In some of the worst corners of the Internet, the recent revelations about billionaire sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein have been greeted as something they are not: vindication. The former denizens of conspiratorial right-wing internet forums like 4Chan, 8Chan, and 8Kun where the QAnon conspiracy subculture first burst into life have taken the recent release of files related to Epstein as proof that everything they once raved about is true. The problem? They’re wrong.
As someone who spent too many years of my life following, studying, and chronicling the evolution of the QAnon subculture – from its nascent days as a half-formed revenge fantasy known as The Storm, largely relegated to weird forums, to the day it inspired the storming of the United States Capitol before diffusing throughout society – I feel qualified to say that recent revelations about Jeffrey Epstein do not prove QAnon. They disprove it.
To those only familiar with the basic, broad-stroke outlines of the arcane and intricate conspiracy theory, it’s easy to understand how the Epstein files appear to give a patina of credibility to Q: global elites were, in fact, engaged in child sex trafficking (something I’m not sure anyone ever actually doubted, to be clear). When boiled down to that un-nuanced residue, the reality shown in Jeffrey Epstein’s emails sounds quite similar. But to understand QAnon as a conspiracy theory about global elites engaging in sex trafficking is to fundamentally misunderstand QAnon.
QAnon was never a movement concerned about the safety of children. It was never a movement looking to end child sexual abuse. And it was never a catch-all indictment of the global elite.
From the very beginning, QAnon was a hyper-partisan conspiracy theory which specifically claimed that Democratic politicians and Hollywood stars were engaged in the widespread kidnapping and trafficking of children in order to harvest the psychoactive drug adrenochrome from their blood. In some strains of the theory, the adrenochrome was believed to be used to create a sort of potion to prevent aging.
The conspiracy’s central claims got weirder from there. Many proponents believed that Hillary Clinton had secretly been arrested and arraigned before a military tribunal, that Robert Mueller’s investigation into 2016 Russian election interference was cover for an operation to prevent a coup by Barack Obama, and that federal Democrats would be arrested en masse at Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration in January 2021.
Needless to say, none of those things happened.
This is not a situation where QAnon was aiming in the right direction but missed the target. It’s the opposite. If anything, QAnon was a blessing for Epstein and the degenerates in his inner circle. It took the focus off of them.
Though we cannot know for sure, the latest tranche of Epstein files includes certain indications that obfuscation might have been the entire point. Somewhere in the nexus between Jeffrey Epstein’s conversations with the founder of 4Chan, his close friendship with Steve Bannon during Donald Trump’s first term in office, and his well-understood desire to shield his lifestyle from scrutiny, unanswered questions lie in the shape of a much more plausible conspiracy.
Regardless of whether Epstein or Bannon was actually involved in puppeting QAnon – and, despite suspicions held by some, it has never been proven that either was – both benefited from it. Instead of training a spotlight on the very real crimes being committed by Epstein’s subset of the global elite, QAnon screeched into existence as a raucous, grotesque parody of those real crimes, substituting real harm for fantasies like adrenochrome harvesting, helping to ensure that accusations of similar crimes – like the accusations made against Epstein – would sound inescapably conspiratorial.
Intentionally or not, QAnon concealed and distorted much more than it ever revealed.
Instead of alleging what we now know to be true from the Epstein files – that a bipartisan coterie of politicians, financiers, and tech bros were raping children on an industrial scale – QAnon actually positioned many of Jeffrey Epstein’s friends and defenders as heroes.
QAnon followers praised billionaire Elon Musk as a champion for free speech, and believed that his purchase of the site formerly known as Twitter would open the floodgates for “truth.” He later joined an administration which is still working feverishly to prevent any consequences for any perpetrators named in the Epstein files, and recently released emails show Musk attempting to plan a visit to Epstein’s island more than four years after the billionaire was first convicted for having sex with children.
Kash Patel rose to prominence on the back of QAnon, appearing on dozens of QAnon podcasts and being regarded in the community as a brave insider willing to tell the truth at personal risk to himself, despite none of that being true. Now, Patel is the head of the FBI and is effectively one of two people, alongside Attorney General Pam Bondi, in charge of running the ongoing Epstein coverup.
Most prominently, QAnon praised Donald Trump as a scourge of sex traffickers everywhere, claiming for years that he was secretly arresting and executing people who committed sex crimes against children. It never bothered them that he was known to have been Jeffrey Epstein’s “closest friend” for decades, or that many women have accused him of sexual assault, or that he made lecherous comments about his own underage daughter, and it certainly does not bother them now that he has been named in the Epstein files more than 38,000 times despite robust efforts to redact his presence from the files.
Why? Because QAnon was never about the children. It was never about child sex trafficking. It was always about partisan politics. The individuals behind Q’s mask simply used the most shocking, heinous claims possible to drive a partisan agenda. Like the recent claims by Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Bottoms, who alleges that he has uncovered secret pedophile rings in the state capitol but won’t unveil them unless he’s elected governor, QAnon’s claims were ham-fisted attempts to push an unrelated agenda.
The revelations in the Epstein files should put to rest any notion that the fevered minds behind QAnon were onto something: they cast the villains as the heroes, rendering the only parts of the theory which came close to the truth closer to the exact opposite.
Unlike QAnon, the Epstein files give us a glimpse into something rare. Something I have for many years called the one true conspiracy: the conspiracy of the rich to stay rich, and to maintain the benefits of unaccountability and untouchability that come with it. It is the conspiracy which has shaped our world, both literally and figuratively. It is the conspiracy which allowed untold girls to be harmed by Epstein and his clique of reprobates; and it is the conspiracy which has thus far ensured that no one has seen the inside of a jail cell for those crimes except for Epstein himself – and that, briefly.
Also, unlike QAnon, bringing down this very real conspiracy of elites does not require an unconstitutionally empowered Donald Trump or military tribunals for members of Congress. It requires a little spine and a lot of grit from a few people in power, and support from the rest of us. It requires investigations, indictments, trials, and convictions. No adrenochrome, no secret tunnels, just justice rendered by a jury of peers.
In the United States in the year 2026, the idea of accountability for the powerful might sound even more fanciful than the idea of industrial-scale blood harvesting – but it is possible, and we must demand it, or the one true conspiracy will continue shaping our world in ways the fake ones could only ever aspire to.
