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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026

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This, but seriously. The only reason why there isn't a populist uprising against the paedophile-riddled establishment is that the person who was supposed to be leading said uprising turned out to be compromised. * Epstein is far worse than the Dutroux scandal (which led to a reorganisation of the Belgian political system) and although the sex crimes were not as bad as the Pakistani rape gangs in the UK, the complicity of elites is far worse. (This has not yet led to a reorganisation of the British political system, but it looks like it may do).

There is an obvious N-dimensional chess story where Qanon and Comet Ping Pong were a deliberate ploy to spike the future Epstein reveal by making paedo panic (a) low status and (b) sufficiently MAGA-coded that opponents of Donald Trump wouldn't jump on it as an issue. (The hypothetical conspirators know that Trump is lying when he engages in populist anti-paedo messaging because he is one of the paedophiles.) I don't think this is true - I think paedo panic is right-coded because the Anglosphere left have made being the defenders of sexual deviance (other than paedophilia) part of their core values, and the man in the street (mostly correctly) believes that other forms of sexual deviance are strongly correlated with paedophilia.

Right now it looks like the only Americans sincerely opposed to powerful men sexually abusing teenage girls are dissident right-populists like MTG, although I think the MeToo movement showed a few mid-rank figures on the feminist left who were also consistent on this point even when the perp was a Democrat.

* I am using paedophile in the dangerously loose sense the public do - what is relevant to the politics is the view of the typical low information voter, and normies don't care about the Hannaia/Tracey "words have meanings" argument. There were no prepubescent children involved, and accordingly nobody involved is a paedophile in the technical sense, and it is not clear whether or not Epstein trafficked the girls to the clients until they were over the local age of consent. But there was definitely sexual abuse of teenage girls going on.

This has not yet led to a reorganisation of the British political system, but it looks like it may do

I don't think so. I think Brits are too cucked to do something about it. They may push out Starmer and replace it with some other asshole, but the system will remain as it were, and will continue the course.

As for the Epstein story, the Swamp has been afraid stuff may come out. But it didn't. Whether it was because there were no records from the start, or because they were successfully destroyed, I don't know, but the result is the same - the Big Reveal is not happening. So, now the Swamp is just using this thing to its own purposes, because once there's no danger of the truth coming out, they can outlie everybody else - that's their specialty. Some small change players will fall due to orbiting too close to Epstein, but those people are replaceable and nobody cares if a bunch of corrupt small-change players fall, they'd be replaced by another set of small-change corrupt players, who would in time fall too, it's the cycle of life. In the meantime, if it can be used to smear Trump - or anybody else - it will be.

the only Americans sincerely opposed to powerful men sexually abusing teenage girls are dissident right-populists like MTG

I don't believe it. I do believe she sees it as a topic to be loud about and farm likes (for Candace and Tucker it's Jews, for her it's pedos - and also Jews, of course - each has their own market) but I don't think she deserves the mantle of "only American that cares about teenage girls". A lot of Americans care about teenage girls, but I don't think using it as a cudgel to gain popularity and attack your political enemies has much to do with actually helping the actual teenage girls. I am not sure we could point to a single girl whose life had been made better because of anything MTG did, can we?

There don't seem to be any "paedophiles" in the Epstein files, with the possible exception of Epstein himself.

No, regardless of your footnote, 17-through-19-year-old prostitutes don't count. There's a probably apocryphal story where Abraham Lincoln poses the riddle "If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?" and he gives the answer as "Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it so." Well, same goes if you call someone who has sex with a 17-year-old a "paedophile".

I'm not even sure there's evidence of anyone (again, aside from Epstein) actually having sex with a 17-year-old. Yes, if you discard all the meanings of words and all the lack of evidence, there's something here.... but there isn't. A bunch of rich people partying with 17-year-old prostitutes (and I would guess cocaine also) isn't news -- "hookers and blow" is pretty much expected.

It was serious.