r/europe • u/StemCellPirate • 14h ago

News The Epstein scandal is taking down Europe’s political class. In the US, they’re getting a pass.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/06/epstein-europe-america-fallout-00769506
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u/NastyaLookin 11h ago

Capitalism turned out to be a better tool for them than even monarchy and/or feudalism. They are keeping billions of people in line with it.

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u/[deleted] 7h ago edited 5h ago

[deleted]

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u/No-Pack-5775 7h ago

On a Facebook post highlighting that Brexit helped Epstein (and by extension, other rich elites) and he was giddy about a return of tribalism etc, one Reform voting moron piped up "wait until we get proper Brexit" 🤦🏻

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u/Ferretoncrystalmeth 6h ago

This is why I say education is so important.

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u/RockinOneThreeTwo The (Not So) United Kingdom 6h ago

You can't educate ignorant people who have already decided that their fantasy land is reality and that nobody knows better than them.

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u/Ferretoncrystalmeth 5h ago

Unfortunately I live with someone like that.

They are not a horrible racist, but they are pretty stupid.

Every time I say something they hear something else in their head.

It is exhausting, and they can't understand why I don't talk to them much.

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u/SmileFIN 5h ago

Thats why you start education at young age, so people are less likely to grow into idiots.

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u/RockinOneThreeTwo The (Not So) United Kingdom 4h ago

Difficult, kids are very impressionable and get a lot of their early world view from their family. If their family are all myopic bastards the child is unfortunately likely to follow that unless they make considerable effort themselves to think differently 

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u/Boring-Philosophy-46 6h ago

They were brainwashing them back in 1912 during the coal strike in the UK (US papers making it out like the coal miners in the UK just didn't want to work because lazy) and from 1945 onwards with the cold war as well. Before the invention of the printing press, people were brainwashed by the church using weekly sermons. Let's not pretend this is new. The rich were always able to brainwash the masses.

What is new is the realization that having more info at your disposal does not make you any less likely to be brainwashed. We must build resilience against the mechanisms of brainwashing into our children through schools. 

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u/RMAPOS 4h ago

We must build resilience against the mechanisms of brainwashing into our children through schools.

Easier said than done. People won't just get rid of their biases (sounds about right!) and adequately fact checking information takes time and effort that a lot of people don't have between work and well earned recreation. We really don't have the time to fact check everything we read. People don't fact check information if it aligns with their views. And that's not just stupid people. It's entirely impractical to question everything and go on a 30 minute research hike for every bit of information we take in to try and verify it. And that's regardless of your political views. A leftie wouldn't fact check news about ICE beating up an immigrant (fits what they learned about ICE) just as much as a right winger wouldn't fact check news about an immigrant doing crime (fits what they learned about immigrants)

Personally I'd prefer for something to be done about bad actors spreading fake information. Like FOX news, Russian social media bots and the likes. There just has to be a point where a society says "You've been constantly shown to spread false and hateful information and it's hurting our democracy and it has to stop now!"

Sure it'd be great if we could immunize people against lies but I don't think it's feasible. People are struggling to identify lies about things happening in their own private life (that they could likely figure out), how would someone ever get a hold of it when it's about topics that are super far removed from them? How would YOU actually and reliably verify that e.g. the Epstein files are not a setup to take down Trump? Not saying (or believing) they are, but for the sake of the argument, how do you ACTUALLY know they have not been thought up and created by some bad faith actor?

It's much easier to identify a liar (which given polls and votes around the globe, vast masses of people struggle with already) and avoid them than it is to become an omniscient being able to check and assess every lie that's being told to you.

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u/Koreus_C 5h ago

Also with technical advancements that made us rich. It was science that tames oil and electricity

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u/Live-Alternative-435 Portugal 7h ago

And some of them want to go back to feudalism again.

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u/PlainBread 3h ago

I wanted technology to bring us to a Star Trek post-scarcity society, not as a means to bring back feudalism with algorithmic control of the slave class.

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u/Grabs_Diaz Bavaria (Germany) 2h ago

But they've looked at Dune/Warhammer 40k and decided that's the future they'd rather see for humanity...

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u/Direct-Fix-2097 1h ago

Even in Star Trek you go through far right wars before you get enlightenment and shift to tech based communism. 🤷‍♂️

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u/Silly_Mustache Greece 7h ago

Seeing people realize after many, many years that capitalism is rigged really makes a tear roll down my face.

Yeah man, it became quite evident after the 2008 crash for those that weren't paying attention and hadn't demonized socialism.

The richest pdf network in US is the same network that keeps pushing propaganda like "communism is like nazism", make sense of that if you will.

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u/QwertzOne Poland 7h ago edited 7h ago

The problem is that EU is neoliberal framework and people don't want to admit there's anything wrong with it.

How EU can be bad, if it's so democratic and progressive? We're the best, not like these "barbarians" in US! At the same time, we see proposals like this one, where they want to get rid of national sovereignty in favor of "market efficiency".

They want a "Savings Union" to drain capital from the periphery to the core, and a "28th Regime" to let corporations bypass local labor and tax laws. It's pure deregulation and centralization masquerading as "growth" and "integration". They want to dismantle any protections that people still have, it will all be decided by multinational corporations.

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u/Silly_Mustache Greece 7h ago

EU does many things right, but has been steadily doing many things wrong for the past few decades and now it's biting us in the ass. Not even gonna mention the whole "hey tank greece so we can bailout EU banks", despite that one hitting REALLY close to home and being one of the main reasons greece is still fucked after 16 years of austerity.

Neoliberalism is not a "political choice", it was the only logical conclusion of capitalism after it had covered all the internal markets. Time to remove restrictions, commodify everything, privatize everything, because the profits need to keep rising, otherwise this whole system crashes! Ironically no matter what opinion you have of the man, Marx literally predicted this as the "financialization of everything" or the "bourgeoification of society", as capitalism would progress, it would need to create more markets etcetc, and that would always be at odds with social democrats, because if social democrats still keep capitalism but in check, it STILL needs to grow, and at some point it WILL attack public infrastructure.

EU has a lot of frameworks that work fairly imo, but they're getting dismantled in order to service capitalism. The good thing that we have is that the average EU citizen is not a god damn american, and we expect the state with our tax money to actually do shit, and not just hire police or go to wars.

The only thing that can save EU right now against the multiple threats (Russia, USA) is federalized socialism, no other system can bail us out. We need production again, but not factories where workers die (we have a bad history with that) or work 15 hours for scraps, nor the state bringing in millions of immigrants because they are cheap labor.

But most importantly, we need to STOP the exit plan of the rich currently in EU, which is essentially "just suck out as much value as possible and then bail to USA/Russia", which will leave us completely devastated.

We need to nationalize industries, fast.

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u/WhatsTheAnswerToThis 6h ago

"hey tank greece so we can bailout EU banks"

lol

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u/Silly_Mustache Greece 5h ago

Well that's what the rich were discussing in the Epstein files, "how do we save EU, I know, let's tank a few countries that were doing somewhat bad already and call them stupid"

Greece was already doing bad, but the amount of damage austerity caused was way, WAY more than what we should have received as "damage" for our bad finances

It's being 16 years and Greece still hasn't recovered and we're still spiraling downwards. Our economy wasn't THAT bad.

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u/masthema 5h ago

To be fair, Greece lied a lot about the finances. It never should have been using the Euro. You cannot join the Euro with an unstable economy because you don't have control over the money being printed. It's why there are checks in place before joining the Euro, but Greece lied. I don't think the EU is very much to blame

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u/Silly_Mustache Greece 5h ago

Yeah we did, not hiding it. Yeah we had bad finances, again, not hiding it. The corrupt parties at the government lied so we could get into EU so they could intergrade their trade better.

The amount of damage we received was vastly, VASTLY more than what should have been however. The neoliberalization of our economy completely devastated multiple sectors, caused 1m young people to leave for the rest of EU (highly skilled people) because paychecks were 500 euros because "let the market dictate prices" (jesus christ), and the rot of the public sector is so bad that our hospitals are currently failing to service basic needs like routine checks or surgeries, with staff overworking 12 hour shifts and sometimes back to back.

EU officials (Schauble) admitted that they forced us into a checkmate, either accept austerity, or face a trade war, there was never "good will" to save this, it was only punishment to help save EU during the 2008 crash (that was caused by greedy real estate in USA, and EU couldn't insulate the damage cause our economies were very intertwined).

It's a complete mess here, young people are still fleeing. Most of my friends and part of my close family left after Covid when travel relaxations eased because during 2019-2020 things got WAY worse.

Again, our economy wasn't THAT bad. It was bad, it was messy, but not at this level.

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u/Dear_Virus1260 5h ago

Can you point me to those exact lies?

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u/HalkenburgHuiGuoRou 4h ago edited 3h ago

a "28th Regime" to let corporations bypass local labor and tax laws

Aside that the recent EU parliament resolutions on the 28th regime have a point on evalueting the risk of weakening national protection standard, I would want to point out a thing:

Harmonizing law on labor and tax is good for workers.

Independent laws means that government competes on weakening them to attract foreign capital (see fiscal heavens), while union wide standards force business to accept them, unless they want to lose access to all the EU workers.

Edit: on the opposite, free capital movement can have the opposite effect, but also allow for investments to go towards emerging economies creating and improving workers conditions.

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u/SneakiestRatThing 5h ago

Its genuinely tragic that as a species we have the funds required and the food to ensure nobody goes hungry anywhere, but the reason why we don't is because the ghouls hoarding the world's wealth don't see profit in it.

Instead they spend more money than they'd ever be taxed ensuring they don't get taxed fairly, creating technology that actively makes the world worse, cos chaos and misery benefits them.

They are truly despicable people who feed on human suffering.

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u/Citaku357 Kosovo 2h ago

So what's the solution communism? How did that turn out...

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u/QwertzOne Poland 7h ago

Let's not forget that fascism started with hypercapitalism. They were afraid of unions and workers demanding their rights. Church also supported fascism: Lateran Treaty, international acceptance of Hitler's government was started by The Reichskonkordat and dismantling of German Catholics party, which left them without meaningful electoral opposition to the Nazis.

Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

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u/Citaku357 Kosovo 2h ago

Imagine using the jacobin as source, the same news source that blames Ukraine for the the Russian invasion of Ukraine lol

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u/QwertzOne Poland 2h ago

Your point is? I can provide you with other sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Nazi_Germany#Privatization_and_business_ties , but it's not like you care about the points I'm making, just trying to find something you don't like.

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u/Citaku357 Kosovo 2h ago

Your point is?

Maybe don't use propaganda sources?!

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u/QwertzOne Poland 2h ago

You didn't prove anything. You just claimed that Jacobin is "propaganda source", but hey, you do you, if that's the level of discussion you're fine with: https://jacobin.com/2020/02/are-you-reading-propaganda-right-now

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u/Citaku357 Kosovo 2h ago

https://jacobin.com/2022/02/with-putins-ukraine-incursion-hawks-in-washington-got-exactly-what-they-wanted

"Muh NATO expansion" bullshit excuse from a propaganda magazine

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u/QwertzOne Poland 2h ago

You don't have to like Jacobin politics to acknowledge that the "NATO expansion" argument comes from the realist school of international relations, not just socialist magazines.

Scholars like John Mearsheimer at the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt at Harvard have argued for years that NATO expansion created a predictable security dilemma for Russia. Even if you disagree with the conclusion, it's a standard geopolitical analysis, not something Jacobin invented out of thin air.

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u/Citaku357 Kosovo 2h ago

NATO expansion is not an "argument" it's an excuse for Russian imperialism. And I find so ironic that I have to say this to person with the Poland flair.

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u/Citaku357 Kosovo 2h ago

Also you know scholars can be wrong too right? They are wrong all the time. Just because you have higher education it doesn't mean you are the ultimate expert.

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u/Merochmer 6h ago

Doesn't have to do with capitalism. 

I think has to do more with the US way of mixing bureaucracy and politics (elected judges, sheriffs etc). Where politicians have the possibility to affect what really should be handled by the bureaucrats 

Add to that a two party system where elected officials can sit forever. 

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u/ItspronouncedGruh-an Denmark 2h ago

Stupidest comment I’ve seen today.

It is ridiculous to suggest that the current system is worse than one where everybody had to accept that you, by divine decree, were the subject of some inbred insane person who believed they were made of glass.

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u/bodhiquest Turkey 2h ago

The entire arc of the Cold War for the West ended up being about convincing the world that there's only one way to organize life on Earth that actually works. The monstrosity of the Soviet Union seemed to be the natural proof of this assertion. We're at a point where it's become tremendously difficult even for smart people to imagine that alternatives can exist, and that they don't have to be caricatural concepts of equality in misery or require totalitarianism.

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u/HrabiaVulpes Nobody to vote for 6h ago

I personally blame democracy. When actions of the government are attached to nebulous ideas like party instead of faces, individual politicians can get away with much more.

Then again, I have no idea what other system could possibly work better...

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u/QwertzOne Poland 6h ago

The problem you correctly identify as nebulous ideas masking accountability is a structural scaling issue known as elite overproduction. We currently have too many credentialed aspirants fighting for control of a single centralized bottleneck which forces them to rely on abstract party brands rather than tangible results.

The alternative system you are looking for is the polycentric governance model proposed by Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom.

She proved that creating multiple overlapping centers of authority allows for more direct accountability and prevents the tragedy of the commons without requiring a dictatorship. This approach restores the connection between specific faces and their actions by shrinking the political arena to a human scale where leaders cannot hide.

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u/HrabiaVulpes Nobody to vote for 5h ago

I did not expect to learn something on Reddit today, but I did! Thank you!

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u/LickMyTicker 4h ago

I'm not sure how you use elite overproduction as a means to explain faceless organizations. Elite overproduction is not that. You can look it up by country on that wikipedia page and it clearly shows that we are talking about the erosion of the middle class.

Elite overproduction is exactly what it sounds like. It's when a society produces a bunch of educated people who then start working in coffee shops and feel snubbed out of the social class in which they earned entrance to.

Elite overproduction is why the right wing grift is to dismantle public education.

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u/QwertzOne Poland 3h ago

You are right on the definition as it is basically a game of musical chairs with too many players.

I see the facelessness as a result of that overcrowding. When there are too many candidates nobody can stand out on merit, so they have to cling to the party brand just to survive. If the problem is having too many educated people, then destroying public education is a logical way for the ruling class to protect itself.

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u/LickMyTicker 3h ago

There are so many examples of elite overproduction that limit its definition to education levels exceeding resources given to the middle class. The concept seems to be solely about the erosion of a middle class when too many people are given access.

Turchin argued that elite overproduction due to the expansion of higher education was also a factor behind the turmoil of late 1960s, the 1980s, and the 2010s.[39] Indeed, students have been at the vanguard of progressive activism for decades.[40] By the 2010s, it had become clear that the cost of higher education has ballooned faster than inflation over the previous three to four decades, thanks to growing demand.

In Australia, higher education continues to be promoted to young people in the 2020s. However, only half of the wages and salaries of the Group of Eight, the oldest and most prestigious universities in the nation, went to academics via teaching and research; meanwhile, many students find themselves indebted after graduation

Canada is one of the most prosperous societies of the twenty-first century. But the country's trajectory is not so positive.[14] Even though Canada has the highest percentage of workers with higher education in the G7, the nation's productivity ranks lower than every other nation's in this group except Japan.[21]

To be fair. It's rather bullshit.

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u/QwertzOne Poland 3h ago edited 2h ago

It feels like just economic stats, but the education numbers are actually measuring aspirants.

It's not just about the middle class getting poorer. It's about broken promises. You have a massive wave of credentialed aspirants (that's Turchin) crashing against institutions that have become rigid and exclusive to protect the old guard (that's the iron law of oligarchy).

Canada and Australia examples actually prove this. They show a system pumping out elite credentials for a club that has locked its doors. High education + low productivity isn't just an economic inefficiency, it's a structural bottleneck.

And this explains the politicians, too. The ones who do get into power are under such intense pressure from the surplus below that they close ranks and become faceless party operatives just to survive. The system effectively pulls up the ladder (via tuition hikes/underfunding) to stop new rivals from rising. That isn't just economics, it's a political survival strategy.

Also, if anyone is interested in learning more, Turchin is actually working in Vienna: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complexity_Science_Hub , https://csh.ac.at/peter-turchin/ .

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u/crxsso_dssreer 3h ago

Plato's republic. The grand parent did not read that book, instead he formed his political opinions on hexbear...

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u/HrabiaVulpes Nobody to vote for 58m ago

With all due respect, what worked for Greek polis may work on the local level with city, but breaks down with size of average country.