This debate offers a sharp intellectual framework to distinguish between legitimate demands for accountability and the performative volatility of digital-age outrage. It effectively challenges viewers to evaluate whether our reaction to elite misconduct is grounded in evidence or amplified by sociological panic.
Install our extension to search inside any video instantly.
Are the Epstein Files a moral panic?
Added:We should all be probably a bit more morally panicked by the magnitude of the Epstein moral panic.
>> Equating public demand for accountability in the Epstein case [music] with moral panic is a fundamental misuse of the term.
>> There would be no rational reason why a deceased financier's massage-related violations from 2002 [music] to 2005, roughly, should have been the basis for this full-blown political and cultural [music] emergency 20-plus years later.
>> If even a fraction of the documented adjudicated claims here are true, [music] that alone excludes the Epstein scandal from being a moral panic.
>> Welcome to the Soho Forum.
Thank you.
Tonight's >> [applause] >> Tonight's resolution Tonight's resolution reads that Jeffrey Epstein scandal has become a case of moral panic. Speaking for the affirmative, affirmative, Michael Tracey. Michael, please come to the stage.
>> [applause] >> Speaking for the negative, uh, Marcella Shalblevich.
>> [gasps] >> Marcella I'm sorry. Marcella, please come to the stage.
>> [applause] >> Lucas, please close the voting. Michael, you have 15 minutes to make your case. I think you want to take the podium. Take it away, Michael.
>> Well, good evening.
Happy Bastille Day.
What better way to celebrate than to gather together to discuss Jeffrey Epstein?
Now, moral panic can be a bit of a fluid concept. I think I will go with a definition that was once put forward by the journalist Joanne Wypijewski, who said that moral panic is first and foremost, quote, the enemy of skepticism.
Because by nature moral panics are historical. They jettison reason for emotion, she says, transform accusation into proof, spur more accusation, and create a climate that demands not deliberation or evidence or resistance to prejudice, but mindless faith. Now, that all describes the Epstein issue to a T.
My opponent, and thank you for doing this, has written that moral panics, in being socially constructed, are also unique to the cultures from which they spring forth.
And there's no doubt that the Epstein moral panic, as I argue it is, does feature some unique elements that distinguish it from moral panics of the past.
For instance you might be familiar of the kind of strange cross-ideological confluence that has given rise to the Epstein moral panic. First, you have the, let's call it grassroots right, who are already very much fixated on these wild pedophilic child sex trafficking kink theories, and they inflict them with, you know, variations of fervid Christianity, and they like to believe that it implicates all their political adversaries as child raping demons. You know, maybe you followed that over the years. And then, coupled with that, you have the common left-liberal discourse around the purportedly exploitative nature of power dynamics, which entails needing to believe women and survivors.
And since 2025 has merged with the predominant anti-Trump narrative of the second term. So, that's convenient for them.
Then you have the largely pliable media mainstream and alternative that's almost overwhelmingly unwilling to scrutinize any of the core claims or tenants of this Epstein narrative except for here and there they'll maybe like you know snidely rebut one of the more outlandish and comical theories and that this like podcast ecosystem is already predicated on a kind of default conspiracism epistemology anyway so there's nothing that's been better tailored to their brain dead sensibilities than the Epstein conspira slop.
My opponent has written that the media in reporting on moral panic gives the impression that of representing a unified moral front but this is sort of artificial and contrived and so too with Epstein the relentless unanimity around this issue is really something to behold. I know I've personally spoken to many journalists privately who tell me that they have become more and more skeptical of the veracity of the narrative but they would never say so in public because who wants to be day loose with accusations that either they are themselves pedophiles or they're enabling pedophiles whatsoever it's unpleasant.
I can attest that lots of friendly people on the internet are very eager to fling that accusation. If you'd like to see any of the lovely email or DM evidence establishing this feel free to see me afterwards.
Then on top of that and arguably in the driver seat okay and this is hardly ever discussed is what I've estimated to be an approximately one billion dollar Epstein industry of settlements and payouts and all these other compensation mechanisms that created an incentive structure that is considered very rude to ever point out but I think it's probably a potentially salient factor in how this whole thing has come into manifestation. Now let's review on the substance of the Epstein matter okay because there are there's such a pro proliferation of widely believed myths that that based on virtually nothing tangible or factual or credible that it's rather incredible.
How about the claim, remember this, that Epstein installed hidden cameras in all his bedrooms or other sensitive areas throughout his properties to capture prominent people in illicit sexual encounters so he could then blackmail them? That was like kind of the crux of the whole thing. It's where everybody was sloganeering, release the Epstein files.
It's totally false. According to internal DOJ and FBI communications that they never had any reason to suppose would come into the public domain.
And they really wanted it to be true so they could bring related criminal charges. Or how about Pedophile Island or sometimes called Rape Island?
Would it surprise you to learn that given the mountains of evidence that have surfaced around this Epstein thing, we still never have found gotten any credible evidence at all that there has been any rape or any pedophilic predation on that legendary island? Or how about the client list? Remember the vaulted client list, the secret list of elite Epstein-connected files that everybody from Elon Musk to J.D. Vance assured us must totally exist? Another bust.
Even though a group of self-proclaimed Epstein survivors went in front of the US Capitol last fall and declared that they were going to produce an a client list and they were going to hand it off to their sympathetic allies in Congress who were then going to read it aloud on the floor of the US House of Representatives. Now, that never happened.
Well, I wonder why.
And the client list thing goes hand in hand though with the idea that Epstein was trafficking child sex captives to all his powerful friends, right? That was sort of central to the mythos.
But again, the Epstein files that everybody was so eager to have showed that government investigators who were really really invested in this being true found it to be utterly groundless much to their chagrin.
Or how about bogus statistics? Now, moral panics tend to create this atmosphere where you can just screech any statistic you want no matter how lacking in uh credibility and nobody bats an eye. So, we've been told for a a year now that there are over 1,000 victims of Epstein or or even thousands some will say depending on who you ask which creates the impression in the public that thousands of helpless children have been sadistically pedophilically brutalized, right?
But then the Epstein files come out and though the media never covers this naturally we get dispositive proof that that number was cooked up. It was basically invented out of thin air. It's this extrapolation based on the number of supposed people had been ever harmed even peripherally by Epstein which includes the family members of purported Epstein victims as though, you know, Jeffrey went around raping all their uncles or something.
Um and on top of that the vast majority of purported Epstein victims from everything that I've been able to ascertain were adults at the time of their claimed victimization and yet the moral panic consensus is that this is the most monumental pedo- pedophilia and child sex crime scandal ever to beset humanity. So, please you tell me what kind of phenomenon could cause such fictitious nonsense to be so ubiquitously believed and so validated by the media, by politicians, by activist groups.
Uh maybe moral panic isn't the correct term. I'm not sure quite sure how to capture it terminologically the scale of the insanity. So, maybe we need to invent a new term tonight. I don't know.
Uh but here's a suggestion.
Ask your local zoomer if they believe that the world is fundamentally governed by a cabal of pedo sex traffickers cuz I'm told that you are now considered the weird one if you do not instantly agree with that proposition.
Here's what I'll concede, okay, Because it's always nice to concede things up front. Moral panics do often tend to have at least a kernel of truth to them.
It's true that somebody named Jeffrey Epstein did once exist. We can agree on that.
Although he's been turned into this kind of world historic mega-villain character that we're told by the academic literature is necessary to sustain moral panics. But okay, yeah, he did plead guilty to two prostitution offenses in 2008. People have complained that he wasn't punished severely enough. So let's stipulate that his massage-related violations were so heinous that he should have been punished 10 times more severely, okay? So he should have gotten 10 times the jail time, 10 times the civil restitution he was required to pay.
Uh should have been made to register as a sex offender 10 times harder. I'm not sure how that would have worked. But even if we grant that, okay? The proportionality of this whole thing would still be so comically out of whack. There would no be any There would be no rational reason why a deceased financier's massage-related violations from 2002 to 2005, roughly, should have been the basis for this full-blown political and cultural emergency 20-plus years later. The only thing that explains why this happened is the underlying dynamic of moral panic.
Nor should there be really any reason why figures as varied as Noam Chomsky to Steve Bannon to the president of Bard College, for Christ's sake, should have been been ostracized and like denounced as these uh evil doers because they had some kind of relationship with Epstein in the past, even if they themselves were never actually accused of any sexual wrongdoing.
Um And people are deceased to have There are people who are deceased today who have had their reputations shredded, like Bill Richardson, Marvin Minsky, based on nothing but the uncorroborated say-so of one individual, the late Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who's been elevated now into some kind of sacrosanct martyr figure despite a proven track record of manipulation by profit-seeking lawyers and outright confabulations and recantations.
Now, this didn't of course stop her memoir last year, published posthumously, from rocketing to the top of the New York Times bestseller list cuz all the moral panicked, you know, public were eager to purchase it or for their didn't stop there being a bill called, quote, Virginia's Law, that's currently progressing through a Congress that we lovingly abolished the the statute of limitations for trafficking offenses. So, and by the way, you know, just in case we're like of the mind that we're I'm attacking, you know, the most beleaguered people in society here, her estate was just valued at $30 million.
So, uh moral panic can be quite lucrative, apparently.
Now, it's true that the most of the people who have been compelled to issue these groveling apologies for ever associating with Epstein have been, quote, elites uh despite, again, not ever being accused themselves of committing sex crimes.
But, [snorts] you might argue that we should overlook this as a tolerable consequence of the moral panic because everybody dislikes the elites anyway and they have plenty of resources to continue living their comfortable elite lifestyle. I'm not sure how defensible that logic is because really, are you that incapable of putting forward like an evidence-based or rational critique of elite misbehavior?
But, anyway, it's just simply inaccurate to dismiss the repercussions of this moral panic as limited solely to elites.
The Epstein files, you know, nobody looks at like the actual illustrative ones, but they show us outrageous examples of prosecutors and private attorneys slandering totally innocent people as somehow implicated in the most hideous child sex crimes, like, for example, a girl's dance coach in northern Virginia, a grandmother and retired federal employee, a World War Navy veteran who's been dead for 25 years, among others. Or how about a 25-year-old Norwegian man who killed himself earlier this year because his parents were so fervently didn't ask for having some relationship in the past with Jeffrey Epstein. Is that 25-year-old guy who's now dead elite enough that we should just write it off as like, you know, coming with the territory?
Or [snorts] how about this? This is amazing. School children across the United States who had their school picture day canceled or postponed this year because their parents became convinced that the school photos were being funneled into a global pedophile database based on TikTok rumors.
Okay? This happened. Of course, it was like totally bonkers, but you had schools everywhere from Texas, Ohio, New Jersey, Michigan, California, Arizona postpone or cancel their school picture days. Now, I obtained an email through a public records request for one of these concerns that were registered to a school superintendent in Connecticut.
One of these mothers writes, quote, that she's warning that our our children's photos are being stolen and used by pedophiles.
Another mother wrote that school picture day can, quote, no longer be viewed as safe for children because the school photography company is, quote, connected to pedophiles and the global trafficking of children. Again, this is all just completely made up.
So, if you have another term than moral panic to describe it, I'm open to suggestions. And by the way, the school that those mothers were were writing to did terminate the contract with the school photography company.
So, we have the very group that we're told is being so steadfastly defended from moral danger by way of this moral panic, that's actually one of the ancillary victims, children. Because their parents have been driven uh crazy with these outbursts of paranoia and confusion.
Another uh hallmark more of moral panic, right, is the disproportionality of a perceived threat in terms of the media attention it garners.
It would be impossible to quantify this full scale of Epstein-saturated media coverage over the past year. But, when you include social media, it's got to be like mind-bogglingly gargantuan. There was there Take one single video on TikTok, okay, that received 10 million views in just 1 month from February to March of this year, in which the creator gravely narrates to the enraptured viewers this supposedly bombshell new Epstein file revelation that exposes that infants were mass cannibalized.
Again, this is just like the ravings of a mentally ill person that got, you know, transcribed by the FBI, but he doesn't care. Nobody cares.
Cuz this the stuff spreads far and wide so easily, which you think, again, would be another quintessential feature of a moral panic, obliteration of skepticism.
I call it pedo panic peddling, you know, feel free to use your own term. It's gloriously bipartisan. You have Congresswoman Lauren Boebert on Real Time with Bill Maher in February saying that after conducting a very careful investigation of the Epstein files, she concluded that it contained talk of child consumption, with by which she meant consumption of children and infants.
And [snorts] Bill Maher agreed saying he has to apologize to QAnon because they were right that the world is fundamentally governed by a an elite network of pedophile trafficking networks.
Um The crazy manifestations of this moral panic are truly endless. Uh unfortunately, this is not a 4-hour podcast, so I have to like limit myself at a certain point, but you have, you know, rallies being held around the country where the rally-goers are screaming about children being eaten.
You have the comeback of the once scientifically discredited technique of recovered memory.
You have a spate of mass shootings where somebody who could became obsessed with the Epstein files in one month. Another shot up a church in Minneapolis, a bar in North Carolina, a hockey rink in Rhode Island, Mar-a-Lago, the White House Correspondents Dinner. I don't bring that any of these up to blame anybody who made a fuss over the Epstein files as personally responsible for acts of spree violence, but only to say that there are serious consequences when you allow allow a moral panic like this to just be totally unleashed without challenge because there's going to be some percentage of people who are absorbing this crazy talk and maybe have a mentally unstable predisposition and decide that it's up to them to take vengeance into their own hands. So, in conclusion, my proposition is that we should all be probably a bit more morally panicked by the magnitude of the Epstein moral panic. Thank you.
>> Thank you, Michael.
>> [applause] >> Marcella, you get an extra 20 seconds because Michael took an extra 20 seconds. 15 minutes and 20 seconds. Take it away, Marcella.
>> Thank you.
>> I love your pantsuit.
>> Thank you.
It's in honor of Jeffrey Epstein.
>> Um uh um >> [clears throat] >> uh IP. You guys have to do Q&A. Sorry, Marcella. Uh please uh guys, you can boo, you can cheer, but no comments from the audience other than during the Q&A.
Thank you.
>> Okay. Um so, give me just one moment. I want to start my own timer. Well, if you don't if you don't mind.
>> I do mind, Marcella. That guy is in charge of the time.
>> Okay. Well, I will keep my own as well, but I will look at you, sir. Thank you.
>> You got to obey that guy, [snorts] Marcella.
>> Okay. I will obey him. Um all right. So, thank you to Jean Epstein, to Lucas Grund, to the Soho Forum for inviting me into this debate.
As a professor of communication and media studies, I am am truly pleased that there are still forums that value spoken argument and civil discourse.
Um I want to be clear about how I approach this issue. Uh I have spent over 15 years researching and teaching about moral panics as identifiable social science phenomena.
Uh most importantly, the term moral panic is is a stand-in for describing all forms of public outrage.
For reasons I'll detail tonight, invoking the phrase moral panic to describe the Epstein scandal is both incorrect by definition and counterproductive in practice.
So, when I was asked to write an op-ed on this exact question for Ms. Now, I, like many Americans, had only a passing interest in the Epstein scandal.
Thankfully, picking apart the lurid details of this case is entirely separate from the decision in tonight's debate. You're not voting tonight on how much attention the scandal deserves, whether the victims should be called survivors, or if all the claims are true. You're voting tonight on whether the Epstein scandal fits the definition of a moral panic. It does not, and in fact, I don't know if you heard it, but my uh opponent suggested that maybe the moral panic isn't the right term, so should we just go home?
>> Um so, all jokes aside, um many of us are rightly suspicious of mass hysteria, of government overreach, and witch hunts that strip citizens of due process. I am as well.
But, equating public demand for accountability in the Epstein case with moral panic is a fundamental misuse of the term.
So, my case tonight has three parts. Any one of these parts provides you with independent justification for rejecting the resolution.
First, as I've already said, on a purely basis, the Epstein scandal does not meet any principal definition of a moral panic.
Second, as a matter of discursive framing, the outrage we're seeing is understandable and legitimate. It's a public response to reprehensible allegations.
If you reject that premise, that's fine.
I'll offer you some better labels that we might use without misappropriating the idea of moral panic.
Third and finally, I'll show you how the moral panic label itself is being weaponized and transformed in corrosive and perhaps unintended ways that uh are being used to describe the Epstein scandal.
All right, so let's begin with the definition.
Moral panic, as I said, it's not a synonym for public outrage. It's a specific sociological concept. It was coined by Stanley Cohen in 1972.
And it is a model that has been refined through 50 years of research. So, according to that model and and there are multiple models that have slightly different terms, but I'm going to give you a simple one here. A true moral panic requires five key attributes, including one, heightened public concern, two, hostility toward a specific group, three, a real or engineered consensus about the threat, four, volatility, meaning it comes and goes quickly, and five, and most importantly, as my opponent has pointed out, disproportionality, meaning that the public sphere is vastly out of proportion to the actual threat.
Now, crucially, the term moral panic is also designed to identify episodes of manipulative social control.
Moral panics rely on what Stanley Cohen called folk devils.
Folk devils are a marginalized or emerging group that stereotypes by the government or powerful elites as a threat to traditional social values. So, two clear examples from history are the Salem witch trials and the communist red scare of the 1950s. And what both of these share is an elite using panic to manufacture broad social compliance by othering and scapegoating a relatively defenseless rather subgroup.
I have countless other examples I can cite. Crusades against marijuana smokers, as depicted in films like Reefer Madness, the mass burning of comic books due to fears of juvenile delinquency, or my own research, uh which looks at Chinese video gamers that have been demonized as internet addicts and sent to military-style boot camps to cure their {quote} addiction.
Suffice it to say that in all of these cases, the model holds.
By contrast, the Epstein scandal fails to meet the definition of a moral panic in at least three ways.
First, the individuals named in the Epstein files are not a marginalized group, right? They are billionaires, they're politicians, they're royalty, and powerful businessmen.
Moral panics happen when those in power rally public moral condemnation against a tide of change, to place displacing that fear onto groups like women, communists, immigrants, the LGBTQ community, so-called Satanists, even libertarians might be subject to this type of discourse.
Second, the scrutiny on Epstein and his circle doesn't even target rich men as a demographic group at all. It targets specific individuals who actively joined with, aided, enabled, or covered up for Epstein, especially after his 2008 conviction for procuring a minor for prostitution.
So, for example, academics who lost jobs due to the Epstein scandal lost them because they violated their own university's ethical standards by accepting money from Epstein following that 2008 conviction. These individuals are simply facing consequences of their own choices.
Third, true moral panics produce disproportionate legal or social sanctions that strip civil liberties from villainized groups. So, Salem, they executed 20 people and jailed hundreds more for alleged witchcraft. The Red Scare stripped passports while thousands of accused government employees, university lecturers, Hollywood actors lost their jobs. By contrast, in the Epstein case, aside from Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein himself, almost no powerful associate has faced jail time.
So, at this point, I've given you three separate ways in which the Epstein case falls short of meeting any principal definition of moral panic.
Doesn't empower an elite to suppress the marginalized group, it targets individuals based on their own choices rather than their status, and it isn't the prelude to a sweeping reactionary sanction.
So, let's move on to my next main contention that has to do with discursive framing. So, discursive framing is the idea that in describing an issue, the words we choose and the labels we use will shape what an audience concludes independent of the facts themselves. So, two people can hear the same case, the same facts, and walk away with a different understanding depending on which label they hear.
Moral panic is one such label, and tonight I want to show you it's the wrong one on two grounds.
First, there are superior alternative labels, right? Better words to frame this narrative. If we're going to accurately frame the intense public scrutiny that surrounds the Epstein case, we should employ language that fits the facts. So, if you like any of the other these other terms I'm going to give you better, um, then you should vote no on tonight's resolution.
Consider the term media spectacle, for example. This term accurately describes the intense public and media interest in the case, focusing on its transformation into a form of grotesque entertainment, right? Um but it doesn't insinuate that this interest in it is panicked or based on false claims.
Or what about conspiracy theory lightning rod? This accurately isolates the fringe theories, many of which we just heard about, um that are attracted to this scandal without indicting without indicting the entire public reaction, for whom most of this episode is honestly of next to no concern.
So, there are many other labels we might rightly associate with the Epstein scandal, and for the sake of time I'm not going to get into them, but but just think about that alternative label possibility.
Now, the second problem with framing the Epstein scandal as a moral panic is this issue of disproportionality, meaning that the fear exceeds any reasonable threat. Now, in the Epstein case, any reasonable understanding of the facts excludes the moral panic framing. And as an important proviso, I want to reiterate that my winning the argument over Epstein's criminality actually isn't required for me to win your vote.
However, if I convince you, within reason, that the outrage surrounding Epstein is rational, then it isn't a panic, and quite frankly this debate is over.
So, listen to some of these facts. In 2008, Epstein pled guilty to felony solicitation and procuring a minor for prostitution.
In 2019, he was federally indicted for a sex trafficking conspiracy and the trafficking of minors, systematically recruiting girls as young as 14 over many years.
Forensic accounting reveals that between 2003 and 2013, Epstein made over 3.1 million in direct payments to dozens of women, including wire transfers to countries identified as sources for human trafficking.
Epstein's bank ignored what should have been red flags that led to suspicious activity reports. And in fact, in 2023, JP Morgan paid a $290 million settlement to Epstein accusers for its negligence in not flagging that suspicious activity.
Now, beyond that, after Epstein's death, his own estate, run by his lawyer, Darren Indyke, and his accountant, Richard Kahn, both bound by fiduciary duty to administer that estate prudently, voluntarily created the Epstein Victims Compensation Fund.
They brought in Jordana Feldman, administrator of the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, to independently audit and verify individual claims.
Feldman found that more than 150 women out of approximately 225 applicants, meaning they did not accept all of the applicants, were due over $125 million in settlements that she approved. That wasn't a mob, it wasn't the government, it was Epstein's own estate administrators concluding that the claims that women brought forth were credible enough to be worth $125 million.
So, pick apart all of the other details you want. The already decided criminal, civil, and administrative cases are based on evidence, not conjecture. They speak for themselves. If even a fraction of the documented, adjudicated claims here are true, that alone excludes the Epstein scandal from being a moral panic.
Okay, finally, I want to address the idea that this term is being weaponized. Calling something a moral panic is a truly powerful move, right? It tells an audience that someone else's fear is manufactured, it's irrational, and it must be dismissed.
My opponent tonight, Mr. Tracy, argues that what he calls the Epstein industry, by which he means politicians, journalists, lawyers, accusers, it's worth a billion dollars, driven by money and attention-hungry participants.
But honestly, consider the fuller implication of framing the Epstein scandal as a moral panic, as Mr. Tracy asks you to do.
In that framing, my own opponent tonight is part of the very Epstein industry he abhors. He is what moral panic scholars call a moral entrepreneurs, right? I mean, he's writing lots of articles on this and getting a lot of attention.
So, the thing is Sorry, it's true.
>> [laughter] >> So, the thing is at at its core, you're being asked to accept just one conclusion. These women are lying. It's dressed up as skepticism, uh but strip it away and you're honestly left with the oldest move in the book, treating victims' claims of abuse as symptoms of hysteria rather than evidence.
I know that the libertarians in this room rightly despise the idea of individuals being canceled without due process, right? But holding powerful people accountable for voluntary interactions with a convicted sex offender, that's not a witch hunt. And let's not forget, none of the Epstein associates, aside from Ghislaine Maxwell, have even been charged, much let much less stripped of their due process.
So, unlike the marginalized victims of historical panics, the individuals named in these files have vast fortunes to defend themselves. Honestly, if they're innocent, they can clear their names in the media or in a court of law.
So, I will ask you directly, who is silencing whom in this case?
The weaponization of the moral panic label here carries real costs. It delegitimizes real victims by recasting their grievance as hysteria.
It risks impeding the legitimate outcome of due process, encouraging exactly the type of institutional shrug that let Epstein operate for years, and it corrodes the analytic value of moral panic as a tool for social science.
Because if the definition of moral panic can be stretched to mean any story that generates anger, it stops meaning anything, and we lose the ability to name the real thing when it happens again.
So, a moral panic occurs when powerful elites or the state manufacture moral outrage to strip you of your liberties or a specific group of their liberties.
What we have here is the opposite. The public is now demanding that the state stop shielding powerful people who violated the rights of underage girls.
Let's not pretend that demanding answers from million billionaires, politicians, and captured institutions is a panic.
It is moral. It is not a moral panic.
>> [applause] >> Thank you, Marcella.
Uh 5 minutes everybody from you. Uh Michael, we uh yeah, you up show, but you probably want to take the podium. 5 minutes everybody.
>> First of all, I had no idea that I was in fact a beneficiary of the Epstein industry. That's a fascinating. I was referring to, of course, in coining that term the massive settlement vehicles that have become available as a result of Jeffrey Epstein such as through major financial institutions like JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank. Yes, the Epstein victims compensation program, Bank of America has a brand new settlement that was just court-authorized starting in April. And then you have all other kinds of settlements, both known and unknown, that amounts to a billion dollars. I'm not talking about anybody who ever wrote an article on Substack and then like somebody paid $5 to subscribe.
Um But notice what we're asked to do by my opponent. Where's told to just forget about when you whether any of the core claims are fundamentally true as to what the public perception was about the nature of the Epstein scandal because instead we should all hone in on like the precise academic definition of moral panic as told by a handful of books starting in the 1970s. Well, you know, I think that's a little bit of a red herring at the same time, you know, I went back and read some of those books. I know my opponent is familiar with Good and Yehuda in terms of how they conceptualize moral panic. And they say that a moral panic is a scare about a threat or a supposed threat from deviance or folk devils, a category of people who presumably engage in evil practices and are blamed for menacing a society's culture, way of life, and central values.
Concern over, fear of, or hostility toward the folk devil is out of proportion to the actual threat that is claimed. Okay. So, the threat that was claimed was that Epstein was running an international pedophilic sex trafficking operation in which he ensnared legions of prominent people and blackmailed them so that this pedo cabal could fundamentally dictate how societies around the world is governed. Has that been borne out by the evidence? No, it has not. So, we already have to revise down the threat that was purportedly going to be unveiled by a thorough investigation of this Epstein story, but I guess we can just get bogged down in the academic minutia instead. Although, again, the academic literature does actually support Epstein as one. Gooden Gooden Yehuda also say that folk devils are the personification of evil, and child molesters in particular are terrific and instantly recognizable candidates for the role of folk devil.
I don't know. It seems like Jeffrey Epstein has become like the Satan Hitler pedo mega villain of our entire age and maybe until we all perish. So, I think that check that box could be checked.
Now, I'm glad you mentioned civil liberties, right? Because one of the reasons why I've have even bothered focusing on this story to begin with is because of the under-recognized corrosion of civil liberties that the unfettered proliferation of moral panic has entailed. How about the practice that's now, quote, normalized where the only requirement to be designated by the government as a victim of anything is to simply self-declare as such. That is what the Trump DOJ has employed as their criterion for redacting materials in the Epstein files if they simply get an email from a lawyer declaring that somebody was victimized.
You don't think there are any, quote, marginalized people who might end up being further marginalized by the government's burden of proof to designate them as a sex criminal gets so radically lowered? Or how about the abrogation of the non-prosecution agreement that everybody's so freaked out about that Epstein was bound by as a result of the 2008 conviction. The government really can just decide to negate an agreement that it comes to with a defendant that the defendant complied with, satisfied all the conditions of, but then, you know, a decade or more later when some dopey Miami Herald article comes out and everybody thinks that there was some scandal that was covered up, they can just come up with a cockamamie rationale for why they don't even have to be adhered to the non-prosecution agreement. How about the Sixth Amendment being eroded so that purported Epstein victims can testify in court in criminal trials under fake names?
How about this notion that it was a sweetheart deal that Epstein got in 2008? I'm sorry, go ask any marginalized person you'd like who's on the sex offender registry by court dictate if they feel like they're in a sweetheart situation by for life having to report their movements and so forth to these authorities who are always looking to nail them on something and throw them back in prison. It's not required for the object of a moral panic to be quote marginalized in the traditional sense.
That would exclude the satanic panic of the 1980s and '90s, which is also not time limited, so it doesn't have to be volatile in meaning being very brief, because you had middle American classic Americana types who ran daycare centers or even police officers and sheriff's deputies who ended up being accused in mass of having committed the most grotesque rape and trafficking of their in own children in certain cases, thrown into prison by the hundreds, and then years or even decades later finding finally belatedly absolved of those crimes. So, no. Marginalized people or same saying that moral panics can only ever target the marginalized is not an excuse. That would have to mean that anytime there's a sex panic like in the United Kingdom where a literal fabricator accused a former prime minister, a former home secretary of committing sex crimes against children decades before, then that couldn't be a sex panic even though it was predicated on outright fabrications and a slew of insane hysteria, otherwise it would have never happened.
Okay.
Thank you. Um You got You got an extra minute for the uh for the rebuttal uh since Michael took the extra minute. You want to take the podium again? Oh, sure.
>> Okay. So, I I want to begin by just reiterating a few of my key points here.
First of all, Mr. Tracey here seems to want to dispense with the term moral panic as as meaning anything, right? And I think I don't know if he knew what debate he was getting into, but the resolution reads that this is a case of moral panic, right? So, definitions matter. I know that Mr. Tracey values definitions. He cares a lot about the definition of pedophilia and talks a lot about how I'm sorry, but I I've seen the discussions about No, no, no, no, no. Excuse me, but but the idea is that I've seen him debate the idea around pedophilia, whether Jeffrey Epstein qualified as a pedophile or not. So, we can't pick and choose when definitions matter, right? And moral panic's definition does matter.
Um Remember also that there are other words we can use here, right? That other discursive frames that would be worthwhile to consider, like media spectacle, right? And remember how I also argued against the definition of moral panic being stretched because of the risk of weaponization. Now, turning to Mr. Tracey's arguments, he talks about exaggeration, hysteria, false accusations, and so on. And most of his case boils down to whether or not claims in and adjacent to the scandal are true.
And on this notion, I have several responses.
First, these claims are irrelevant to determining whether the Epstein scandal is a moral panic, right? He He argues about the number 1,000 victims being inflated, but how many victims is acceptable, right? His own estate decided to pay out to 150 victims, and they didn't do so just because somebody self-declared as a victim, right?
Jordana Feldman of the 9/11 Victims Fund watched and and reviewed these cases and rejected 75 of the applicants for a payout, right? Um second of all, I will grant the idea that pedophiles are a common subject for moral panics, right? It has been well documented. The satanic panic is an excellent example of a moral panic about child abuse and child sex abuse, but again, these panics were targeting groups, the pedophile, right? This is a pedophile, a very specific sex offender who engaged in abuse of underage women, right? It's not targeting all pedophiles. It's targeting Jeffrey Epstein, and it's targeting people who might have aided and assisted and engaged in this behavior with him, okay?
So, very specific individuals, not Satanists, not pedophiles writ large.
And finally, he makes this big case of the 2008 um you know, sweetheart deal, and he talks about dopey Miami Herald articles.
And I'm sorry, I'm a media scholar.
Julie K. Brown won a Pulitzer Prize citation for her reporting um on the perversion of justice series. I I I would like you to check it out if you haven't already because it's worth a read. And for that matter, it's not just a reporter, but the police chief in Miami, Michael Rider, also felt completely unsatisfied with the outcome at that case, specifically because there were 36 underage victims in that case who were not even told about that plea deal before it happened. That was a violation of the Victims' Crime Rights Act, okay? The Crime Victims' Rights Act, rather.
They He violated their rights in accepting that plea deal and making that plea deal. And some of the people who made that plea deal then went on to serve at the highest levels of our government, right? Alexander Acosta made the plea deal, became Secretary of Labor under Trump.
Currently, we're we're hearing about a new attorney general, right? Who also has been involved in the poorly redacted Epstein files, who's now being considered as Attorney General of the United States. So, there are a lot of issues here that we might get into, um, that simply just don't jive with the kind of information that Mr. Tracy is giving us. He wants us to believe that there's no evidence. There is plenty of evidence in this case. There are victim statements, and these women should be believed. Maybe some of them, even if some of them are exaggerating, even if one or two of them have not told the entire truth, fine. Are you telling me that all of them are lying?
Think about it.
>> [applause] >> Thank you.
Um Uh I I want to I want to begin the Q&A by taking moderator's prerogative to ask just a single question of both sides. Uh as with all so-formed debates, both sides sign off on the precise wording of the debate resolution. And Michael, I do want to remind you that when you signed off, you took time to read Marcella's article op-ed article in which she said it was not a moral panic. But so my little question to you is because I I trust I hope the audience won't get stuck or none of us will get stuck on the idea that this is a debate over semantics rather than a debate over what the Epstein case is really all about. Uh I first wanted to ask you Michael, can we at least would you say that there's a there's at least a 90% if I may invent that invent that number connection between your understanding of what a moral panic is and what you think Marcella's understanding is? Do you have any major quibble? Do you think you mostly agree with her concept of a moral panic?
>> No, I mean I don't agree because again her criteria would have to exclude the satanic panic which she then after the fact said is a great example of a moral panic and yet it did not target any classically marginalized group. Again, you had sheriffs deputies kind of middle America types who were in relatively high socioeconomic stratum who were targeted by basically demented mobs who believed that they were like you know sex torturing children in underground tunnels and like literally went and go to to dig up the ground to see if they could find these sex torture tunnels.
And you know actually this is being replicated in the Epstein thing because now we have the state of New Mexico the New Mexico Department of Justice opening a brand new criminal investigation as of the past few months where they're literally going to the Zorro Ranch and using sonar technology to scan for dead bodies because somebody sent an email to an Albuquerque New Mexico talk radio host in 2019 saying hey, I'll tell you where the bodies are are on Zorro Ranch if you send me some Bitcoin.
So like literally that's the for this criminal investigation in New Mexico.
Now, I I have to just respond to a couple of things that she said. I'm not just inordinately interested in debating the definition of pedophilia on the internet as though it's a fun pastime.
It happens to be legally relevant and also relevant in terms of how the moral panic has been fueled because what happens when you say the word pedophilia? People deactivate their critical faculties and start blithering with rage. Okay? So, moral panic, I mean, you have to read like 12 books even to get an approximate definition of what it is.
And again, I'm arguing that this is a moral panic. I'm just saying there are potentially tenable synonyms that we could also use like, I don't know, mass hysteria, multi-dimensional mega hallucinatory narrative, whatever.
Okay. So, hold on. I got I got cuz she just threw out a bunch of stuff there.
So, the definition of mass moral panic is like not so straightforward. If you want If you want to get into defining pedophilia, you can literally go to the DSM, which is like a clinical handbook for defining certain pathologies, and it gives you the definition, which is illicit sexual attraction to or behavior with prepubescent children. Now, if you dispute that definition, that you're more than welcome to, fine. Second last thing and I'll wrap up, okay? The Epstein Victims Compensation Program, which she cites as like foolproof evidence that like there was some mass vindication of all these claims, have you read the court protocols that approved it? It was expressly non-adversarial and confidential, so there was no downside risk to inflation of the gravity of the purported claims, okay?
And by the way, some of the people who got rejected from it later got settlements from other other settlement vehicles like J.P. Morgan. So, there you go.
>> Um Michael, of course, pedophilia was not in the resolution.
>> It was raised by her just now.
To like do a low blow against me as just like being a guy who loves talking about pedophilia.
>> That wasn't the That wasn't the question I asked you. I asked you about the term moral panic. It seems as though you you you pretty much accept the definition as abstractly, but but you were questioning how it might be applied by citing the example that you did. I think that that's what you said, uh but >> it when you see it, you know, like pornography.
>> Oh, well, oh, oh, well, >> That's my definition.
>> Excuse me. That That that gets me bothered. You're getting semantic on us, but I believe that I believe that you more or less said that you accept the definition, you just question the how it how it would be applied empirically in this case. Uh uh I now want to turn to you, Marcella. Uh do you think that you and Michael part company on the on the concept of moral panic in any crucial way? Uh cuz that would concern me that we're arguing then about about definitions and semantics.
What's your response to that?
>> Well, my response is that I think Michael does seem quite happy to accept other terms in this case. So, I think it does matter. And and I mean, I do think I was really gratified. I'm not just trying to to slander Michael. I was really gratified to hear that he read my article on moral panic. And and I do think that, you know, he says there isn't a simple definition, but there is a simple definition, right? I gave you five criteria for a moral panic. It's very simple.
Um you can Google it. It's easily found.
And if you can argue that the DSM-5, again, an academic text and the American Association of Psychology has a, you know, definition of pedophilia, then, well, fine, stick to that definition. I agree, let's also stick to the definition of moral panic, because that's what we're debating.
>> Okay, thank you. Uh all right.
Uh uh I'm through with my moderator's prerogative. Uh then I now want to declare that uh part of the The we work is that each side uh Michael, Marcella, you get a chance to ask the other a single question. You can exercise that privilege now, or you can exercise that privilege a bit later once we hear questions from the audience. Marcella, is there a question you'd like to put to Michael right now, or do you want to wait to see what if you want to exercise the prerogative later?
>> Um I'll wait.
>> You'll wait. Uh Michael, do you have a question for Marcella now, or might you want to wait?
>> Mhm.
May I also strategically wait maybe like 10 minutes and see what I come up with?
>> Great strategy. Okay. Uh all right. Uh people can line up, and please understand that the gentleman who's holding the mic will continue to hold the mic under your mouth. Uh do not grab the mic from the gentleman.
Okay. Uh Uh first question, and uh if it's addressed to one party or the other, say so. We don't want to know who you are.
Excuse me.
Please audience, uh let's have discussion later.
Uh we don't want to know who you are. We don't want to know what you think. Just what is your question, sir? Go ahead.
>> Yes, this is for both debaters. Um I believe it's been established that proportionality is an important element of a moral panic. Um and to establish proportionality, you have to have a certain baseline of facts. So, I would like both debaters to answer, what is it you believe Jeffrey Epstein did do, particularly in coordination with the people named in the files?
>> Okay, I guess it Well, yeah, so what was the proportion? Okay. Uh I guess Michael wants to step in and be the first one to answer. Go ahead, Michael.
>> Yeah, so my my my opponent said that I'm just flatly declaring that everybody who's ever made an accusation about Jeffrey Epstein is just lying. That's not my position. Okay, there are multiple layers of how things can potentially be embellished or how memories can be distorted that just don't align with a simple declaration or imputation of lying.
However, Epstein himself conceded when he entered his guilty plea in Florida in 2008 that he procured a minor for prostitution. It was a single 17-year-old who told the police and told the grand jury that she consensually engaged in sexual activity with Epstein at age 17 that culminated in one incident of sexual intercourse just before 18th birthday.
That's not me speculating. This is what she told the police. Okay, so that is what was adjudicated in an adversarial criminal process and that Epstein himself conceded that he committed.
Now, I think there there is were others in that one phase from roughly 2002 to 2005 in Palm Beach when he had, you know, a bizarre amount of girls, let's say, or young women ferrying in and out of the house to engage in a massage of varying degrees of sexualization that he did actually engage in. Now, it is the case that there's plenty of evidence that he sought to ensure that the girls coming were 18. That's why the girls were lying amongst themselves to tell him that they were 18 when they asked, not in every single case. I'm not saying he wasn't reckless in going about it. I'm just saying that in terms of the proportion not only the idea that this is now some like explosive all consuming mega narrative about some improper massages in 2004 and 2026 just doesn't stand to reason because, you know why? It became that because of this just presumption that it must have involved him trafficking captive girls to his powerful friends and then blackmailing them and then like pulling the strings on like US foreign policy or or And so doing, there's just zero credible evidence that has emerged from this. My opponent wants to tell us that this is just strictly irrelevant in terms of what whether the moral panic term applies. I would argue if that the whole Epstein narrative is undergirded by such an outlandish amount of pure mythology that doesn't stand up to empirical evaluation, then if that doesn't count as a moral panic, maybe we need to revise the academic literature.
Um Michelle, you're right. You answered the question.
>> Yes, thank you. Um so, yes, disparate proportionality matters and um what I would say here is that we have a case of a convicted sex offender who systematically over number of years uh recruited, groomed underage girls for sexual activity, often illegally, non-consensually.
Um minors can't legally consent, remember? Uh I would also like to bring up the fact that again, you know, according to the forensic accounting um that was the the review that was done, he was making payments to, you know, women in multiple countries that were flagged as hotspots for illegal sex trafficking. Now, it's not my job. I'm not a lawyer. I don't know everything about this case. It's not my job to sort of like litigate the details of this case. But, what it tells me is there is a lot of credible evidence, not just victims' testimony, um and it needs to be considered. And it's not a moral panic to say that we should actually allow due process to play out here.
>> Next question.
>> My question is for Marsala, is that your name? I want to make sure I get it right. Okay.
Why wouldn't it be declaring people or or making people into folk devils when politicians, pundits, journalists, et cetera go beyond targeting just just Jeffrey Epstein and label a group they've designated as elites. They designate them pedophiles as such and anybody who's skeptical of the Epstein narrative as pedophile protectors. Why aren't those folk devils?
>> Well, it's a good question. I would say that they're not folk devils for a number of reasons. First of all, they still have the ability to defend themselves, to you know, clear their name. They're just simply under suspicion of guilt and fine. But again, they're not being targeted as a a group, right? Unless we say people who engaged in this sort of conspiracy with Epstein, right? They're not being targeted as a group. In the satanic panic, you know, my uh you know, opponent um Mr. Tracey argued that uh there was no marginalized group, but Satanists, sorry, it's a marginalized group, right? Anybody who engages in sort of a non-traditional religion is a marginalized group. Um you know, so I think that we are dealing with this sort of need to talk about this case beyond the specifics of it. And you know, there are a lot of fringe theories out there, but guess what? That's the internet. That's the state of media today. Are we going to call every sort of time that the internet gets like worked up with conspiracy theories and moral panic? I don't think so.
>> Can I ask my question now?
>> Well, well, yes.
My format always is that the other side gets to comment on the question as well.
Take it away, Michael.
>> I just think it's amazing that we are being repeatedly told that there's no need to litigate the details of the Epstein case. Like it's all just irrelevant as to whether as as to whether like the core tenets of it are true. You say we should You say it's it's not for us in terms of the scope of this debate to get to bog down in litigating the specific details.
Now now why is that? I mean, that's crazy. Like if I was arguing that something like is so grievous that it should consume such outsized societal consternation, result in all these legislative changes and cultural changes in cultural mores and this oversaturated media coverage, which yeah, I mean, the internet is now a factor in how moral panics get propelled into existence.
That would seem to be pretty consistent with the academic literature that we love invoking, right? So that's the nature of how people consume news today.
And so when social media is telling them that like Eyes Wide Shut, the movie has been proven true. I'm serious. Like you can go on YouTube and find videos of these like clowns with millions and millions of views where they're saying, "Look, because I like misread some snippet of some email that I saw on Twitter X or TikTok or some place or Reddit, that means that our like worst fears about a cabal of elite pedophiles running things has been vindicated."
It's just not true. It's not supported by the evidence. You don't seem to want to engage on that. You think it's sort of irrelevant to consider whether the specifics of what has always been alleged and why this moral panic arose in the first place are actually valid. I mean, if this again, this didn't come about as a newly live issue in July of 2025 because everybody thought that we needed to have a big reckoning over Jeffrey Epstein's improper massages 20 years before. It was because of this whole network that we was positive must exist that had been covered up whereby he sent out all these enslaved underage women to his friends and powerful acquaintances and blackmailed them.
Again, that was that's all been virtually as conclusively disproven as it possibly could be, not by my own speculation or self-interest, but because like I have spent spent like an unhealthy amount of time reading the actual Epstein files.
And, you know, that's just the reality. So, I'm I'm amazed that you could be so blasé about the relevance or not of the actual specifics of why Jeffrey Epstein has become a folk villain. Like that guy said, I say he's like a mega villain Satan Hitler pedo villain. Next question.
>> Can I respond?
>> Um okay, yes.
>> [laughter] >> Okay. Um I would just like to say that I do think that we need to get into the details of this case, but not we specifically, right? If we wanted to have that debate, you should have invited two lawyers here who are like involved in the case. It's not my job to litigate this case, right? It belongs in a court of law, and my argument is simply that what we're seeing is a demand for a due process to play out, right? Victims want their day in court.
They were denied that when Epstein died, right? And beyond that there have been settlements that show guilt, okay? That that there have been these settlements where JP Morgan admitted that, you know, they were in the wrong for not flagging suspicious activity reports for what Epstein was doing with his bank accounts. Um that his own estate paid out 125 million to 150 women. Okay? So, there is evidence here, and I just don't think Michael wants to accept that evidence.
>> Do you want to comment, Michael, or >> Uh no.
>> First of all, victims did get their day in court, like literally. After Epstein died, Judge Richard M. Berman held an unprecedented hearing in this here in the Southern District of New York, where anybody and everybody was able to just funnel right in and make any claim they wanted to about Epstein, a deceased defendant at that point, a purported victimization of them. Some of those claims were subsequently proven to have just been have to been totally made up.
So, talk about due process. I don't see a whole lot of concern about due process. Yes, he was deceased at that point, but if it gets just quote normalized for a judges to provide a forum of their courtroom for anybody to just make any outlandish claim they want, and that's like giving the victims a day in court, I mean, that's preposterous. And by the way, these victims have been so lavishly compensated, it's absurd. And I mean purported victims, okay? Because the their claims have not been adjudicated in any properly adversarial process. The Epstein victims compensation program was expressly structured to be non-adversarial, meaning that their claims were not meaningfully interrogated by Jordana Feldman or for us the subsequent mediator they appointed for the JPMorgan settlement, who I just reported recently let a like a outright fraudulent claim claimant be awarded $2.5 million, and like she literally made it up, and that was determined by a federal judge who was appointed by Joe Biden, okay?
So, I mean, you're just I I I I could see why maybe you're not that interested in litigating the details because the detail the details actually don't align with your pro moral panic position. Next question.
>> All right. My question is to both speakers, which I think will be relevant and pertinent to answering the debate resolution.
Is President Trump and former President Clinton implicated in any criminality or moral wrongdoing in the whole Epstein scandal?
>> I guess that's a question for you.
>> I mean, I'm not going to speculate on that because honestly, it isn't relevant to the resolution that this is a moral panic, right? I mean, there can be many fallacious claims, there can be true claims, right? There can be um there just needs to be a body of evidence that we feel is legitimate enough to say that this isn't totally panicked, right? But beyond that, there needs to be something else, right? One of the Remember that one of the things I talked about with moral panics was the outcomes of them.
That the outcomes result in people being executed. They result in people going to jail. They result in people having their passports and their civil liberties stripped. I'm sorry, but what's happened here with Trump and Clinton and anybody else other than some rumors? The Trump is still president, okay? So, there there are no big horrible outcomes for these individuals. They can defend themselves.
>> Uh any crowd coming from you?
>> Well, of course that question is relevant to the proposition. What? You don't think that the presumed complicity of Bill Clinton and Donald Trump in heinous child sex crimes might have been a relevant factor in terms of why people got so enraptured by this story?
That's just like something we can just brush aside now? And we don't have to speculate. Let's be evidence-based.
Okay, there is an enormous quantity of evidence now available for anybody who is so moved to peruse at their leisure by locking on to doj.gov.
And there is no credible evidence whatsoever that either Bill Clinton I'm going to be bipartisan about this gloriously that either Bill Clinton or Donald Trump engaged in child sex criminality, okay? Now, of course their political opponents love to just screech and holler about how they don't like them, so they must have engaged in like pedo trafficking.
But, that's just like partisan nonsense.
So, they said yeah, again that you could just write that off because of we we have to like stay like really hardcore focused on this good and Yehuda definition or Stanley Cohen definition or whatever his name was from like 1973.
I mean, you're just brushing off the core tenets of how this became the all-consuming political, moral, and legal, and media controversy that it became So, yeah, if there's no credible grounds to think that either of those two, or Bill Gates, or Prince Andrew, or name your other like quote elite mega villain.
>> to them.
>> way, you're too flipping about the repercussions for some of these people.
I would like to introduce you to a woman who emailed Jeffrey Epstein a few times in like 2009, 2010 over some, you know, business deal that they never went forward with. And because then once she was found to be in the quote files, otherwise had no public notoriety, right? Then she was told that she could no longer chaperone her children on school trips because she was a danger to children. Okay? So, maybe some of the marquee names like you might just be comfortable assuming face no real consequences for their association with this stuff, but like it goes a little deeper. Next question.
>> Hi, my question is about how a lot of the social response has come from the appearance of repeated obstructing, redacting, and obfuscating the Epstein files by the Trump administration. Do you agree that obfuscation occurred, and if so, what is a proportional social reaction to that lack of transparency when during the last Trump campaign transparency was repeatedly promised?
>> Um uh uh let let me let you take that, Michael, first, yeah.
>> Well, some of it has to do with the novelty of the Epstein files transparency act, which is literally novel in American history, meaning there's never been a case where Congress passed a statute and the president signed a measure that required just the mass disclosure of the investigatory files undergirding a an investigation that otherwise was deemed to have no grounds to proceed, or found no predicate for charging anyone further. So, I've been I was the first to warn in advance of the Epstein files being disclosed that based on the convoluted criteria that they were employing, where they were just taking direction from these profit-seeking victims' lawyers, quote unquote, like, you know, David Boies, Bradley Edwards, et al., about how vast expanses of material had to be redacted to protect the victims even if some of these alleged victims had already voluntarily come out in public meaning written books, appeared in the media, uh other otherwise unveiled their identities. Even then we were had to have their identifying information redacted in the files according to what the victims' lawyers were demanding and what the Trump DOJ agreed to employ as their criteria for what how to impose redactions. So it created a whole mess that I agree was very haphazard. Now and I think if you look at like the the uh superfluous redactions by and large it seems to have been because they were overloaded meaning at the DOJ with the this redaction process where like people were being held in in office held in held in like held over Christmas to uh to redact Epstein files and like they screwed a bunch of stuff up. Now could there be a case here and there where maybe something was done for a more nefarious purpose like to redact something that pertained to Donald Trump? Yeah, possibly. And if those incidents can be uh corroborated then yeah, there should be some price to be paid. But there really is no basis for assuming based on anything that I've seen that there's been a systematic effort to cover up anything that had to do with Trump or any other high-profile uh figure except for maybe like uh a marginal case here and there.
>> Any comment on that?
>> Uh yeah, I would say that the Epstein Files Transparency Act um came also in response to the sweetheart deal that Epstein got in 2008, right? And the non-prosecution agreement, right? And and the fact that the plea deal that he got in 2008 violated the Crime Victims' Rights Act, right? So you know, they failed to notify the victims and so what we had was a situation where people felt that justice wasn't being done, that victims' rights were being violated. Um and I might add that there are historical precedents for releasing of files. The JFK Records Collection Act 1992, the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act 1998. Right, there are cases in which Congress decides that, you know, justice isn't being served and it's not being served properly and so they need to release files so that people can examine the case evidence.
>> Um and this would clearly apply to that Okay, at this point Okay, at this point though, uh uh you said you want to strategically wait, Michael, and uh Marcella, perhaps too. Do you want to put a question to Marcella?
>> Uh sure.
Can I just preface that with like a like a 30-second comment?
>> Yes.
>> Okay. So, the Crime Victims' Rights Act thing that she cites, first of all, that was a law and order bill that is civil liberty shredding that had been passed in 2004 under George W. Bush, championed by Dianne Feinstein and Jon Kyl. Okay?
And in any event, it was found on appeal that the failure to supposedly sufficiently notify government-designated victims prior to Jeffrey Epstein's entry of the guilty plea plea in June of 2008 did not violate the Crime Victims' Rights Act.
So, maybe that's a detail we should litigate. Um and uh >> What's your question?
>> So, here's my question. Okay, so is is this a detail you find pertinent or should we also decline to litigate it?
The Epstein mythology, which I get I grant is a bit of a derogatory way of putting it, but nonetheless, I think I can support it empirically. The Epstein mythology largely stems from one particular individual, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who's now deceased, who in December of 2014 had a court motion filed on her behalf in which she alleged that there was a sprawling international child sex trafficking operation that was enforced by blackmail that ensnared legions of prominent people. As I mentioned before, she now has a lavish estate of $30 million it's been valued at in Australia that there's pure like errors are fighting over and she had a best-selling book that rocketed to the top of the Amazon charts New York Times last year and like one best British book award. I mean it's insane. Nobody Nobody could refute it. So I'm saying do you think that the fact that she recanted her allegations against Alan Dershowitz which she repeated ad nauseam for 8 years including under in depositions and affidavits in which she graphically described her purported victimization by him in terms of in described his like ejaculation habits and his body, recanted against John Luke Brunel, recanted against a Harvard professor Steven Kosslyn. Like is that just irrelevant in terms of like whether we can accurately judge the proportionality of the public outrage around this this stuff or should we just ignore it?
>> You heard the question.
>> All right. Well, um I think that again, you know, the credibility of a single victim in this case is isn't something that we necessarily need to litigate here. I think I think that we have 150 victims who've received settlements.
I think that we have, you know, 36 victims who in 2008 were part of the original Miami case against Epstein.
Right? So there are plenty of people and we don't need to pick apart the stories of one person who may or may not have been pressured by Epstein Dershowitz, multiple other individuals. I mean again, these people had vast resources.
Police Chief Michael Rider talks about how he feels that somebody from Epstein's camp moved in next door to him and Epstein was calling the police department to try to sort of like bribe them with stuff. He had vast financial resources, so does Alan Dershowitz, right? So let's not get bogged down in the details here. All you need to consider here is whether or not there are there is enough evidence to say, yes, this is something that people are rightfully concerned about, right? And I would also add to that that we all know we live in an attention economy, right?
We live in a situation where the media is constantly spinning, you know, information. And from what I've seen, you know, a lot of the fringe conspiracy theories that, you know, seem to be so interesting to Mr. Tracy, they never are showing up in the major media outlets.
These are on the internet where conspiracy theory thrives, right? The fact that people are speculating doesn't mean that there's a moral panic.
Remember, consensus here is important.
And as far as I can tell, there's no consensus about all of these crazy fringe theories. There's just the consensus that Jeffrey Epstein was a sex offender, that he specifically seriously ta- serially targeted underage women, and did so with his vast financial resources.
>> a question to put to Marcella, or do you want to defer that? Uh No question, but you wanted to defer.
Next question.
>> All right. This question is Professor Marcella. Um it seems that you're correct that the inner cabal that may have been involved here, that very little um negativity has fall fallen upon them. However, um Mr. Tracy did detail that there were quite a number of persons on the periphery who through like loose association have been driven to suicide or caused some trouble.
>> Close to the mic again.
>> Oh, sorry.
So, does the um nonexistence of an identifiable subgroup enough to break the definition for moral panic, or does the existence of all of the uh this sort of negativity that's fallen upon persons on the periphery uh not count as >> What about the people on the periphery?
Okay. Go ahead. Go ahead, Marcella.
>> Yeah. Well, remember that I gave you a number of reasons why it didn't meet the definition of a moral panic, and it wasn't just the lack of existence of a group, right? Um but, yeah, sure, the people on the periphery matter.
Everybody matters. There are also victims of Jeffrey Epstein who have died by suicide, right? They matter. There is fallout in this case, and there's fallout, you know, on both sides, you know, of the accuser and the victim side, sure, right? Again, that's not the question we're debating, whether it's like worth it or not. We're debating whether it's a moral panic, and it just isn't because there's just too much reason to believe that something pretty terrible happened, and that it is justified that this is justified, right?
This This investigation into Epstein and his associates is simply people wanting answers when they haven't gotten answers, right? And And again, you know, as you pointed out yourself, one of my arguments here is that moral panics end with specific kind of social or legal sanctions for the group that's targeted. All right, now, pedophiles as a group face legal sanctions, right? Because I think that Mr. Tracey is absolutely right in pointing out that the child safety regime has upped its ante over a number of decades, right? But we are not talking about pedophiles writ large, we are talking about Jeffrey Epstein and Jeffrey Epstein's associates who have engaged in criminal behavior.
>> Uh coming from you.
>> Okay, so so which of Jeffrey Epstein's associates engaged in criminal behavior?
You know, that's just something that gets thrown out there, and you don't have to actually substantiate it. Yes, Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted, but aside from her, who is my opponent alleging has engaged in criminal behavior because there was extensive investigation, including on totally spurious ginned-up grounds against anybody that people in the Southern District of New York or the New York District Attorney's office could conceivably charge with any crime under the sun, and they came up empty. Now, she accused me of fixating >> I I would like to respond. That was like a direct attack on my argument. So, could I respond?
>> Let me just finish. Let me finish it, you see.
>> She accused me of fixating on fringe theories, right, that the media would never countenance as in any way legitimate. I'm sorry, it's not a fringe theory that there was a supposed Epstein client list. That's kind of why this exploded into a new political controversy in the summer of 2025, right? You could see this everywhere.
And also, I was if when the Epstein files were released en masse in February, it wasn't a fringe idea that the way to go about looking, you know, researching >> the Epstein files methodologically was to type the word pizza into the DOJ search bar, okay, and then just decode the references to pizza as indicating some kind of child sex enslavement, okay? Look at the top of the podcast charts in the United States, and like that's what they were all into. So, you can poopoo it as irrelevant, but I'm not even necessarily too invested in single-mindedly looking at the quote fringe theories. The core theories fall apart upon the barest inspection in terms of this, again, um huge hugely expansive child sex trafficking ring that everybody was assumed must exist because they just mindlessly were vegetating in front of Netflix or or podcasts or Hulu or any of of any other of the endless pop cultural entries on this story that just have not panned out whatsoever.
>> You wanted to You wanted to comment.
>> I I did want to comment because I think there was a question in there for me and I am not to make it clear alleging that anyone beyond Epstein and maybe Ghislaine Maxwell because after all she's been convicted committed crimes, right? I'm just saying that there's enough evidence to ask questions and that's what due process is and that's what the Epstein files transparency pact is about is about allowing people to like ask questions of those people who have associated with Epstein for years, right? So I'm not alleging it. Mr. Tracy, however, is alleging a lot of things about a lot of people who lied, who made things up. I'm not making those allegations. I'm simply saying we need to let this play out um in a court of law that we need to give victims the chance to, you know, make their claims and people the chance to investigate it. That's all I'm claiming.
I'm not trying to litigate the information. And the fact of the matter is, again, this isn't a moral panic.
>> Okay, let things play out. Investigate away. Who's stopping you? So you could just vaguely allege that somebody some associate of Epstein's must have committed a crime and we can just like continue asking questions about it ad nauseam as all like millions of files are now available that could in theory provide the evidentiary basis for your ascription of some kind >> Who did I point a finger at?
>> You didn't, that's the point. You just well alleged abstractly so you never have to justify anything that you assert.
>> No, no, no. I'm I'm just basing my argument on the already sort of adjudicated claims and the settlements that have been made. That's the only thing that I'm basing >> you could just allege like a witch's evil spell have like contaminated everybody in her vicinity but you never really have to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt. I don't know, it seems like a parallel.
>> Okay.
>> I have to declare that uh we're drawing to the end of our Q&A and so I I have to change the format. Each person ask a question and then we'll see if that can be covered in the summary. So, what what first what is your question, sir? And then we'll have to further answer.
What's your question?
>> Uh sure, my question is for Michael. Um in your investigation and your review of the Epstein files where they spied the Department of Justice, um would you agree that some of the photographic evidence depicts a pretty unambiguous caricature of children who are prepubescent?
>> Some of them were prepubescent. You're going to have to answer that later. Next question.
>> Uh Michael, uh to what extent do you believe that um QAnon played a role in the Epstein moral panic before the Julie K. Brown article? And Marcella, do you at least think that QAnon was moral panic?
>> Um and next question.
>> Sorry. Hi, mine's a little bit longer, but one thing I want to question is how you uh for Tracy specifically, is how you use >> question, my dear. Only one.
>> Yes. Yeah. How you use the terms minor, underage, and prepubescent in as opposed as you know, concerning your definition pretty interchangeably. Even if we zoom out and pretend there was only one singular person involved in this whole thing, what is the appropriate level of panic when we see a bunch of elite authority figures be at the minimum bystanders for a man that you spent a lot of time saying had consensual sex with a 17-year-old when under any other definition that would be statutory rape?
>> Uh next question.
>> Michael, you mentioned a case where uh picture day was canceled.
>> him or >> Excuse me, sorry. Um you mentioned a case where picture day was canceled.
Does that have some connection to Epstein? You didn't mention one, but you you you you brought it up.
>> Uh next question.
>> Okay. Um oh, sorry. This question is for Professor Marcella. Um I just want to know if in some way are you engaging in a moral panic argument here by saying that guilt by association itself um makes somebody um guilty. You said all these elites are just guilty by association. They can defend themselves online. They can But many people have lost their jobs. And you also uh sort of insinuated that Michael's interest in this is questionable and he's so worried about the definition of pedophilia. And you also said, "Well, maybe one or two of the women are lying and the facts don't matter."
That in itself is is a feature of many moral panics.
>> Okay. All right, thank you. All right, I'm I'm going to Okay, I'm going to give um I since since we're able to short-circuit the questions a little bit, I'm going to give each side an extended period of 5 minutes of summary.
For you, Michael, you want to take the podium for your 5 minutes.
5 minutes. Wow, what a hoot.
>> Okay, I hope I can remember all the questions that were asked.
The school photography thing, if I didn't make clear what the connection was with Epstein, it was that rumors exploded on TikTok alleging that one of the major school photography companies called Lifetouch was somehow found in the Epstein files by way of some um you know, three steps removed connection to like the private equity corporate parent that was run by Leon Black, right? So, therefore, Lifetouch was a active danger to the children whose photographs were being taken because the parents assumed thing thing based on TikTok that the photos were going to be funneled into a giant international pedophile database. So, yeah, that's the Epstein connection. I would think that's probably not a totally warranted conclusion to have drawn. And yet, the schools across the country did cancel or postpone their school picture day. So, I don't know. I mean, again, moral panic seems like it would probably be apt to capture whatever the hell that was.
Um in terms of the uh the 17-year-old who I'm not the one claiming that she consented to anything. I am quoting her own police interview with Detective Joe Recarey, okay? In October of 2005, when she's asked to describe her interactions with Epstein, and she herself describes them as consensual. Now, of course, that wouldn't therefore mean that for Epstein to have engaged in sexual contact with this person at age 17 was statutorily unlawful. Yes, it was, which is why he ultimately did plead guilty to procuring a felony, procuring person under 18 in relation to that person, despite her not having alleged, at least in her own words, that she was in any way significantly victimized. And why do I even bring that up? Again, not because I'm really that uh fanatical about like going, you know, the age of consent or the ins and outs of like, you know, what sexual contact is warranted between like, you know, 17 versus 18-year-olds, okay? No, it's because of the proportionality issue, right? Because if if that is the core of what Epstein was found to be criminally culpable for in terms of the only set of charges that were ever adjudicated adjudicated to completion, then again, that's something that I think warrants bearing in mind when the whole Epstein narrative gets extrapolated out to such monumental proportions in terms of what we're all supposed to be so morally panicked by.
Now, uh there were other questions, the pre-pubescent uh photo The guy said like a caricature of a pre-pubescent. I'm not sure what you're referring to. You mean like an art piece or something? Uh look, I mean uh Epstein definitely did have some strange art. I mean, I think we're like in in lower Manhattan now, so like having strange If like everybody who had strange art like in like within a quarter of a mile of here was like therefore assumed guilty of something rancid, then I don't know, they might have to vacate full blocks.
Um so, but but I think the more relevant issue is that no, the Epstein files do not contain a shred of evidence, whether visual uh audio um or uh documentary, you know, written, that suggests that there was ever any prepubescent child, okay, which okay, like look, I'm not running around like proclaiming that the DSM is like something that we all have to abide by like day-to-day and like, you know, we have to be like super concerned like, you know, in between, you know, lunch and dinner between like what the precise clinical definition of pedophilia is, but like I don't know. Concept creep is like one another I would argue moral panic in which like some some concept that is like bound to some concrete definition gets expanded to the point where now we have adults, okay, who secured uh lavish settlements from the Epstein victim compensation program and these other settlements.
Uh these aren't beleaguered victims, okay?
These were in many cases adult women in their 20s who voluntarily chose to go on like a luxury vacation to the Caribbean.
Seriously, and uh never made any claim of any kind of wrongful conduct for 20 years, and then all of a sudden they're told by lawyers that they can recast their purported experiences as trafficking, and boom, JP Morgan will give them millions of dollars tax-free. I'd probably do it if I had gone on the luxury vacation.
So, now but but but that gets cited to justify the uncontrolled proliferation of what at bottom was a pedophile uh panic, right? A a panic about the supposed unpunished victimization of children, vulnerable children, and they use these inflated statistics that my opponent seems to suggest are immaterial to create the this false public impression that the scale of child victims is so massive that we should deactivate our critical faculties and just start screaming for some something vaguely called accountability uh at wrongdoers who we can't say what precisely they did. We just like know deep in our hearts it must have happened. Like we even though there are millions of files now in the public domain that we could like theoretically review and find a basis for our dramatic claims, but we don't want to because we love just kind of saying comfortably in this moral panic position, and we can like use it against our political enemies deviously and just like let the party keep going.
>> Thank you. Okay, Michelle, you have 5 minutes to summarize or address the questions or do both.
>> Okay, so I don't think I can address all those questions that were fired at us in the last round there. I'll say a couple quick things. QAnon I would say is a fringe conspiracy theory, right? Because there was no consensus around it. We need consensus. We had some folks who agreed, but the vast majority of Americans were not buying QAnon, okay?
Um and as for guilt by association, I absolutely am not advocating for guilt by association, right? I I I'm not pointing the finger at anybody here except for Epstein and maybe Ghislaine Maxwell who's already been put in prison. Now, in preparing for this debate, right? I was perusing the Reason magazine archives, and I found this collection of content labeled moral panic. And among that uh collection was a segment where Robbie Soave told a story about his colleague Christian Britschgi who had allegedly eaten too many hot dogs, and so he tried to help his friend, um and he called a doctor, and the doctor happened to be named Jeffrey Epstein.
But Robbie realized belatedly that he'd contacted the bad Epstein rather than the good doctor, right? Now, it's a funny case of mistaken identity, and I'm sure our host Gene Epstein maybe has his own tales to tell. Um but the larger implication of the story is the idea that the public is taking things too far. It's pointing fingers at any and every public figure named in the Epstein files. And let me just be clear.
Um this is actually a massive exaggeration. Are celebrities and politicians going to jail over simple mistaken identity or, you know, casual association? No, right? Maybe like they face some scrutiny, but I don't think anybody's like knocking on Katie Couric's door and being like, "You're in the Epstein files, right?" Um so, uh the list of the names in those files is endless, and the vast majority of people are going about their lives entirely unbothered. And for the few who are under intense scrutiny, they again have the opportunity to clear their names in the media or a court of law. Rumors and public scrutiny do not equal a violation of due process, nor do they equal a moral panic. Secondly, remember that there are legitimate concerning moral panics today. In the, you know, Reason archives, again, you can find genuine examples of what I would call some misguided child safe safety regulation that infringes on freedom of expression and civil liberties, right? That um changes the definition of Section 230.
Um lots of things that I don't have time to get into, but I'd love to talk about with you afterwards. Okay? Um that is problematic. By definition, right? A moral panic is a sociological term. So, we do need to worry with this one about concept creep, just as Mr. Tracy worries about concept creep with pedophilia.
Okay? Um so, I mean, he just said it. He just said it. Um You know, it's a sociological term.
>> I'm worrying about it.
>> It refers to efforts by an elite um to manufacture public fear of change, and it leads to social or legal sanctions on a specific group or minority, and it strips them of civil liberties. Right?
So, when you decide how to vote tonight, ask yourself three questions. Does the Epstein scandal actually fit the definition of a moral panic? If it doesn't, vote no.
Are there better words to describe this?
Again, I have suggested some. Media spectacle.
I think Mr. Tracey likes the term narrative inflation. Fine. Again, these terms are better suited to an attention economy that has this kind of tendency to blow a lot of things out of proportion, okay? So, if you like other words better than moral panic, vote no.
Now, finally, who benefits from weaponizing this term? Right? Who's Who stands to gain from this? As a former editor of the New York Review of Books wrote in 2023, "There's a preemptive strike quality to contemporary accusations of moral panic. The goal in exaggerating and distorting the opposition's concerns is to nip them in the bud by caricaturing anyone who takes issue as some kind of raving fanatic." I mean, this sounds kind of like what's been happening today, right? So, if you want to avoid a world that demonizes anybody who accuses Epstein and casts Epstein and his associates as victims, right? Do you want to engage in what some social scientists called DARVO, deny, attack, and reverse victim and accuser?
If you don't want to do that, then vote no tonight. So, I'm going to offer a final thought. Those who weaponize moral panic are crying wolf, right?
Journalists like Mr. Tracey who use the term to defend figures like Epstein risk inviting a world in which lawmakers and the public stop listening when you invoke the term to fight real abuses of government power. So, don't be caught crying wolf. Vote no.
>> Thank you.
>> [applause] >> All right. Um Lucas, please open the voting. Please vote yes, no, or undecided on the resolution. I have in my hand the silver form Tootsie Roll that goes to the winner of the Oxford-style debate. Uh the Jeffrey Epstein uh scandal has been a case of moral panic.
Yes, no, or undecided. Uh while you're deliberating, I want to remind you about our after-party. Both debaters are attending. It's at 55 Great Jones Street. The second buzzer from the bottom will have the infamous name of Epstein on it. So, press the second buzzer from the bottom. I think you'll get there before I get there because I do tend to hobble a bit. Uh Marcella, you've been to that uh apartment. So, follow Marcella just in case you get lost. It's uptown.
It's actually 3rd Street, and it's one flight up. And both debaters will be there for you to collar them. Uh I also want to announce that in keeping, of course, with our monthly schedule, where in August we will have a debate uh in which someone will defend a very provocative uh resolution about gun control laws. Uh in September, we're we're having a debate about Trump's tariffs in which another provocative resolution will be defended. In October, we're having a debate about Mayor Mondani's housing policies, and we're already selling a lot of tickets to that one even though we've barely advertised it. But if you go on the show or forum.org uh and of course first hit the donate button, we can use your your money. But secondly, just look at the coming events. All three of those debates for August, September, and October are on sale right now. Uh and again, uh the resolution is now being uh voted on and I'm going to see if I've got the results that came in. It looks as though they have not yet come in. Uh is that uh correct? All right, you guys are still voting. I'm looking at my text. Uh the uh again, both sides agreed on the wording of the resolution. I hope that your voting does not get bogged down into the question of the semantics of moral panic. I hope that you've decided that the concept of moral panic that each side had is reasonably overlapping so that we can speak about empirically about the case of Jeffrey Epstein. Uh uh uh we uh we are of course also sell uh tickets to the after-party for all three of those subsequent debates. Uh and uh we will have we will be shortly looking at a potential debate in November that will be off off-campus. Uh and it will be about uh the uh the Iran war. Uh whether the Iran war is going on then or not, we will still believe that it's fodder for debate. I now see uh that the uh the vote has come in.
Uh drum roll, please.
Uh the yes vote the yes vote went from uh 25 35% to 44%.
It picked up eight percentage points.
That's the number to beat. The no vote went from 24 to 45. It picked up 21 percentage points. Therefore, the no vote had it and the tissue roll goes to this side.
>> [applause] >> Thank you to both debaters.
Related Videos
2:26
Sociology
Children found neglected, malnourished in Nashville homeless camp
Fox17Nashville
1K views•2025-03-19
37:29
Sociology
Race Still Matters | Santiba Campbell
ElonTLT
104 views•2019-03-01
31:06
Sociology
Opening session | Disability—Social Protection—Inclusion: Dialogue for Change
socialprotectionorg
155 views•2022-04-15
24:29
Sociology
Domestic Violence in Utah
UtahStories
113 views•2023-08-18
4:12
Sociology
What is disability at work?
fnegemedias8982
104 views•2025-10-23
0:44
Sociology
Povertys Impact On Childhood Choices
ItsMoreThanJustPovertyPodcast
902 views•2026-04-25
1:40
Sociology
Islamofobia meningkat di Australia sejak 7 Oktober 2023
astroawani
258 views•2025-09-12
1:00:00
Sociology
Millennials, Parents and Grandparents: Family Transmission of Religion (and Non-Religion)
oregonstatehealth
520 views•2015-05-27
Trending
9:05
Artificial Intelligence
2.4 BILLION Records Got Leaked...
DeepHumor
15K views•2026-07-22
13:25
Business
Playstation NO DISC/NO BUY Fight Is Over...
DavidJaffeGames
4K views•2026-07-23
19:32
Business
Should I buy a Sawmill?
essentialcraftsman
29K views•2026-07-22
16:52
Anthropology
Americans Confused in Australia for 17 Minutes Straight
IWrocker
17K views•2026-07-23