Epstein files

The release of the Epstein files fits perfectly within the logic of post-truth as a technology of power.

Not because of what they reveal — or only partially reveal. But because of how they are released into the public sphere: in a chaotic form, emotionally overwhelming, fragmentary, lacking stable contours and a shared interpretive framework.

The strategy is to make access to truth itself impracticable. The goal is to saturate the informational public square with contradictions, suspicions, half-revelations. The result is not heightened awareness, but cognitive exhaustion. When everything seems possible, nothing becomes ascertainable. A technique of power, of manipulative control over public opinion.

Russian post-truth, the offspring of the mind both brilliant and demonic of Vladimir Surkov, has set the standard in this regard.

There is no need to say “this is false,” but rather to insinuate that no one can really know what is true. The disorderly publication of the Epstein files does not foster a coherent narrative of responsibility. On the contrary, it generates an emotional roller coaster of anger, disgust, paranoia, and witch hunts. In chaos, coherence dies — as does any minimally shared understanding of the facts. And with it, the possibility of translating indignation into rational political action.

The renunciation of coherence is central. Opposing messages coexist without interruption. Was Epstein the sole figure at the center of the documented moral bankruptcy, or not? Is everything proven, or not? In chaos, everyone is guilty. And no one truly is. A simultaneity of versions that is not a mistake, but a choice. Power no longer has an interest in imposing a single narrative; it merely needs to flood the public sphere — to produce infodemia — until truth becomes indistinguishable from noise.

Information overload is the most devastating weapon of the 21st century.

Overwhelmed by continuous revelations — emotionally chaotic and morally squalid, bordering on gossip — we succumb to cynicism (“they’re all the same”), apathy (“I don’t care about anything anymore”), and identity fragmentation (“I side with those who think like me”). Anger is channeled into micro-conflicts, while real power remains in the background, intact and undisturbed.

Control is no longer external, but internal. No censorship, no repression. People, overwhelmed by emotionally deregulated infodemia, voluntarily renounce the possibility of knowing. It is a cognitive surrender…

…followed by a political surrender. The propaganda of post-truth has a precise objective: depoliticization. To portray political participation as useless, toxic, naïve. Public freedom is delegitimized, private freedom exalted as the only one worthy of effort and attention. We strike a pact with the devil — with power. I renounce my political freedoms; you guarantee me efficiency (those who vote for Trump, support Putin, and the like repeat this mantra obsessively). Order, infrastructure, security, “tranquility.”

The death of civil society, rendered subordinate and passive. All that remains is to consume the crumbs of a media circus designed to stimulate mass hysteria. A rise and fall that leads from collective emotional stress to total sedation. In this sense, the Epstein files are part of a decades-long process that has turned politics into the most watched reality show. A stage on which the great human passions are performed, embodied by men who willingly — for sheer electoral gain — turn themselves into characters in these sweeping sagas.

The publication of the Epstein files is a sedative that induces political paralysis. It reveals facts in an emotionally chaotic way, produces informational saturation, polarization, and participatory depression. It divides an already fragmented political body.

Is it a coincidence? Or a very precise design? Induced chaos is not a side effect: it is the conditio sine qua non. The necessary condition for making political participation impossible. For allowing power to operate undisturbed. In the silence where only its unappealable verdicts resound. With no recourse left to civil society.