Mind bending truths
When the absurd starts to feel a little less absurd
I am coming to realise that a documentary continues to evolve even after all the finishing touches have been made and it is ready for release. Of course the film itself never changes after that point, but how it is viewed, and the meaning you can take from it, changes according to the context of the moment you are watching it in. With the release of the Epstein files they have added a somewhat mind-bending layer to my film The Conspiracists that is about to begin its UK cinema release. The film is a portrait of three MAGA women who have fallen deep down the conspiracy rabbit hole. On their respective journeys to radicalisation they each discovered QAnon. QAnon is a conspiracy theory premised on the notion that there is a secret cabal of satanic, cannibalistic child abusers in league with the deep state who are running a child trafficking ring.
In the film I spend a week on a road trip across America with a self-styled conspiracy theorist called Yvonne. At one point on the journey she explains “adrenachrome” to me.
YVONNE: So adrenachrome is taken from our blood. And the younger and the more pure blood like children, the more potent it is. So when you’re terrified, your adrenaline glands pump adrenaline into your blood, and they drink the blood of terrified people. And that is what keeps them younger. And it also...
LIZ: Wait, who drinks the blood of terrified people?
YVONNE: These elite pedophiles. This is what human trafficking is all about.
Sounds absurd, right? And it is, except … what the Epstein files reveal is an elite set of powerful people who did not think there was anything wrong with cavorting around with a notorious child sex offender and a human trafficker. The files reveal an intricate web of relationships that stretch across MAGA and the US far right, the Silicon Valley tech bros and beyond into the European far right and bad actors in Russia. Its web is not limited to the political, financial and tech elite, but includes the academic elite too. None of these people can use the excuse that they did not know Epstein was a sexual predator because he was convicted and went to prison for “procuring a person under age for prostitution” in 2008. As more and more files have been released, what has become apparent is the extent to which so many of the rich and powerful were in his orbit. What is so disturbing is the extent to which they did not care, and were just willing to look the other away. It is the same attitude that is so well portrayed in Sarah Wynn-Williams book Careless People. It was not surprising to discover that the likes of Elon Musk and Peter Thiel were among those who continued relationships with Epstein, but Noam Chomsky? That’s when you realise quite how entrenched this is. Reading through the most recent trove of emails, the “frat boy” casual use of language and the misogyny is gross. It reads as nauseating arrogance from people who believe they are above the law. Even if those who continued their relationships with Epstein had no direct involvement in the sexual abuse or trafficking of women, the fact that they continued to play ‘best buddies’ with him in a bid to advance themselves or simply for a kick, makes them complicit. The wide use of derogatory and objectifying language and their attitudes towards women who are reduced to vessels, or simply “p” or “pussy”, downplays the horror of what Epstein was involved in. In doing that they normalised it and gave it a sheen of acceptability.
To add to the ‘mind-bending-ness’ of watching the film in this context, is the emergence of Epstein’s role in trying to influence the right-wing conspiracy theory machine. Epstein spotted early on the potential of platforms like 4Chan to be used to manipulate people. There is a thread that suggests he may have intentionally influenced the founder of 4Chan, Christopher Poole, who the day after they met reintroduced a board that he had previously shut down because it had become a breeding ground of hate. 4Chan fostered the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. It now feels like a insidious strategy used by Epstein to hide in plain sight. I covered Pizzagate in my film I Am Gen Z, and the clip below explains it.
I Am Gen Z, made in 2019/2020, is also a different watch now in 2026. Statements that seemed outlandish when viewed on its release in 2021, today seem remarkably prescient. Pizzagate has been thoroughly debunked but the real world consequences of that conspiracy theory came into stark reality when a man, convinced of its veracity, went to the pizza parlour in question armed with a gun with intent to kill.
Unsurprisingly Pizzagate came up during my road trip in The Conspiracists too:
LIZ: Is this is all like the Pizzagate thing?
TARA: Yeah. Have you ever heard of QAnon?
LIZ: Yeah yeah, I’ve heard of that but I thought Pizzagate was just rubbish.
YVONNE: No. And it’s never been debunked.
LIZ: Oh really?
YVONNE: There’s a video that proves it’s never been debunked. So Pizzagate is actually very, very real and there’s more than enough evidence. And I can give you some videos to watch that will....
TARA: What always confused me about Pizzagate it talked about a basement and there’s no basement in that particular pizza place. I had been there a long time ago, so I always wondering, so what do you think that means?
YVONNE: I think there is, probably just don’t know that unless you’re in on it.
TARA: OK
YVONNE: you probably... They have a kill room in there.
The number of bizarre references to pizza in the Epstein emails suggests that the term may sometimes have been used among his pals to mean something other than a mundane desire to eat pizza.
One of the moments that always gets a laugh in the film is when Tammy tells me that the Queen is a reptile and she trafficked children in Canada. The children disappeared and she thought that the Queen probably ate them. It is funny because it is absurd, but as more and more revelations come out about the Queen’s son’s relationship with Epstein, the harder it becomes to laugh at it. The problem with conspiracy theories is they often have a grain of truth. That grain of truth gets warped into nonsense, but Tammy was a little too uncomfortably close to home on that one, even in all its absurdity.
So what are Yvonne and the MAGA followers making of the Epstein files? There is one uncomfortable and irreconcilable truth: their saviour Donald Trump is implicated too. For them, Trump is a “white hat”. He is working behind the scenes to reveal the truth about all of these hidden systems. The MAGA diehards are generally being quite quiet about this, although, in a curious twist, one of MAGA’s biggest proponents, Marjorie Taylor Green, has been vocal about it, and now sees MAGA and Trump as one big lie. I have not had an opportunity to ask Yvonne if her view on Trump has changed, but given that she received a pardon from him I think it is unlikely she is going to remain anything but his closest disciple. On social media at least, Yvonne hasn’t been vocal about it. One of her more recent posts relating to Epstein chooses instead to focus on her belief that Joe Biden was a clone:
Another aspect of the Epstein files that is bending my mind is the strange way that it unites the right with the left. Those on the left, the ones that MAGA ideologues call “the loony left”, also see themselves in a fight against a powerful elite who are out to serve themselves, and who care not a jot about the little people. What the Epstein files reveal is just more and more evidence of a billionaire class acting with impunity. According to the conspiracy theorists in my film, the world is made up of paedophiles. With the release of the Epstein files it is feeling hard to argue with them. They may have missed the mark when it came to naming them correctly, but that we live in a paedophilic culture is becoming clearer and clearer with every one of the Epstein files that are released.
In other news,
The UK cinema release of The Conspiracists begins on 21 February with a screening at Hebden Bridge Picture House. I’ll be there for a Q&A hosted by Scott Archer Patient.
For a London cinema screening block in April I am excited to announce that Noelle Cook, my compatriot on the road trip in the film, will be coming over from the US to join me for the Q&As. Noelle is the author of the book The Conspiracists - Women, Extremism and the Lure of Belonging that accompanies the film. We have screenings already confirmed at Curzon Soho, The Lexi and Act One. More dates are being added all the time, so do check back if you can’t find a screening in your local area or sign up to our newsletter for updates.
In person screenings with Q&As of The Line We Crossed are continuing too. I’ll be joined by Marcus Decker and Phil Laurie for a Q&A following a screening at The Sands Film Club in Rotherhithe on 10 March. I am delighted to announce that the film is coming the Scottish borders and will be showing in Galashiels at Pavilion Cinema on 29th March. Trudi Warner and local activists Kate Prasher will be there for the Q&A.
The Line We Crossed is now available to stream! Thank you to everyone for sharing this on newsletters and within their communities, it is entirely thanks to word-of-mouth that people get to hear about my work. Please keep sharing!
I am continuing to work on completing the film The Humanitarians and was pleased to be able to show a short preview clip of that work with an audience last week prior to the screening of The Conpsiracists organised by the Manchester Quakers and at a talk the following day with sixth form students at Billericay School. This is a challenging film to make on so many levels and I am very grateful to everyone who is supporting me in this endeavour.
More recently I have begun work on a new feature documentary about “the anti-gender movement”. Today I am publishing the full interview that I filmed with Neil Datta in conversation with Deborah Frances-White. If you don’t know much about the anti-gender movement, I would highly recommend watching it.
