Jeffrey Epstein Case: A troubling emblem of societal corruption, showcasing a privileged class seemingly consuming their own offspring.
Philip Jenkins, a researcher and professor at Baylor University in Texas, has deciphered the deep-seated obsession with child trafficking and pedophile crimes that occupies a unique place in the imagination of the American right.
Jenkins, who specializes in religious movements and social phenomena, has made this analysis for Libération. He views this focus as a recurring theme in his research, akin to historical witch hunts or past moral panics, where innocent people are accused on weak or sensational grounds.
The Epstein case and conspiracy movements like QAnon are seen by Jenkins as accelerants of this hysteria, fueling widespread, unfounded fears about elite pedophile networks that lack credible proof but thrive in the political imagination of right-wing groups.
Jenkins' analysis primarily focuses on the American right. He critiques this obsession as a form of moral panic that distorts reality and is detached from actual prevalence or evidence. This focus, he argues, often erupts under social anxieties and leads to miscarriages of justice.
The Epstein case ignited and gave new visibility to conspiracy theories alleging systemic child exploitation among powerful elites. QAnon, for its part, propagated elaborate theories that ride on and magnify this panic, embedding it firmly into certain segments of the American right’s worldview, despite the absence of verified evidence for many of the claims.
Thus, Jenkins views the obsession as a socially constructed and politically leveraged myth tying together genuine concerns about child protection with exaggerated, conspiratorial thinking. This interpretation frames the phenomenon as a moral panic fueled by anxiety and media amplification more than by factual patterns of widespread trafficking or abuse within elite circles.
While none of the specific search results directly quote Jenkins, this understanding aligns with his scholarship on moral panics surrounding child sexual abuse and conspiracy theories linked to figures like Epstein and movements such as QAnon, as viewed in academic and journalistic analyses of these topics.
Jenkins is the author of reference works on moral panics in America and the UK, including "Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America" (1998). His work provides a valuable perspective on the current discourse surrounding child trafficking and pedophile crimes in the United States.
The unique obsession with child trafficking and pedophile crimes in the imagination of the American right, as discussed by Philip Jenkins, is a recurring theme in his research, often compared to historical witch hunts or past moral panics. This focus, according to Jenkins, is a form of moral panic that distorts reality and is detached from actual prevalence or evidence, often leading to miscarriages of justice.
