Techno-Fascism Exposed: The Epstein Files and the Naked Ruling Class

Hi, this is Robert Shear with another edition of Sheer Intelligence. Used to be on uh KCRW on the FM station in Santa Monica, but with the coming of Trump. Uh NPR is not what it used to be. I'll just leave it at that. So now we're on Substack but we're also on Apple Spotify.

and everything else and I'm really thrilled. What I like doing about this, I'm gonna be ninety in about six weeks or eight weeks or something. I can't get over that reality. And I've spent my life doing journalism of one kind or another pr ever since I Uh actually I mentioned it once I was in

Colin Powell's class at City College studying engineering and he went off to become uh top general and secretary of state and I went off to do ramparts and other things and then worked at the LHIs for about twenty nine years. And but in all of that time, I don't think I've ever came across a story like the Epstein Files. And uh and I'm talking to Nolan Higdon who I think is doing the best work in the country on this. And and it's i it's thrilling actually at my age to learn to shut up.

and listen and uh and we have this thing going now every Wednesday. This is episode three. And uh he's taken me to school on this, but because of something called the Epstein Files Transparency Act, suddenly the truth is kind of As uncontrolled as it's been in my journalistic career. Yes, there's no blacking out lots of pages, but there's so much.

on on Epstein uh and uh and it comes out because it's now all but bipartisan the crowd that wants the truth to come out. And it's not just for Goss, obviously not gossipy reasons, although it's a great gossipy story, it is probably uh the clearest insight we've had to were the workings of power. in the American Empire that we have. It it it it is a gift that does not stop giving because it really brings us in To the bedroom, uh the living room, the bathroom, the hot tubs.

of the ruling class. It shows them naked, it shows them gross, it shows them their aspirations, their claims, it's the anti PR uh ingredient. It's it's the wonders of truth. of suddenly a truly free press, if we could ever get one, this is it. And and uh Noel Hignan, who is a professor at uh in communications and I guess journalism in the U C system, they don't they say communications, uh at uh Santa Cruz, UC Santa Cruz.

Is doing the best work. He's got the Epstein in the Shadows, uh incomplete truths and the high cost of official secrecy. He's got a substack file. I'll let him promote that. But on a weekly basis now he no one in the country is doing a better job covering it as far as I can see. a and so I'm gonna let him begin this Wednesday morning episode. Uh and uh Tell us what's new.

All right, Bob, thank you so much for having me. And yeah, folks can check out the work at nolanhigdon.substack.com. I'm trying to keep a Weekly article coming out of the new revelations. And I've got some places there where you can find all the the previous articles. And as you kind of mentioned, one of the things I'm trying to do is

Go through the files as well as the reporting and see what where evidence actually exists for the claims that are being made and cite it right there so folks can go back to the original documents. Um,'cause while you're right, there's a lot of revelations coming out that are critically important.

There there's also a mix of some disinformation about the files as well. So I think if they go to nolanhigdon.substack dot com, they'll be able to find a lot of the the primary sources and vetted reporting to help better understand exactly what we've discovered here with these files. So tell us what this what's this week's revelations? Well, you know, this week uh there's been a l a lot of revelations and focus on a kind of a part of the Epstein story that was

really focused on in twenty nineteen, but kind of died off since then, but now has reemerged. And it's about this so called Zorro Ranch in New Mexico that Epstein owned. Um and the Emails seemed to indicate that this ranch was part of um or was being used by Epstein as part of his larger goal of really wanting to get into gene editing. Um again the the emails, as you noted, are redacted and incomplete. But one thing is clear that Epstein was really obsessed with this idea of gene editing.

Um, he reached out to folks like Kathryn Rumler, who was the then White House counsel to Barack Obama, as well as others. To try and get people in the NSA who were a part of the so called codebreakers who were who are editing genes or looking into gene editing. And uh there's indications that might be connected to his ranch. And I I say that because in twenty nineteen, both the New York Times and The Guardian.

reported on these allegations that there was a uh DNA farm or some people called it a baby farm at in New Mexico.

Um though what that's really meant has not been substantiated. Uh as I look through the files though, I did find some interesting tidbits that may be associated with these claims, but again, I gotta say these are just you know, we just get these emails. We don't have a lot of context for them, but There's one woman who accused Epstein of trying to buy her baby from her six months into meeting him.

Um, there's also some back and forth with the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, and she Sarah Ferguson indicates multiple times that she's congratulating Epstein on having a baby boy. Um, Epstein even um in a uh email exchange with a redacted person says the baby boy is due March fifteenth. It's not known if Epstein ever had a child. Um His brother thinks this is nonsense. He denies the idea that Jeffrey would have a child without his knowledge.

Um and then lastly, um, in the New Mexico uh thing, there was a radio host in New Mexico who got an email from someone who claimed they had been to the ranch and knew that there were two uh girls who were killed and buried on the ranch property. And he said he would send a USB with more information to the radio host, but we don't know if that ever went anywhere, but

This week, New Mexico announced that it's gonna open up a truth commission and investigate the ranch. So uh at least the New Mexico State is claiming it's gonna do some investigation around these um revelations.

So Another bizarre and bizarre is an important word. Uh w this window we have now, and I'm gonna coin uh uh label for all of this, uh, that I think really is appropriate. I ha just thought about it listening to this because the the sickness of this I'm gonna call this techno fascism. And the reason I bring fascism in is first of all the search for ultimate power and The cause of greed.

Capitalism ultimately denying Adam Smith. This is the cancelling of Adam Smith and a real free market. This is concentrated capitalist power at the highest level. But if we go back uh and think about the rise of capitalism in the last century, eugenics. figured into this. And in fact German fascism did a lot of gene editing. A lot of the superior human being, after all. This was the whole master

uh class idea. The perfect blonde, blue eyed German, you know, Hitler was obviously the opposite of that, but that didn't bother him, you know, uh but the fact is the matter the idea of the master race was to create in their own image the master race and kill, destroy, impoverish anyone who was different, unless you could use them as slaves or in factories.

and so forth. And and what you have now the endorsement of what's been going on uh with Epstein and then uh now with Donald Trump and the administration by Silicon Valley. Uh and these guys are know all the contradictions. After all, you know, Musk makes most of his fiat in China. He but that's a variation of capitalism now. Chinese communism is really Chinese capitalism communism. Uh, you know, is the worship of power. It's a denial of their own mortality. They think they can live forever by

d your proper genes and maybe also move up to another planet or or what have you. Uh there's all these fantasies about, you know, eternal power, eternal life.

And I think w uh I don't have your familiarity with the files, but I've read enough of them to know that across the board, Democrat, Republican, you know, uh from uh Bill Clinton to uh Donald Trump There is in all of it something about the inevitability of a superior group of people that they're included in it and by virtue of what their merits and they claim, their privilege, their skill, whatever, the rest of us are just a bunch of slobs to be exploited and to be manipulated.

And so this twist in it in terms of the uh gene editing is really I think basic to the story and I wanna stick with this techno fascism label. I'm hope you can steal it from me. Uh uh so forth. But the reason is it's really a belief in the technology As the new, you know what, God thing, Jesus. I mean,'cause basically these people are secular in their aspirations. They can all say one nation under God. They can talk about the same thing.

about religious values and so forth. But that's the last thing on their mind. You know, you're not gonna get to heaven being in a hot tub with uh uh teenage uh children, you know, uh uh that that's not gonna do it in the eyes of any God that I know about that's been described. So clearly these people did not think they were being judged. by a a traditional almighty in the Judeo Christian tradition or actually any other.

major religious tradition, they were indifferent to it. Absolutely indifferent to it. You know, who who w who was gonna forgive them, you know, uh for that, you know, uh clearly d defies all the rules. Now somebody could bring up the Catholic priests also get into some some of this stuff. So I'm not going to say there isn't hypocrisy.

But the idea seriously of how to and I'm as an old guy I think, well, yeah, what was this life thing all about? And you know, what what do what do you think uh happens after and you have different notions ranging from Birch and Russell thinking you have a life force that persists somehow. Lots of luck with that. But you did write books and have ideas, or you're remembered, or maybe there is actually a heaven or a hell and you'll be rewarded or punished.

But clearly Our ruling class and this is now so extensive, when you put the head of Harvard, Lawrence Summers, in there, who was also our former Secretary of the Treasury, And you you know, people like that in there. Uh this is the top of the top, the creme de la creme they used to say when I was growing up in the Bronx. So, you know, what if look could dig dig deeper here.

into what this really means. You know, uh uh we're seeing uh you know, I noticed you used one of my headlines there from ShearPost, the Caligula Roman thing. This is these are the last days of the Roman Empire in a way.

Yeah, and I you know, a couple of things you said there really really stood out. One, you talked about the the technology angle, the intersection of these uh kind of eugenics way of thinking that Epstein was clearly an advocate for. And he did actually think um that this gene editing was gonna help extend his life. That was one of the things he wanted to do.

Um, but you you mentioned the intersection of technology and and that's always been a a part of fascism. I mean, folks forget that uh Hitler's regime depended heavily on an IBM subsidiary that was able to track and manage all these different people that he was enslaving uh through the Nazi regime. Um so there's always been that that close relationship and in the Epstein files

This, I think, is where we get to Epstein's intersection with academia. Um, he was really interested in using existing knowledge base and thinkers to try and produce. this gene editing or understand what like a a superior human could or or would be. And you mentioned Silicon Valley. They're heavily involved with Epstein. I mean, Epstein was on the cutting edge of um cryptocurrency.

Um, he was a major advocate for Peter Thiel's Palantir uh to be integrated throughout governments he was associated with, particularly the United States. and Israel as well. And so you you see that throughout the the documents that a lot of these existing power structures we have today have Epstein's fingerprints all over them. And I think that the techno fascism is is appropriate. Because um big tech has done such a good job of trying to

sell itself as like a new hip industry that's not like the old rapacious capitalist robber barons of yesteryear. But the reality is they are, they are the new, the new digital um versions of those robber barons from a gilded age of the past.

You know, it's interesting because in my journalistic career I did spend time with Nelson and actually David Rockefeller. I I I spent time with the old ruling class, you know, Nelson Rockfell was vice president when I interviewed him extensively and travel with these people somewhat. They at least had the restraint. of cr traditional uh religion and traditional perspective of accountability.

And that's why you know, e there's the Carnegie Library commitment. There's even Bill Gates had when I interviewed him, uh, once for Talk Magazine, I guess it was. He talked about giving away all his um money ultimately and he with Warren Buffett were gonna do that and have a legacy of what he's done to s solve real problems for real people on the world and gave away a a lot of money. What is revealed in the Epstein? File is hedonism.

i it's the opposite of any pretense of religion. I mean clearly these people do not believe in the God that they claim they believe in. They clear clearly don't think they're being judged whether they're Jewish, as Epstein was, there is after all, in the Jewish biblical tradition a great sense of judgment and accountability and laws.

Right. I forget the number now, nine hundred and forty or something, uh that you have to observe, you know, uh and uh you know, uh uh uh uh the the idea that somehow these people are covorting in this way. Just denies. It just went bullshit. Their comment about living in the Judeo-Christian ethic is absolute bullshit. How can they with a straight face

talk about any of this. They clearly are out for themselves. They're unaccountable. They think there is n there are no moral principles that apply to the super wealthy. You know, and and they're gonna do anything, anything to not only gain this enormous, unbelievable world w class the world has never seen. such wealth and such a gap between them and everybody else. The world I have to make this clear. People are sort of accepting this.

We've never had this kind of income gap in the world that we have now. Unbelievable. They can just discard uh, you know, millions. I mean, if we have three people, Peter Thiel is one of them. who have more wealth than half of America. More wealth than half of the population, they can easily think the rest of the population is theirs for sale, exploitation. Well get rid of'em. What do we need'em now? We got robots, we can do our AI. Why do we need them? We are in the hands of cynical monsters.

I mean, these pitbulls And uh you know, I I'm I I read the Epstein file not to find out what, you know, kinda wild sex they'cause it's not really very imaginative, it's exploitive. in the extreme. It's not ex you know, this is not D. H. Lawrence or something, uh, you know, uh this is not some great, you know, the the Kama Sutra or something. This is, you know, uh Uh th th this is this is tawdry in the extreme, but mixed in with this idea is that they are somehow going to continue life.

be beyond anybody else's expectation and there's clearly no, not a moment of accountability. Not in any uh you've read these files now. None of them ever Seem to question You know, and the founders of our constitution, you read their diaries, you read their letters, there's a lot of questioning. Who are we to make a new republic? Can we really restrain ourselves?

Are we really on the side of virtue, you know, and so forth? They they refer to religious tradition even when they're deists or a you know, non believers, they refer to it. These people have no reference points in any Anything smacking of a recognition of responsibility, of paternal questions of life and death, they are simpletons. They are simpletons. They are going to be in the hot tub d w with a teenager or something or someone that looks like a teenager and and they think this is wonderful.

Yeah, that's one of the things that comes through in the communications, right? There there is no real sort of deep exploration of virtue. And the way you and I might communicate via text or email to say set up like a lunch date is how they talk about things like insider trading. or uh trafficking women. It it's it's because uh y when you look at the individuals who are in the Epstein files, so many of them have gotten away with so many massive crimes for so long it becomes normalized. Like, um

You know, one of the folks who really made some news uh today, uh, Les Wexner, who was the um head of the Victoria Secret Empire, uh he's gonna be called in before Congress. He's gonna be deposed um before a committee. He you know, he and Epstein were a part uh a part of, yeah, the Iran Contra scandal in the nineteen eighties. Um, Epstein helped, you know, broker the US weapons through Israel to Iran and then the planes that were used afterward.

um were uh brought to the United States as part by Les Wexner. That in it that alone is is a massive crime um that broke a congressional order um in the nineteen eighties, but they get away with things like that. And then you also read in the emails Um just some of the the details of the accusations against these men, um, the sex crimes that they committed. Like Epstein would

you probably through Wexner, um, get associations such as popular models like Naomi Campbell. And then he would use that association to to tell young girls like, Look, I'm associated with the Victoria's Secret Empire and Naomi Campbell, this this famous model. I can get you um a part of that as well. I'm gonna have this big party at my house uh with all these execs. And then the the girls show up and the party only has Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein at it.

And then you read in the files um the accusations these survivors make and I've tried to Temper in my writing some of the accusations to be respectful of the survivors, but I mean it's it's grotesque. As you pointed out, it's not s it's not like Kama Sutra or some like enlightened uh sexual vision. It's pure exploitation, abuse, sometimes in the form of like gang assault um and things like that in the files. And then you also read

The ways in which um Epstein really grooms these girls. Uh he's telling a girl who he says is fourteen years old how to act twenty two. Um there's there's multiple emails about that. Um he's telling them that, you know, you're tw remember you're twenty two, nobody wants to hear you talk, men barely want to hear you talk when you're thirty. He says something like that in the emails. And then to your point about how um they it's just hedonistic.

they they seemingly think they can get away with everything because they have connections everywhere. So if they get in like a financial um you know tough spot financially They have levers to pull on rich people to blackmail them, or they have insider trading, or if they get in a tough spot politically, they have levers to pull on people they know in administrations or governments or the intelligence community.

If they get bad PR and their characters assassinate in the public, they have levers to pull in the press to resuscitate it um or to change it. Consistently throughout the files, these folks uh just act like the world is their playground. And uh it's you know, back to that George Carlin line, it's a big club and you ain't in it.

Um everybody who's not in it seems to be just kind of background characters for the larger story of of a lot of these elites and Up until you and I talked about this in the last couple episodes, I w was pretty angry at the fact that other governments were moving rapidly to open up investigations, but the United States was not. Most of the people who stepped down or through shame, right, at Goldman Sachs or or Larry Summers and other academics or or people at law firms.

Um, we have seen some slight movements by our government in the last week. Um, the Democrats have proposed Virginia's law so they can retroactively prosecute some of the sex crimes. Um, the Clintons are gonna be brought before Congress, uh, which may help shed some light, at least draw attention to the story.

And now it looks like Les Wexner, who's one of the uh alleged co conspirators who's named in the files, uh, according to the internal investigation by the DOJ and uh Thomas Massey and Rokana. He's gonna be brought before a committee as well. So y d to say the wheels of justice move slow is an understatement, but uh we at least saw like the slightest movement toward government actually taking some action on this that we've seen since uh the Epstein saga has captured national attention.

You know Uh uh I'm I'm thinking okay, you mentioned the Israel connection and of course any time you wanna we now have national and here in California state law.

Saying uh we can't don't dare talk about Israel or anything connected with Israel, or we'll be accused of being anti Semitic and therefore you'll lose your job teaching and uh so forth. Uh but the fact is this is really the meaning of the Jewish tradition and certainly the religious Jewish tradition that here these folks are supposed to be helping Israel

Right, which is supposed to be a Jewish state and uh uh that they they did God's work. God was supposed to w uh return, right? Uh but no th they they do it. Uh and what is that about? Because You know, I I I'm I can't claim that I've been a big believer, but I I was married into an Orthodox family. My mother uh came out of a whole Jewish Städetl tradition, you know, uh and so forth.

And certainly it is a demanding religion. That was in fact my mother's objection to it. She came from a family a long family of Vilna rabbis and maybe even the Vilna Gunn is somewhere in the mix. And and my whole experience with the religion was about the things you're not supposed to do. And then I would work in the cascals and if you put a flacia dicker spoon in a milk dicker pot you could be fired, you know, this was against God's law. You can't mix milk and meat and and so forth.

These people are ostensibly trying to help Israel and his partner. Isn't she Jewish also? The Maxwell family uh as I recall. Yeah, from Robert Maxwell, yeah. Yes. And and and Epstein. And so I'm not here now to feed some kind of anti Semitic trope. I'm here to examine the the slander. of the Jewish people, slander. This is anti Semitism with a vengeance uh in this thing. This is somehow supportive of Jews.

that that Epstein, why would he be welcome? What is what what is going on here? You know, why doesn't he think the commandments, any of them, apply to him? o or or to his partner. R really, what is going on in their brain? Uh and and after all, if you believe it all in you know, uh judging God almighty and you really believe life is a preparation for something else and so forth, how in the world do you pursue this? I will use this word with such abandon.

Why do they not have a conscience? I think this is the really key question to ask. You know, uh we a lot of us we do bad things. We can do bad things, we've done bad things. In fact it's wrapped into the tradition, the jail jail Christian ethic, that you will be tempted. You will I Jim interviewed Jimmy Carter at some length, caused him some problems when I did my

Playboy interview with him, but he was talking about we all sin and we have to fight sins and we can sin in our mind and so forth. So Jimmy Carter, the Sunday school teacher, was tormented by ideas of what's sin. and took it very, very seriously, you know, which is why we had that discussion. He brought it up.

You know, what uh these people claim they care about Israel. They came up care claim they care about Jewish people, all right. What what are they doing? Wexler and and right and Epstein they're supposed to care about the future of Jews and how they're perceived. And they open up this this this horrible view of of what it means to be Jewish.

It's yeah, there was always so th the the intersection of Israel and and Epstein have have always captured people's attention and to to kind of understand why I I think it's important to go back to to Robert Maxwell, who's Ghullaine Maxwell's uh father, and um n not necessarily in terms of sex crimes, but in terms of like the belief that he was international intelligence. Um Robert Maxwell kind of predated Epstein. Um he was this connected figure

uh who was believed to be an Israeli spy. Israel never admitted that. Robert Maxwell never admitted that, but after he died the press the press baron, right? Yeah yeah Yeah and after he died, um Israel gave him a state funeral. Publisher, right? Yeah. Um I believe he was originally born in Ukraine. Uh he escaped um Nazi Germany. Uh b lived between Britain and France a lot, created a a media empire, and it was largely believed, like I said, he w his connections to Israeli intelligence

Um, he d he had a state funeral by Israel when he died. Um, some folks say he died under mysterious circumstances. I think he was so he was on a boat supposedly in engaging in um sex with his then girlfriend or wife when he died. It was it was a mysterious circumstance, but Um, his daughter, Ghlaine Maxwell, uh, then ended up with Jeffrey Epstein, where we're who had, you know, similar rumors of these intelligence connections.

And I think looking through the files, uh, there's plenty of evidence to say that uh Epstein was either formerly or informally uh in Israeli intelligence. I say that because there was a confidential human source and an FBI informant who said so. Uh he has these long connections with Ehud Barak, the former prime minister of Israel. He's helping Ehud Barak. uh on multiple things, uh connections to international organizations, uh connections to international leaders. Uh

helping sell Israeli software that's for used for intelligence, like spyware or facial recog recognition software to other countries to use. First they would test it. They mean Israel would test it on like the Palestinians and then sell it to places like Nigeria and Epstein would help with that as well. So i that um Israel seems to have had uh or some of Israeli's leadership, I should say.

I Ehud Barak being uh number one, had an interest in Epstein purely for his connections, uh, what could be described as intelligence services and the financial opportunities uh that they also engendered.

And that becomes very, very clear in the files. Now, um, we don't know the extent of that. It's also worth noting that Epstein was not just within Ra Israeli intelligence. We see him really trying to uh connect with the Russians and Russian intelligence. He really seemed interested in trying to get meetings with Vladimir Putin.

uh although it's not clear if those ever were delivered upon. And then he's highly um uh connected to US intelligence as well, particularly the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency as well. Um he has those connections throughout the file. So Th this this has really I think the revelations from these files have really shook Israel because um not only does it um

contradict some of the things the Israelis have said. For example, in one um exchange, Ehud Barak is talking to Epstein and he's bemoaning the fact that uh if basically if a one state solution is allowed to emerge, Jews are gonna be the minority in Israel. And he's he's talking to Epstein about how to to ensure that doesn't happen, um, that uh Jews do not become the minority in Israel.

So we have that kind of exchange and that looks really bad. It it counters a lot of what Israel has previously said um about their their goals. in um with Gaza. And this week uh the Israel Israel decided to leak or give to Fox News a story that they um think it's total BS that Epstein was ever connected to Israeli intelligence. But to me, the fact that the Israeli government felt like they had to do that illustrates to me that that they're feeling pretty wounded by a lot of these

uh revelations. And I I think it's important to note to audiences too, and you you brought this up with these new laws about how it's basically illegal to to criticize Israel. Israel had a, you know, a monopoly on both parties. And it was really uh Benjamin Netanyahu who kind of severed that. He ignored

Um, Barack Obama, who remember didn't invite him to the US and then Congress, who was ran by Republicans, did invite him, and that started a divide between um the party's bases over Israel. And that only grew throughout Gaza. Joe Biden's support for Israel Uh in when they were engaging in something the United Nations called a genocide. Uh that sent a lot of Democrats the other direction. And now we see

A lot of Democrat politicians are running from admitting that they take APAC money. Even Gavin Newsom twisted himself in in circles over that. So I think these laws were kind of a last ditch effort to secure support for Israel as they see it slipping through their hands and Epstein revelations I think have contributed to that.

But but I'm trying to get to a more basic question about religion and its relation to uh the American Empire in a way. Uh uh first one on Barack uh uh uh and on um um I'm sorry. Uh uh uh

the in in the Israeli leader, uh there was a scandal he had, I forget financial or what have you. So he's really and yet uh he still remains a major figure, but he had you know, he's not typical of every Israeli leader and clearly w is controversial and ironically he seemed to have been closer than say Netanyahu, who I don't who I don't think isn't is tainted i in any way in this connection, right? Not that I've seen. Yeah.

So I I I just think we have to be care careful here. I don't not that I'm I I expect they'll apply the law no matter what, no matter what you say. But but the the fact of the matter is, uh what what I'm really trying to get is a at a deeper question. The misuse of religion You know, uh because after all, if anti Semitism means anything, it means disparaging the right of people to hold a different religious view, in this case uh Judaism.

a and and uh their interpretation of the Old Testament and and so forth. Uh and and really we're talking about the most substantive questions of human existence. What is right and wrong, where is morality? Now that's what I'm trying to get at, whether they claim to be Christians or they claim to be Jewish.

this whole crowd and I bring up Jimmy Carter because, you know, he he he he he died not that long ago and I spent time interviewing him, as I did by the way, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan and a lot of other people. And you know, the the idea that we invoke the Judeo-Christian uh ethics so t all continuously and so completely ignore

any of their requirements. I mean when I was working in the Catskills, if it was a a a possible violation of a commandment to throw the fork that had been used uh to eat meat. uh with a milk uh fork and you have to have two sets of silver or two sets of dishes, then that's serious. clearly violating all those other commandments about how you behave, right? Which certainly go into sex a lot and what is proper and and not proper. You know, how can they be so splendidly indifferent?

to all this. That is one reason I'm pushing it. I I think that if we really want to talk about anti Semitism, we have to talk about disparaging after all, what was anti Semitism as applied to the Jewish people was denying the right of Jews to worship God in their way and take God seriously in their way and read scripture in their way.

This was denied, right, by uh people who used Christianity as a weapon against them. You know, you killed uh Jesus and so forth. This is what anti Semitism is based on. But if we take any of these religions seriously, you have to wonder how people can live this way.

ignoring the the most obvious rules of all of these religions. That's my only point. And I wanna get back finally with you being very generous with your time. If we can go to another few minutes, that would be good. Uh I wanna bring it back to Palantir, this mystery organization, and remind people Palantir is an organization, this is great a whole Silicon Valley.

is really reflected in the story of Palantir because Silicon Valley claims, Oh, we're just the market, we're just free enterprise, we just were brilliant capitalists. But the fact is Silicon Valley is the creation of the military industrial complex, technically. Right. This was uh uh DARPA was the uh you know, uh use of uh uh uh and the whole f first of the whole internet. Uh we really why why does the internet? The internet is finding a way of communicating

that can elude an electromagnetic impulse that would destroy all conventional elections. So you have the packets and break it up into fragments and then reassemble it so it will survive a nuclear war. And so out of that investigation, that planning comes the whole idea of the internet, which ends up being the wide world. And the reason it's robust, the reason it can expand indefinitely, is because it is fragmented inherently. I don't want to go into the whole technology.

Uh uh but the the so these people have been in partnership in Silicon Valley so forth with government from day one and what the Edward Snowden revelations made so clear Is is their data is what's fueling the CIA and the NSA and everything else. And and and so that's why our constitutional protections should protect us against Google and Apple and everyone else because they're working cahoots with the government. That's the real meaning

of Snowden's uh revelations, which has been denied by Silkville. All we just do it our own way. Palantir is the case study, this hugely important organization. The CIA was its only client for the first three years. They didn't make any money other than and what did how could they develop their system? They had access to CIA files. They were able to dig into the most treasured uh collection of data on Americans and develop their models.

uh co okay and then after that they could then move on to the public and the CIA, the organization was called NQTEL, invested in in in them, what was among them. And and uh and you can look at Peter Thiele, all of these people come out of that. a Alex Carp and all that these people and so

There's this fantasy that somehow they're just these wild guys in in in Silicon Valley. No, they exist because they can manipulate government, they can use government and and so forth. That's what's coming out here now. They had perfect access to government and and Epstein is a a example, but it also reveals their connection with the universities.

The the real story. The New York Times really had a lame story this week about how dependent universities are on money raising. But that's not what the case here. The universities uh far financed by government primarily and and there's no distinction between the state schools and the private. the private, as we see with Columbia and Harvard, are all a at the beck and call of government. And they've done it discreetly. They've done it through

supporting military investigations and research and so forth. So Uh let's take the next two and a half minutes or so, because I think we're on to a really

big point here in w what what what let's call Epstein in the shadows. And not Epstein Shadows, it's power in the Shadows. It's these are the most powerful people and finally in history and studying, we don't have this for Russia and uh under communism or under Putin. We don't have it for China. We don't have it for Saudi Arabia. But one of the blessing contradictions of our constitution is it's created this room for an act to be passed

holding the government accountable, getting these documents. You are now spending time with these documents. Uh uh I seems to me this is the dawning of a new age unless they kill all of us before we get the story out. Yeah, I think um yes a couple of things you said there I think are really important. And and one is, um, yeah, we always tell this story of Silicon Valley of people

starting out in their garage. But as you point out, it was defense industry spending in higher ed that created a lot of these tools. But on top of that, the government picked which companies would sink or swim. Um Larry Ellison is a prime example of this at Oracle. Um government contracts, particularly the CIA, allowed Oracle to uh out compete some competitors like Cybase and others.

Um, and then ditto with like the Elon Musks of the world, um, Palantir's Peter Thiel. A lot of these folks were were chosen with these massive government contracts. And to your point about higher ed, yeah, there's a direct relationship there because uh and this is where I think the Carter analogy is interesting, because Carter ushered in uh the neoliberal era where the public was convinced that public institutions need to

run less for the public good and the common good and underneath uh bureaucrats and more like private industry so they can be more efficient. Well, what that has resulted in is a r reduction in spending and a reduction in co accountability. The public runs like the private, which is very corrupt and profit seeking. And higher ed is is no different. Um the New York Times got part of the story right.

Epstein would use the potential to donate money to scholars as a way to get his foot in the door. Some scholars wanted money for research. But from there, it would it develop into all sorts of different relationships, um, where he would be asking them advice. or um connecting them with other people with projects they could particularly work on, um, you know, basically bribing them with gifts, these trips and things like that.

And he would get them in their their inner circle to the point where folks like Larry Summers were comfortable enough seeking relationship advice, you know, from Epstein. And that was the way this this relationship developed. And I I think um w to your point about this dawn of a new understanding. I think the erosion of civics or or the common good, which so much of that was eradicated in the late 1970s, uh, in terms of our like public discourse.

This is sort of what you end up with. Um, when everything is geared toward the market market and run more like private industry and we trust private industry more than we trust

um a government of by and for the people. These are the type of people who rise. Um the people who are savvy enough to figure out how to manipulate the system, uh those who are motivated by hedonistic desires, especially wealth and sex, um, those are the ones who rose in in that system and we're starting to get a peek behind the curtain of exactly how it happened.

More than a peak. And we can wrap this up if you want,'cause we're gonna do this next Wednesday and people can read you on a daily basis, you know, let's get the promo in there on the way out. But i it's more than a peak. I I don't think uh and I'm uh this I'll talk I'll play my age card here. I've covered a lot of stories in my life. I go back a long way. And and uh I've never seen a story like this. Because I would

You know, I went to the Commission on Critical Choices and the Trilateral Commission that R David Rockefeller had, the trilateral Delson Rockefeller Commission. I was able to get lots of information, those you know, and and so forth. Uh and but nothing. It was the tip of the iceberg of how power worked. You know, C Wright Mills is the greatest.

sociologist, probably the greatest professor we've had on the social sciences side, uh was at Columbia, uh r uh wrote about the the power elite and he wrote about all these things. And and you could only get a glimpse of it

And w it's so great having you on the Epstein in the Shadows.'Cause it's really not just Epstein, it's the world that he maneuvered in. He didn't create that world. He probably gave it its crudest manifestation, you know, uh, but then the fact that they would it would also be the most successful assemblage of power. It was much imp more important than the Trilateral Commission or the Bilderberg Group or all of the groups that we used to refer to. Domhoff used to do studies on what was the elite

in America. Well of course the secret of power in America is to deny there's an elite. We're all in the middle class. We're all ordinary people. We all are equal voters. You know, it wasn't a lie from day one when the guys with the Whigs And only guys and only white guys of affluence got to write the Constitution. But the fact of the matter is, it's become a bizarre, absurd exercise and it doesn't matter whether you're Bill Clinton and come from poverty, as long as they can groom you, train you

uh, you know, give you the road scholarship, do this and that and then you play ball and then you go for it. And, you know, I don't know what he's gonna say in the in this hearing. It's not a public hearing, right? He's just gonna

It's been grill grilled in private. They're still debating that. It may be public. They're they're trying to get it public. The Clintons went public. But but you know, pe these people are very good at presenting themselves and they've have very good advisors of how you present yourself.

And they'll hide behind partisanship. You know, and and uh you know, so we don't want our side attack, so l go easier on the other side. That's gonna be the great trade off. But what I'm saying here and I wrote it down, I love it so much. of the Epstein Files Transparency Act has a life of its own. You know, a and and uh a and this is how we learned in the old days about COINTELPRO. There was so much shock that suddenly we have access to this information of how government really works.

And I would tell people that if you find this you have to pay attention to it,'cause this is really how power works in America. We are not this egalitarian democracy. We never have been. But certainly with the rise of this technology, We are in, okay, let me get it out there again. Techno fascism. Like a bumper sticker. That that that's really what it's about. And with AI now, they can present their case

They'll they'll come out with books celebrating Epstein. They'll come out with an analysis of these files that show he was on the real side of virtue. Right? Because that's what they can do. They have huge land now with huge uh sources of energy and can mine through they call it mining, but it's very selective mining. Go through all this data and spin a whole new narrative. Nice word for it, you know, pack of lies.

this narrative and they will show, oh, you know, Epstein really meant well. You know, he just was misguided a little bit and forget about the part with the young girls. You know, that just kind of was the wallpaper that, you know, existed. And and that's what they'll do.

And and you know, the exercise that you and I are having and I applaud you as substack, I applaud you getting the word up. But fact is we don't reach very many people. That that's in part of the illusion of a free media now and and when they own the real media. I mean what does it mean? The people we're talking about own these newspapers now. They own the television. They you mentioned Larry Ellison. Th there went si sixty minutes, there went

CBS, the legendary news organization. How do you teach journalism now? Oh yeah, you you usually have veterans of CBS telling you how great the you know, we've covered this and we covered that. The Washington Post, we covered this. No, you you don't do that anymore. You got legend newspapers that have all been bought.

by people who have no responsibility even to their listeners. They don't care. They have so much money. They don't care they lose some subscribers or listeners or advertising goes down.

It's not important to them. Right? This is Trump change. I mean, Bezos bought the Washington Post with pocket change. He didn't use Amazon money. Right? Oh yeah, no, that's I mean it it was nothing to him and remember he was supposedly buying it to cause he cared about saving democracy, but now he's having mass layoffs uh at at the paper. But uh you know, I wan I wanna say one other thing though, just to to listeners out there because

Um, Dropsite News sent a reporter down to Capitol Hill to try and interview senators and uh representatives about the Epstein files. And they all basically ignored the interview. They pretended they hadn't read the files or didn't have a comment. The the there's at least three million more files that haven't been released. Some estimates say only two percent of the files have been released. There's also financial records, etcetera.

Um, y Congress doesn't have to wait for a release. Congress people could go check out the files. in a skiff and then come on the floor and tell people what they read. And I'm actually gonna encourage partisanship here. If you're a Democrat, go find all the the things about Trump that are in there, read'em on the floor, force Republicans on the defensive to release the files to prove you wrong.

Um, ditto with Republicans, you can do that to Democrats as well. I think this game of waiting is is just absurd. I think there actually is a lane here where partisanship could at least force some more m movement on this issue because the Trump administration Seems hell bent on protecting the remaining files. And let's not forget, both in his first term and second term, from Tom Barack to Alex Acosta to to Steve Bannon.

Uh, not to mention his associations with Palantir and Peter Thiel. His cabinet is full of people um associated with Epstein. And so they have a collective effort in in protecting that. So I hope people in Congress We'll go check out those files, read things on the floor, let things slip. They're they're legally allowed to do so, and it would be useful uh to the American public. Well, let me have a little uh caveat here.

I I no really I I w I don't think it's gonna happen because I think if we understand power You know, it it it's not just them yes, the power is concentrated in the people that we've been talking about, but their ability to buy off what I call the courtier class. uh people with advanced degrees, people who are articulate, people who look good, and so forth. And to buy them and to control the narrative is uh never in human history have we had this kind of

uh ability of power to corrupt the rest of us. And and uh, you know, people will just start to think, well that's the way it is. Too bad I didn't get invited to the party. Uh too bad I don't know how to speak that language, you know. And even what you end up teaching. What you end up promoting in people will not be critical thinking, will not be justice, will not be truth seeking, will not be fairness. It'll be how do you succeed in that world?

Clearly these people were all enormously successful. They have the biggest houses, the biggest yachts, the most freedom. And they're actually admired because they can have buildings named after them and they can create their own legend. It gets back, you know uh to basically this biblical question of accountability. Uh uh if you're not c accountable to your maker And clearly even the arrogance of some of these people that if there is a God

I don't think they think they can buy'em off. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe, you know, there's a an almighty just waiting for the right offer from Larry Ellison or from, you know, Elon Musk or something. But, you know, what you're really talking about is an I I hate to criticise secular society. But the fact is we are a secular culture. So is China. So is Russia for all of their pretenses about religion. The one thing religion gave us

With some notion of accountability. It could be corrupted, it could be bought off. Obviously, the churches and the synagogues have gone along with. bad things, but at least there was some notion of this life as a test of your virtue, as a test of your goodness, or as a test of your commitment. Clearly what the Epstein files reveal is across different religions, whether they're Protestant, Catholic, atheist, whatever they are, they all fell for this.

Not only fell for this, were enthusiastic, couldn't live without it, wanted to book it that weekend. It it No, I'll do that. I'll get on that airplane instead of being with my grandchildren or or you know, at least doing what Jimmy Carter did as ex president, work with the poor or try to build shelter, housing. Oh yeah, I've got time for that, but when I really want to spend my weekends and weeks and the conversations, you know, and you're looking at someone like Lawrence Summers

What is he talking about? He's not talking about the proper way to teach economics so that next time you won't uh author legislation, inspire legislation that lets the banks get away with the theft of the American people, which is what Lawrence Summers did as Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary. these horrible acts of financial service monetization, commodity futures monitoring, all of which let Wall Street run amok.

So he's not now thinking he's just thinking, why was I stupid to hang out with that guy? Or why did I write that email? Right? But the basic soul questioning, how did you leave this country you claim to love? In such a sorry state. How did you allow all these people to be hurt? I don't see any remorse. People step down, they say, Okay, I can maybe I can't run the Olympics or I can't run my company or I can't run this law firm what, Paul Weiss or something. They resign. But no serious reckoning.

with what your activities and actually through a lifetime have done to destroy this greatest example, greatest experiment in democracy the world has ever seen. We shouldn't forget that. If democracy fails in America, it's gonna be pretty hard to pitch it anywhere else in the world for centuries, okay, if ever.

Seriously. Yeah, I think it's a good point. Yeah, we we we claimed the franchise of democracy. If democracy turns down to these hoodlums being able to do whatever the hell they want, like they're drunken fraternity kids or something, uh, you know, uh what what does that do to human aspiration? Yeah, and I think you know, your your point you keep coming back to about religion. I think whether it's religion or not, I I keep connecting it to this idea of

uh service for one's country or one community. That that's something that has been superseded by the um pursuit of wealth in this country, largely because of changes in the late seventies and early eighties, the kind of Reagan neoliberal shift. And again, I think these people are are emblematic of that. There there is no public service. There is no um responsibility to your community or your or your country that we can see. These are global elites. These are people who

travel around the globe to all these different locations where they can do the same thing no matter where they are and they're not held to any local, let alone like global rule of law. And so e whether it's religion or not, I think there there's something there. That social contract is is clearly broken. Um, and in large part because the folks in power, like the Epstein class, didn't have any c connection or desire or feeling of responsibility to their community or country.

Yeah, and we shouldn't be afraid to refer to religion because religion is an aspiration. W in in any form, it in any form, even when it's a cult, even when it's this, it's an effort to find larger meaning in life. Otherwise you've got your lifespan. Getting back ending is with the genetic You've got your lifespan. Okay. And you're gonna be forgotten or if not forgotten you'll probably be as likely re uh attacked as

Praise, but so forth. But even the most famous know they soon disappear. I know because I interviewed a lot of these famous people and I bring it up now. Nobody even knows who I'm taking, you know, uh so forth. So the the point is Religion is is is important as a source of accountability, as imperfect as it is, a source of accountability, that there's some larger meaning to the human experience, if nothing else. at least to keep order and decency and peace.

And, you know, not hurt people visibly. There there's some there ought to be some u innate human thing that you don't exploit a a an underage woman or any woman or anybody. in this crass, ugly way. Okay? If these people have become so successful in our culture and they're so indifferent to the consequence of their actions. then all of the things they said publicly were just a fraud, were just propaganda.

How in the world can you have given these lofty speeches at commencements and in the Congress and everything else? You know? and talk about the your effort to and particularly when you're doing it in a partisan way. Those other guys are monsters. You know, Donald Trump's terrible. He doesn't care. But I, you know, uh Lawrence Summers or Bill Clinton or, you know, everyone we're virtuous and everything.

You know, I think it again, I applaud you for doing this. I really do. And and we'll do it next Wednesday again and and make this available. By the way, you have an Epstein archive. Is that accessible? Yeah. So um like I I mentioned I publish, you know, weekly articles on Epstein among other things, but all the Epstein content I put in one article that I continue to add to, which is called Decoding Epstein and

It goes all the way back to the beginning of the story. So for folks who maybe are unfamiliar with the story, it lays out kind of the timeline of who he was, what happened, and then the subsequent reporting on the files. And that's at nolanhigdon.substack dot com. It's part of my gaslight gazette. And that article's called Decoding Epstein.

And the one we were talking about today that came out is Epstein in the Shadows. You can find both of those at nolanhigdon.substack dot com. Okay, and can people like myself who have s relatively small website, SharePost dot com, but others And there are a lot of good people out there with their websites and

places. The thing I don't like about uh partitioning it off to just somebody's substack N some of them, like uh, you know, uh Chris Hedges who does appear on our site all the time, make it available to everybody, but still you're compartmentalizing it. And I think back the the thing that saved me in life was the Forty Second Street Library in New York and you could go there and everybody could come. So like this basic Epstein file.

Is that something you would allow I don't want to put you on the spot, but is it something you would allow other people to post? Or link to or how? Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. How can we put that up on ShearPost, for example, or Consortium News or any of the other sites that are out there? You know, uh put it up now uh to what, to link to you or can we

How how does it work? Can you get do embedded code and Yeah, there there's multiple ways and folks can also reach out. We can figure out what the best method is that works for each website or uh outlet. But um yeah, my stuff is available.

Um, you know, I asked for folks to become paid subscribers to help support it, but I put, you know, most of my stuff without a paywall because again, like we were talking about, it's important to get this content out there. We're up against some of the wealthiest, most influential media outlets. So the more the merrier. Okay. So again, uh what do they do right now and if they want to follow up more on you? W give us

Go to nolanhigdon.substack dot com. There you can find the latest article, which is Epstein in the Shadows, but the latest article in all previous Epstein articles I've written, which are all hyperlinked with evidence. are under one article on the website called decoding Epstein, which is also at nolanhigdon.substack dot com. Right. And just because I've made the mistake of misspelling your name and searching for it.

N O L A N H I G D O N. That's me. That's you. Okay. Thanks so much for doing this and uh talk next week and uh it's it's really You you're doing God's work, you know, what can I say? Wha whoever God is, you're doing it. It it no, this is really needed. And we don't have clarity about this. We end up hating each other. We b end up blaming everybody. That's where you know, if you wanna talk about anti Semitism, you wanna talk about racism, that's where that comes from. Divide and conquer.

Blame the Jews, blame black people, blame homosexuals. That's really the essence of fascism. Who can you blame for this? Everybody except the rich and powerful. The people who really can that no, that's the essence of fascism. You know, find a scapegoat. And and so if they really cared about anti Semitism they wouldn't wanna feed the scapegoat the scapegoating of uh uh and divide and conquer. They'd want the truth to come out and they'd want us to be transparent.

so we wouldn't have wild, crazy, uh dangerous conspiracy theories, which is after all what fascism was. So on that note, let's wrap it up. And once again I wanna thank uh the our producer, Joshua Shear, who's a big fan of yours. And is the one that insists that I check in with you every week. I would do it anyway. Uh but I wanna thank him for keeping this thing going and check out our site on SurePost. And we'll see you next