring faith in bourgeois politics and the system that defines them.
In the current crisis of capitalism, Trump—much like historical figures such as Hitler in moments of systemic rupture—functions as a vehicle for aggressive domestic and foreign policy on behalf of the bourgeoisie. Trump is not an aberration but an intensification of imperialism. His agenda will persist under a Democratic administration, albeit in a more polished and discreet form.
Thus, once his job is done, he shall be discarded — placing the criminality of capitalism on individual actors such as Trump, which in turn allows the capitalist system itself to evade accountability. This personalisation of blame is central to the political spectacle that postpones revolutionary rupture.
This is because Trump and his administration represent the raw face of capitalism, executing the agenda of the ruling class shamelessly. The Democrats on the other hand, represent the bourgeois diplomatic hand of capital, used to prettify capitalism whilst executing the same crimes — all the while they delude the masses and the façade of liberal democracy prevails.
In addition to the above, although the partial and selective release of the file criminalises Epstein, it does little to expose those he worked with. If anything, the files released protect his powerful friends by retracting names, and by solely exposing second-hand testimonies of crimes rather than hard evidence of said crimes. This again is indicative of a necessary concession by the ruling class in order to appease the masses, whilst controlling the narrative by withholding the incriminating evidence and powerful names involved.
Even the material released with regards to Trump involved second-hand testimonies with no hard evidence to corroborate said testimonies. Therefore the partially released files shape public perception and fuel discourse against Trump, yet provide little that could meet the legal threshold required for indictment, both against Trump and other powerful names involved.
This matters as in a criminal case, the threshold for the burden of proof, particularly for indictment– is very high. Second-hand testimonies alone without material evidence do not suffice, which means that hard evidence would need to be presented in order to support said testimonies. And here lies the crux of the problem.
It is not that the evidence does not exist, but rather that if it does, which I am certain is the case – it would incriminate other powerful actors and the system itself.
Therefore, to answer the question of why the Democrats did not indict Trump based on the files – it is because the evidence required for such a case would expose the broader elite network and threaten the legitimacy of the entire political and economic order. A partial release allows the spectacle to proceed without destabilizing the foundations of power.
Additionally, by releasing only fragments of the files, the ruling class appeases popular demand while concealing the most structurally dangerous material. Powerful collaborators are protected, while Trump is foregrounded in a way that conveniently prepares the ideological terrain for a Democratic electoral victory. This stabilizes liberal democracy and capitalism by diverting mass anger away from systemic critique and revolutionary praxis.
Similarly, the emphasis on Israel within the Epstein discourse serves a similar ideological function – distraction.
As a result, the impending war on Iran is now being framed as a Zionist project, ignoring the decades long imperialist war against Iran — a war rooted in capitalism’s need to monopolise wealth and resources and to target China...
The war on Iraq is now phrased via the same ideological lens, ignoring the ample documents, evidence and leaked memos from years prior to even 9/11, where the CEO’s of oil conglomerates and leading political figures such as Dick Cheney, the former Vice President of the US — were orchestrating the mass appropriation of oil and wealth from Iraq via military means.
In a similar fashion, the US-backed NATO war in Libya is also portrayed as an Israeli initiative, minimising or outright rejecting the material reality that US imperialism thrives off resource appropriation and control. It ignores the decades-long sanctions on Libya for nationalising its oil industry and the threat that Gaddafi’s Golden Dinar was to the US dollar – as the petrodollar has been the main mechanism that has sustained American imperialism globally.
Israel is an imperialist outpost with its own violent agenda. This is undeniable. But portraying the U.S. as merely controlled or “held hostage” by Israel ignores the structural logic of capitalism and the function of the U.S. intelligence and military apparatus in defending it. This narrative becomes a form of ideological misdirection that ultimately preserves capitalism—the primary engine of the crimes being exposed.
Notably absent from public and mainstream discourse about the revelations, is the structural role of human trafficking within global capitalism. For context, human trafficking is the second largest and most profitable illicit industry in the world, generating around $236 billion annually according to the ILO, of which 38% of that is sex-trafficking. There is little public discourse with regards to how the Epstein files revealed how major institutions like JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank enabled Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking operations via lax compliance practices and the deliberate underreporting of suspicious activities.
In fact, according to reports, JPMorgan executives “coached Epstein on how to circumvent reporting requirements and failed to flag his illicit financial activities for years.”
Why?
Because the billions made in human trafficking by people like Epstein and his elite friends, are then injected into the banking system, generating mass profits for bankers as they provide substantial capital flows and transaction fees. That money is then used to inject loans into the US economy, generating greater wealth via compound interest and investment into the real estate sector and stock market. This inflates asset values, which generates artificial growth in the financial US economy — that itself relies on fictitious capital and speculation.
As capitalism faces its crises — illicit funds become a countertendency to safeguard the profits and interests of the bourgeoisie. The profits from human suffering are laundered into the system, transmuted into “fictitious capital,” and used to inflate financial markets, creating a parasitic but stabilizing flow that papers over capitalism’s underlying crisis of productive investment.
Therefore, the crimes documented in the Epstein files are a structural lifeline that are integral to the US economy and capitalism. The very existence of people like Epstein and all those who surround him are the by-product of finance capital, because illicit capital extracted from this barbarism — provides crucial liquidity that fuels the speculative asset bubbles upon which contemporary U.S. financialized capitalism depends for the appearance of growth.
This is but the natural consequence of a system that prioritises profits over people and human life, [ALL life, actually] which is why the same logic produces and capitalises off of genocide, human suffering and mass exploitation. From a macrolevel analysis, capitalism is crime-facilitative, and its criminal networks span multiple faiths and ethnicities.
Thus, focusing exclusively on Zionism or Jewish supremacy while ignoring the systemic incentives that produce Epstein, Trump, Clinton, and others ultimately shields the system that created them.
These crimes will persist so long as capitalism endures. Imperialism will continue to shape U.S. foreign policy as long as bourgeois interests require it—through regime change, war, genocide, and exploitation. As Epstein himself said in his own emails, chaos is profitable business, and the U.S. empire has long thrived on it.
Follow the money. Understand the symbiotic nature of these actors. Do not allow the files to disorient you, and do not fall for the political spectacle of America’s two-party dictatorship.
This is a quick analysis of the on-going events. I will be producing an in-depth analysis in the coming days, explaining how the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate sector profit off of human trafficking and other illicit funds — and how exactly the entire US economy requires it for its survival.
As always, thank you to all my subscribers for supporting my work, especially the paid subscribers as my work is fully sponsored by all of you. I would not be able to do what I do without you. Whether it be via my Patreon, Substack, or you may Buy Me a Coffee - all contributions are seen and valued. Thank you all again!
II.
PROTESTS IN IRAN (high-handed cynicism)
A note by Elina on her Substack, first filed on Jan. 11, 2026.
The protests in Iran and the suffering that Iranian people are currently enduring, is largely the consequence of Western imperialist sanctions.
The UN universal sanctions under resolution 1929, are not unilateral sanctions, as it was prior to the snapback mechanism being triggered.
Rather the UN sanctions that have been reimposed on Iran as of October 2025, binds all 193 member states of the UN to completely cut off all trade, financial and economic ties with Iran.
Prior to the snapback mechanism, though the US had imposed unilateral sanctions on Iran as of 2018 — other countries around the world still engaged in international trade with Iran, albeit to various different degrees, due to the US secondary sanctions.
The snapback mechanism however has triggered the complete financial and trade isolation of Iran, reducing Iran's access to global markets to essentially, nil.
These sanctions are therefore no more than a brutal economic siege of a civilian population, meant to trigger this precise reactionary response, and I highlight the term reactionary.
This chaos that was caused by imperialist external forces, shall then be exploited by the very same imperialists in order to advance their own hegemonic agenda.
At this stage, it is vital to note, that these UN universal sanctions are the precise same sanctions that existed prior to the 2015 JCPOA — highlighting the dire economic conditions that the national bourgeois state of Iran has been operating under for the better part of almost 50 years.
Thus, discussing state repression within Iranian society, without contextualising it within the broader oppressive imperialist sanctions war that has been waged against Iran — fails to address the root cause of said oppression.
In fact, it is the Western sanctions against Iran that have singlehandedly shaped Iran's internal class dynamics — that have in turn aided in the repression of the Iranian working class.
How?
The very threat of Western imperialism generated a highly militarised state apparatus, so as to withstand the external pressure of imperialism.
Moreover, the threat of Western imperialism created a reactionary class alliance between the Iranian bourgeoisie and the working class, who aligned primarily to survive against Western imperialism.
This alliance diluted class consciousness within Iranian society, and as such, the potential for an organised working class movement against the Iranian bourgeoisie.
What's more, is that the sanctions war against Iran stagnated its economic growth and prosperity — depriving the working class of the productive forces that they need in order to build the structural power requisite for a bona fide revolution.
The sanctions war also facilitated illegality among the bourgeois class in Iran, as they struggled to find legitimate means of capital accumulation, because of the economic siege on Iran.
Therefore, again, if anything, it is the West that created the ripe conditions for a more repressive state and mass poverty — that in turn has weakened the revolutionary potential of Iranian society
Consequently, the current protests are the desired reactionary outcome of the imperialist aggression against the Iranian people, and they come at a time when a wider imperialist war against Iran is highly likely.
By weakening the state apparatus and fracturing national unity at such a volatile stage within the broader imperialist war that is transpiring — the protests will allow foreign imperialist powers that are far more powerful than the current national bourgeois class in Iran, to infiltrate Iran, extract its resources and subjugate its people.
Furthermore, albeit there is class base to the current protests, the fact that the protestors are not organised and lack any sort of ideological coherency — makes this outcome all the more likely.
Indeed many Iranians no longer support the theocracy, this is a fact, however, what do these protests call for?
A liberal democracy?
A socialist revolution?
What is the aim here?
The reality is, that these protests are reactionary, disorganised and lack the ideological coherency that underpins a progressive class movement.
As a result, the ongoing protests become vulnerable to external intelligence manipulation, which is where the West dominates — hence the riots that Israel has overtly stated to have instigated.
These riots have done nothing more than to aggravate the deteriorating material conditions for the Iranian working class — placing more economic pressure on the Iranian state.
Consequently, the ongoing protests offer no true alternative for Iran, whilst providing a key opportunity for Western intelligence to destabilise a country that they have wanted to subjugate for almost 50 years.
The protests therefore risk the sovereignty of the Iranian people and the region, at a critical juncture in the historical development of capitalism that is facing its greatest crisis yet.
This is why, in their current spontaneous and ideologically incoherent form, the protests therefore objectively serve imperialism. They risk transforming a nationally bourgeois state, however repressive, into a fully-fledged client regime of Western capital, devastating the Iranian working class and the region's anti-imperialist potential.
To those who claim to care about the oppression of the Iranian people, let me be very clear — the long-term liberation of the Iranian people is inextricably linked to the global struggle against imperialism.
Weakening the imperialist core is the prerequisite for creating the space in which Iranian workers can overcome the reactionary nationalist class alliances, to build independent class power, and dismantle the bourgeois state — thus truly liberating the Iranian people from all forms of oppression.
Actions that strengthen imperialism, however sincerely motivated, ultimately betray the Iranian proletariat and the international working class.
SPECIAL ADDENDUM
The above note gave rise to an interesting exchange. A commenter (A Horseman in Shangri-LaJan), insulted Marxists and Marxism while defending Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Elina immediately responded with her habitual polemical artistry. Deflating the shopworn arguments of those who defend the rotten capitalist status quo, or worse, is never easy. Anticommunism and fascism are difficult, often intractable, diseases of the mind, in which the accidents of biography and temperament play a huge role. Most people afflicted never recuperate. Not to mention that these days social media is clogged with those pushing against revolutionary thought in bad faith, often as as paid agents of the oligarchic system, or simply AI robots. It's an exhausting kind of battle fought on a highly unequal plane, yet, knowing what is at stake, what choice do decent people have? Well, here's the exchange. See what you think. —PG
(Select Comments)
Yet Another Marxist…
“Live not by lies”
-Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Maybe learn what Marxists is, it would really aid you. Also what? Will you quote Dugin next? Laughable
A Horseman in Shangri-La Jan 14
Thank you for the suggestion, I've indeed studied what Marxism is. In fact I've experienced it here in our continent. It is totally disastrous. But delusional folks like you will continue to believe some good can come from it.
That is why I quoted the legendary Alexander Solzhenitsyn, but you will totally refuse to understand what he experienced under Marxists in the USSR, in the Siberian gulag, etc.
Just like us here in Shangri-La, millions suffering while the revolutionaries live in grand palaces but you won't buy that cause you're obviously deluded by this mad man and his evil philosophy.
You haven't studied what Marxism is, which is precisely why you are conflating a critique of capitalism, which is what Marxism is — with the USSR.
You seem to be discussing Marxism as a system, which is indicative that you haven't studied it.
Furthermore, I don't know what your anecdotal experience was, but I know the facts. The data as it stands:
The Soviet Union's social achievements stand as a historic indictment of capitalist development, demonstrating how rapidly a planned economy could deliver what capitalist nations took generations to provide—if they provided them at all.
While the West grappled with the Great Depression, the USSR had already achieved near-universal literacy. By 1939, 87.4% of Soviet citizens were literate, a rate accomplished in two decades from a Tsarist baseline of 28%. The Soviet system didn't just educate an elite; it forcibly created a mass educated proletariat and intelligentsia.
In healthcare, the USSR established the world's first universal, state-funded healthcare system by 1918— decommodifying medicine entirely. By the 1960s, it had slashed infant mortality from 273 to 25 per 1,000 and doubled life expectancy. During this same period, nations like the United States—the wealthiest capitalist power—treated healthcare as a private commodity, leaving millions without coverage which led to much higher death rates. This still stands to be the case today .
Additionally, universal healthcare in Britain (NHS) arrived only in 1948, a good 3 decades after the USSR — and in other Western European nations, it came decades later, if at all.
On women's rights, the Soviet leap was generational. In 1920, Soviet women received full suffrage, legal abortion, and no-fault divorce—rights that preceded France (1944), Italy (1945), Switzerland (1971), and far outstripped the U.S., where abortion was illegal and divorce restrictive. Soviet women were mobilized as an economic majority in the workforce by 1980, while Western women still fought for equal pay and workplace access.
The USSR's legal framework on sexuality and divorce was, for its time, radically progressive compared to the heavily religious and patriarchal norms governing the West.
The Soviet model proved that a resource-poor state could, through central planning and the abolition of private profit in key sectors, guarantee the population basic security: lifetime employment, subsidized essentials, and access to education and culture.
This stood in stark contrast to the insecurities of the capitalist business cycle, where access to these same goods remained contingent on wealth and subject to market crises.
The achievement was not abundance, but the rapid and total eradication of feudal backwardness and the provision of a secure, modern baseline for all—a feat unmatched in speed and scale by any capitalist society at a similar stage of development.
As for Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I have very little respect for a man who supported and glorified the brutal Tsarist monarchy — one that impoverished the vast majority of his subjects.
The irony of attempting to call Marx, who provided a critique of capitalism and how it monopolises wealth, a man who calls for the abolition of the state and extraordinary wealth — evil — whilst defending a man like Alexander who overtly apotheosized brutal and exploitatuve monarchs. Your morals seem to be rather confused, which tends to occur among religious folks such as yourself.
Anyone who glorifies the brutal Tsar era, one that explored and bled the people of the region in order to sustain his flamboyant life style — doesn't have a place in a revolutionary society.
One can critique the Gulags in other ways, but referencing Solzhenitsyn is a rather poor example of that.
It takes a special sort of hypocrite to claim the USSR was brutal and disastrous for its people, even though the evidence points to another conclusion — and then to glorify Tsarist philosophers.
Then again, you refer to Marxism like it's a system, so, that is rather telling.
Highly Recommended reading:
Left Anticommunism: the unkindest cut
by Michael Parenti
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