multi-storied #48: Jeffrey Epstein in Jor Bagh

I haven’t done much political reporting in India, compared to the veterans—but I’ve certainly spoken a lot to the veterans: worked alongside them, hung out with them over drinks, chatted with them on WhatsApp. I loved hearing their stories: tales of venality, cronyism, egoism, deep state-ism, and the intertwined circles of power beyond party politics. (The most memorable such story involves a prime minister, a cabinet minister, and a chocolate cake. IYKYK.)

I’d pick up similar stories on the few occasions that I did deep political reporting myself, and was always struck by two things: how they were absolutely taken as gospel knowledge within political circles, and how they were impossible to convey to readers because there were never any witnesses on record or documents to corroborate. By and by, I felt somewhat dishonest in doing this reporting; I felt as if I knew some truths about how politics and India worked, and that in withholding them and writing my pieces nonetheless, I was giving readers a false (or at least incomplete) vision of their country. You can’t be a journalist and report the mere stage plot of a puppet show without at least mentioning that there are strings, and that there are hands that pull them.

On other occasions, I’d doubt my own doubts. I’d tell myself: Maybe these are just stories that circulate, and that acquire the gloss of fact. Maybe the idea of cross-party politicians and their closest businessmen cronies colluding to control the country is just too conspiratorial, too paranoid. If that were the truth, wouldn’t it have slipped out over time? Wouldn’t these elites in their ghettos of Jor Bagh and Colaba and Alwarpet have made mistakes, dropped the mask? But then something would happen, and the conspiracy theories would feel solid again. When I was working at Mint, transcripts of the Radia Tapes were leaked, showing the immense influence that a PR flack held over ministers, journalists and corporate titans, everyone working to broker deals, form governments, and lobby for business. The elites seemed to be above the plane of ethics, certainly, but even above the ordinary life of the nation itself.

The past few years have given rise to a panic about disinformation: about plausible-seeming stories that are in fact false. The Epstein revelations, in reminding me of the Radia tapes, are the opposite: They are wild, almost outlandish stories that are in fact true. (It’s telling that, on scrolling Twitter, it is impossible to really dismiss any rumour about Epstein Island as too bizarre. Cannibalism? Baby sacrifice? Yeah, maybe!) What is the truly bipartisan issue that brings together Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and lefties, academics and titans of industry, Arabs and Israelis? Apparently, it’s the opportunity to rape underage girls. En passant, this truly loathsome group also offered the collaborative chance to do some heavy networking, get jobs, make deals, and run policy. As I told friends a couple of days ago: the more we know about Epstein Island, the more it will be difficult for us to ever turn on tinfoil lunatics again to say: “Come on, that’s outrageous, you’re being paranoid.”

This is a different kind of crisis of credulity to the one produced by the epidemic of disinformation. And, in a way, this validation of the conspiratorial mood will add fuel to disinformation campaigns, because we will now be inclined to give them even more generous benefits of doubt. “Anything can be true” might seem, on its surface, to be the credo of an open mind. In this case, though, it’s a sign of nihilistic despair, a confession that we’ve ceased to understand the world.

The laziest thing to do, at this point, would be to hand-wavily blame “technology,” as seems to happen often when we speak about disinformation. Of course we know tech companies are to blame for deliberately amplifying lies, but nothing is inherent to the nature of “tech” except what is programmed into it by humans. These tech companies today are run by people who are very much of the Epstein clique (see Bill Gates)—and, more broadly, of the circles of elite power in which depredations are covered up, backs are scratched for mutual benefit, money forgives everything, and anything is fair game if it helps maintain the collective privileged position of these people. These circles exist in every country, they often overlap (see Anil Ambani), and they reinforce each other. Understanding that is the way to start understanding the world again.