Maxwell, Epstein, power and money: it's time to do
away with the super elite
Nathan
Robinson
This sad, sorry criminal case is in part what happens
when a small class of people is allowed to behave however it likes
‘Let us be careful not to focus excessively on
Maxwell’s individual pathologies. We must also understand the social and
economic milieu.’
Published
onSat 18 Jul 2020 11.21 BST
Ghislaine
Maxwell now sits in a jail cell, after having been denied bail on charges of
sexually trafficking minors. Maxwell is alleged to have recruited underage
girls for the billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and also to have engaged
in acts of abuse herself. In one respect, the Maxwell/Epstein story is bizarre
and unusual. It’s hard to think of any contemporary story of criminal
misconduct comparable to that of Epstein, who reportedly wanted to inseminate
dozens of women to “seed the human race with his DNA”. It’s also, however, a
story about what happens when a small class of people is allowed to behave
however they like without any constraints.
Jill
Filipovic wonders at Maxwell’s behavior. What could possibly have been her
motivation? She was a wealthy, Oxford-educated socialite. Why would she want to
spend her time allegedly recruiting a stream of underage girls for an older man
to abuse? Well, anybody can be evil and commit horrific crimes. But people’s
crimes often make more sense when we understand their context. Maxwell had
lived, from birth, in a world where the powerful freely exploited and abused
others. She grew up in a 53-room mansion, the daughter of Robert Maxwell, an
infamous publishing tycoon. Maxwell was described by those who knew him as
“terrifying” and a “dictator”, a man with “a fundamental dishonesty about
everything he said and did”. He died mysteriously at sea in 1991, having fallen
from his yacht, Lady Ghislaine. After his death, Robert Maxwell was discovered
to have committed massive fraud and theft, having raided and ransacked his
employees’ pension fund (a crime that affects retirees to this day).
Ghislaine
Maxwell became associated with Epstein soon after her father’s death. Epstein
moved in the country’s most elite circles, with associates including Bill
Clinton, Donald Trump, Alan Dershowitz, Prince Andrew and Steven Pinker.
Maxwell attended Chelsea Clinton’s wedding, and “had a massive Rolodex of
influential people”. Epstein built “a 21,000 sq ft mansion on a 10,000-acre
ranch in New Mexico which he boasted made his New York townhouse ‘look like a
shack’”, in addition to his Palm Beach mansion, plus his 72-acre “island of
sin” in the Virgin Islands and “an 8,600 sq ft home in Paris, which is said to
have featured a specially built massage room”.
According
to a thorough recent profile in Vanity Fair, Maxwell was reportedly put in
charge of managing Epstein’s affairs, “organizing armies of staff in the
various locations, coordinating everything”, including obtaining minors for him
to sexually violate. She was reportedly “almost as demanding and bombastic as
her father” had been, “call[ing] people her minion, piglet, polyp … [s]o you
felt like you were nothing”.
Epstein in
turn was a screamer who would make Maxwell cry when she displeased him. Maxwell
reportedly ran a whole network of sub-recruiters, who “were allegedly told to
target young, financially desperate women”. The whole process recalls the
Marquis de Sade’s disturbing 120 Days of Sodom, in which a group of decadent
aristocrats in a castle kidnap and abuse dozens of teenagers.
It should
be obvious to anyone that abuse is enabled by the possession of power and
wealth. Harvey Weinstein was able to commit rape and assault because he was in
charge of a production studio, and he could make or break people (and could
afford to hire ex-Israeli intelligence officials to dig up dirt on any who
crossed him). Bill Cosby was one of the richest and most famous comedians in
the world. Bill O’Reilly was the top anchor on Fox News. Donald Trump admitted
that when he was in charge of the Miss Universe pageant, he used to
deliberately walk in on teenage girls changing so he could ogle them. “I’m
allowed to because I’m the owner,” he said. Far from trying to stop him, Miss
Universe employees encouraged the girls to lavish physical affection on Trump
when he showed up.
The world
of the global super-wealthy is a world in which there is almost no
accountability, because the people in it have such tremendous capacity to hurt
or reward others. Even after Epstein’s original criminal conviction, he was not
shunned by prestigious institutions like MIT, because he had a mountain of
money. It would be a mistake, then, to see Maxwell as nothing more than some
uniquely disturbed person. She was nourished by a culture where there is no
incentive not to do whatever the hell you want, regardless of its effects on
the vulnerable. We should be careful to remember that putting Ghislaine Maxwell
in prison will not change that culture.
Ultimately,
the way to prevent the powerful elite from abusing people is to not have a
powerful elite at all
With the
conviction of Weinstein, it does seem as if there is a trend in the direction
of “not tolerating sex crimes as normal and defensible”. But ultimately, the
way to prevent the powerful elite from abusing people is to not have a powerful
elite at all. Epstein – and allegedly Maxwell – could do what they did, and get
away with it for so long, because they had wealth and knew people. They chose
teens who were financially desperate. Eliminating the existence of financial
despair and extreme wealth concentration is thus an important part of making
sure there are no more Epsteins and Maxwells.
It should
be stressed that Ghislaine Maxwell is innocent until proven guilty under the
law, and that the United States criminal punishment system can be deeply
unfair. Maxwell has been transported to the Metropolitan detention center in
Brooklyn, an infamous facility that left inmates without power or heat for days
in the winter earlier this year, and has had a Covid-19 outbreak. One does not
wish to lapse into schadenfreude about this: nobody deserves America’s prison
system.
But of
course, there’s still a good chance Maxwell will evade punishment. Epstein
himself originally got what was essentially a slap on the wrist after abusing
scores of girls, because he was rich and influential and the quality of a
person’s defense representation depends on how much money they have. (One way
to make the punishment system more egalitarian would be to ban private counsel,
so that everyone had to to use the public defender’s office.)
Maxwell has
already been able to evade the law for much longer than anyone with less wealth
and fewer social connections. But whether she ultimately walks or not, let us
be careful not to focus excessively on Maxwell’s individual pathologies. We
must also understand the social and economic milieu that made her alleged
actions possible.
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