On January 30th, the Jeffrey Epstein case has once again gained significant visibility on social media platforms after the U.S.Department of Justice released three million new archives related to the case. Among the thousands of files, it was possible to locate the name of powerful figures like Donald Trump, Bill Gates, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and many more.
Within the same period, a particular case in Brazil, the collapse of Banco Master – an exposure of a major fraud involving big names – also gained public interest. These current public denunciations have something in common, they expose relevant government figures that exemplify systemic impunity and how powerful men – the majority of the time – are able to do anything, from theft to abuse.
The Public Impact
First, it’s important to emphasize that the so-called “Epstein Effect” refers to the profound and irreversible consequences for global politics and culture resulting from the public exposure of individuals and companies allegedly connected to the cases involving Jeffrey Epstein’s island.
However, the true devastation lies not only in the exposure of individual names and companies, but in the erosion of public trust in institutions meant to uphold justice. Since the release of the new files, the online community, including X, Instagram, and TikTok, has gone crazy, mainly because of the mention of the current US president more than a thousand times.
The Epstein case reveals a worrying and common pattern in the world we live in: that when power, money, and influence intersect with criminal accusations, justice seems negotiable. Besides, we have been instilled with the idea that when one has control and authority over something, integrity may not be the chosen path.
Furthermore, the Epstein case has not been reported with the wealth of detail that it should, both in the US and in Brazil, and the same applies to the Banco Master case, where the channels only report what is convenient for the “brand” of the newspaper in question.But the reason is clear. As long as the case continues to be discussed on social media, powerful entities will continue to feed on public outrage, anger, and anxiety.
The population lust for justice, but the elite lust for power.
Magnates and How They Create Power
Power, in its essence, is the ability to direct or influence another’s behaviors in a course of events. In the hands of modern magnates this “power” is not accidental, but rather something strategically designed to dominate large masses and to create safety nets that operate above conventional accountability systems; an action that is only possible because of their economic dominance, political influence, and, above all, a carefully managed public image.
To illustrate the situation, according to the Associated Press, the FBI concluded at the beginning of february that there is insufficient evidence that the criminal Jeffrey Epstein did run a sex trafficking network for powerful individuals.
Major American news outlets claim that the videos and photos collected from Epstein’s apartments in New York, Virgin Island, and Florida did not show victims being abused, nor did they implicate anyone else in his crimes, said one of the prosecutors in the case.
Could this case be the example that suggests the influence of elite groups over media outlets in shaping public perception? As Tom Ross said in his article “The Control of the Power Elite Through the Media”,“We are living in a time where the flow of information is in the hands of an elite few, shaping the reality we experience.”
the audience is no longer shocked
Nowadays, journalists and politicians have been working on the concept of “Scandal Fatigue”, a term that was already used during the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919. This term indicates that when the frequency of scandals is so high, the public stops reacting. At that time, Europe was going through an intriguing post-war period, and the news channels continued spreading local gossip to inflate public opinion, keeping information about the treaty under wraps.
People are increasingly avoiding consuming news because everything has become newsworthy. The excess of content generates anxiety and distrust in the media, leading many to seek simpler sources.
The Epstein case profoundly illustrates all of this; We live in an era of frequent scandals, crises, and wars, and the Epstein case emerged within this hyper-stimulated environment. The public was already exposed to an enormous volume of controversies, meaning the capacity for shock had diminished.
The scandal went massively viral, an intense peak of attention, which caught the public’s attention for some weeks. But now, the vast majority are content with just knowing about it, they don’t want to fight for it; moral fatigue becomes explicit when people are content and are now already looking for other news: “Nothing will happen anyway, the elite always win.”
Now, the question that lingers is: Has the system failed, or is it working exactly as designed? Perhaps the goal of this system was never to guarantee equality in the eyes of the law, but to preserve the hierarchy and stability of the whole; Institutions prioritize self-preservation, cases are brought to the media and then silenced, not to mention that elites have access to lawyers, political influence, and narrative control.
The problem is not just an individual like Jeffrey Epstein, but the institutional machinery that allows networks of influence to thrive. In the end, what shapes public perception is not just scandal – but the pattern it leaves behind.
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The article above was edited by Camilly Vieira.
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