Careful With That Axe, Eugene
The Epstein Class means whatever you want it to mean.
If everyone's Faith Meter was set to "good" and the lever was then snapped off and thrown into a trash compactor, perhaps the phrase "Epstein Class" would be an effective rallying cry for every working American who would vote for anyone willing to bring justice to the country's comically evil criminal billionaires and their enablers.
The good-faith interpretation of a politician decrying the so-called Epstein Class would sound something like this: These maniacal elites have gotten away with it for too long, they've exploited and hurt you and your families and vulnerable people all over this country, and they've done it with a smile because they own the lawmakers and they know they operate outside the law, above the law.
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And in an age of occasionally murderous disdain for this class of rich guys and gals in an era of unprecedented plutocratic excess, this kind of political messaging might be the last that could (potentially) garner bipartisan support. Lots of folks hate the rich – not because they're jealous, but because they see that at a certain income level, one no longer has to play by the normal rules. There is an entirely other set of rules for the eye-wateringly wealthy, one that lets them game the system and get away with crimes – financial and otherwise – and never pay the price the way you and I would have to pay the price.
At the heart of this plutocratic hatred is a seething sense of injustice. Why else would Luigi Mangione became a national hero for millions of otherwise well-adjusted people?
Denny Carter
We don't live in a world in which talking points about the Epstein Class mean the same thing to everyone, thanks mostly to the various realities generated by the social internet. It's very much the opposite: The concept of the Epstein Class means whatever you'd like it to mean, whatever your social media timelines tell you it means. And for many – too many, far too many – the Epstein Class has precious little to do with the actual, real-life criminal billionaires who sit atop the wealthiest society in human history – a society that includes 40 million people who struggle with food insecurity as the government eviscerates programs designed to stop those growling bellies.
This interpretation of the Epstein Class – the bad faith version, I'd say – means only one thing: It means Jews. In the right wing's unreality all Jewish people are wealthy and conniving, having exploited good, hard-working white men and women in pursuit of their fortunes. In this unreality, all Jewish people are influencing every part of American society, propagandizing us and controlling our politicians on everything from tax policy to foreign policy to war policy.
The left detests the Epstein Class mostly for economic and class purposes. The right hates the Epstein Class in more insidious ways that excuse and reinforce their antisemitism and their worst fears about Jewish influence in the US. Jeffrey Epstein, after all, was Jewish, they say. Just another all-powerful Jew, they say. For the black-pilled American steeped in the virulent antisemitism of the X platform formerly known as Twitter, "going after" the Epstein Class means something far more violent and all-encompassing than it does when a left-wing politician suggests the same approach to holding accountable the mega-rich.
Democrats have to be careful with the weapon that is a call for justice for the Epstein Class. It is quite the weapon – quite the axe – that can be swung at any number of corrupt tech oligarchs and Wall Street criminals and federal officials who have robbed our government in broad daylight, with a presidential pardon sure to plop into their pockets when the grift is over. Whether it's Graham Platner in Maine or Jon Ossoff in Georgia, telling voters the central problem in American life is in fact the Epstein Class could come with a bunch of ugly unintended consequences. Good intentions, in this case, don't matter.
“This is the Epstein class, ruling our country,” Ossoff said in February, highlighting the ways in which the president and his failsons have used the presidency to become billionaires many times over. “They are the elites they pretend to hate.”
I can't tell you exactly how the right-wing mind would interpret this Ossoff quote, but I can try: "This is the Jews, ruling our country."
Denny Carter
When Trump said in January 2025 that "a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens, while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair," he knew exactly how his base would interpret that, and it had nothing to do with billionaires generally. It was a winking and nodding broadside against what his backers might see as the Jewish invaders who are solely responsible for the hard luck of working people in the US.
Dismissing the right-wing interpretation of the Epstein Class is a dangerous little game to play. The sprawling MAGA media apparatus that has backed Trump and defended his every heinous move over these past ten years is receding quickly in favor of an explicitly antisemitic American right wing that makes no apologies for its hatred of Jewish people and the harm they believe all-powerful Jews have done to the US over the past half century. These chuds – guys like Nick Fuentes – will talk a big game about pursuing the Epstein Class, but only because for him and his audience, that means belittling and terrorizing Jewish communities in the US and abroad. Railing against the Epstein Class, for a toad like Fuentes, is but a means to an end: It is the most direct way to teach his audience to hate and fear Jews in the US and in Europe and everywhere else.
In today's BFT Podcast, I talk about how elected Democrats should consider using the phrase "Epstein class," and how uncomfortable it makes me to hear Platner use this phrase over and over on the campaign trail.
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