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A digital manipulation that blends a historical oil painting with modern elements. The original artwork is likely based on 18th-century theatrical paintings, such as those by William Hogarth or Gaspare Traversi, which often depicted lively, expressive scenes of drinking and revelry. Photo: Bettbeat Media.
By Karim Bettache – Feb 1, 2026
Imperialism—stripped of its historical grandeur—is simply the hunger for the power to rape children with impunity
We tell ourselves comforting lies about power. We imagine that those who rise to command empires, nations, and vast fortunes do so through merit, through vision, through some Darwinian fitness that the rest of us lack. We tell ourselves that the systems governing our lives—capitalism, monarchy, colonialism, the church—are imperfect but improvable, flawed but not rotten at the root.
We are wrong.
Our world is run by a cabal of pedophiles.
This is not hyperbole. This is not Pizzagate or QAnon conspiracy theory. This is the plain conclusion from decades of exposed scandals, exposed networks, exposed cover-ups—exposed and then ignored, exposed and then buried, exposed and then forgotten while the predators remain in power. The Catholic Church. The British boarding schools. Epstein’s island. The colonial plantations. Always the same pattern: access to children, immunity from consequence, and a system that closes ranks.
The system does not fail to filter out pedophiles. It selects for them. It always has.
The Pattern Exposed
Consider the cult. Every generation produces them, and every generation expresses shock when the inevitable revelations emerge. Rajneesh. NXIVM. The Children of God. Jim Jones. The pattern never varies: charismatic authority, ideological totalism, the systematic sexual exploitation of followers—particularly minors. We call these aberrations. We tell ourselves that mainstream institutions are different.
They are not different. They are simply larger.
The Catholic Church has paid billions in settlements to abuse survivors across the globe. The scale defies comprehension: thousands of priests, tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of victims, a bureaucratic apparatus dedicated not to justice but to concealment. The Pennsylvania grand jury report alone documented over 300 predator priests and more than 1,000 child victims in a single American state. This was not aberration. This was policy—institutional survival placed above the bodies of children.
The British Empire ran boarding schools designed to “civilize” Indigenous children in Canada, Australia, and beyond. Unmarked graves now dot the grounds of these institutions. Survivors describe systematic physical and sexual abuse. The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission called it cultural genocide. But it was also something else: a vast machine that gave predators unfettered access to children stripped of family, community, and protection.
Colonialism itself was a pedophile’s charter. Enslavement meant ownership of bodies—all bodies, including children’s. Domestic servitude placed minors in homes where they had no recourse. The “comfort women” of Japanese imperialism. The child brides of every conquering army. We discuss these horrors in the sanitized language of historical injustice, but the truth is visceral and specific: powerful men raping children because they could.
And it is continuing uninterrupted to this day.
The Royals, The Elite, The Untouchables
The House of Windsor settled out of court with Virginia Giuffre, a survivor who alleged she was trafficked to Prince Andrew as a teenager. The sum was reportedly twelve million pounds. No admission of guilt. No criminal prosecution. The matter, as far as the palace is concerned, is closed.
But of course Andrew is not unique. Monarchies have always operated this way. The “droit du seigneur” may be historical myth, but the reality it gestured toward was not: those with absolute power have always helped themselves to the bodies of their subjects. The royal mistresses of European courts were often (pre-)teenagers. The enslaved children in aristocratic households had no legal personhood at all.
We imagine this is history. We imagine modernity has reformed these structures.
We imagine wrong.
Jeffrey Epstein and the Machinery of Impunity
Jeffrey Epstein did not operate alone. He operated a network—a procurement and blackmail operation that serviced the powerful. His client list included financiers, politicians, academics, royalty. His first arrest, in Florida, resulted in a plea deal so lenient that the prosecutor who arranged it later joined the Cabinet of the United States.
Epstein died in federal custody under circumstances that strain belief. Cameras malfunctioned. Guards slept. The most high-profile defendant in America somehow hanged himself unobserved.
The files released in recent years contain sworn declarations that should have shattered political careers. In one such declaration, a witness using the pseudonym “Tiffany Doe” testified under penalty of perjury that she personally witnessed the abuse of minors at the hands of Epstein and Donald Trump during her employment from 1990 to 2000 — imagine the amount of horrors that happened in just those ten years. She described a plaintiff—a child—being threatened by Trump, told she would “disappear like the 12-year-old female” if she ever spoke. She described threats against her own life for coming forward.
Pause on this. A sworn declaration. Under penalty of perjury. Describing the man who would become President of the United States threatening a child with death.
The lawsuit was withdrawn. The plaintiff cited fears for her safety. No trial occurred. The media moved on.
Imagine being twelve years old. A kid who plays in parks. Now imagine a powerful man—a man whose face is everywhere, whose name adorns buildings—telling you that he could have your family killed. Imagine the powerlessness. Imagine carrying that for decades while the world makes that man its leader.
This is not conspiracy theory. This is sworn testimony that our systems chose not to pursue.
“The victim’s claims about child-raping cannibal elites may have seemed like madness at the time. But in the post-Epstein age, many of us realize we dismissed her too easily”
The most recent Epstein file releases document depravity that even Hollywood horror movies avoid. Child sacrifice rituals. Forced abortions. The consumption of human flesh from murdered victims. Donald Trump allegedly penetrated the genitals of twelve year old children to test how ‘tight’ they were while billionaire friends were laughing in the background. The cabal of powerful pedophiles almost pushes one to become religious—it seems we are confronting the thousand-year-old prophesied battle between good and evil. Between us and a demonic horde masquerading as the “free world.”
The biggest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.
The Netherlands, and Everywhere Else
Every nation has its version. In the Netherlands, Joris Demmink—a former high-ranking official in the Ministry of Justice—faced years of allegations regarding child sexual abuse. Witnesses came forward. Investigations sputtered. Prosecutions failed. The Prime Minister publicly defended him. The matter, officially, is closed.
Demmink is not unique to the Netherlands. He is the Netherlands’ local example of a global phenomenon: the untouchable predator protected by the very systems meant to deliver justice.
Belgium had the Dutroux affair, which exposed networks reaching into police and government. Britain had Jimmy Savile, who abused almost a thousand children for decades while the BBC looked away — oh, and surprise surprise, Queen Elizabeth was very fond of him. Portugal had Casa Pia. The patterns repeat endlessly.
Some of you may remember the child model Gabriela Rico Jiménez screaming that she had witnessed elites “eating humans.” In 2009, the young model from Chihuahua attended a high-profile party in Monterrey—allegedly tied to the Elite Model agency. This wasn’t just any party; it was said to host powerful businessmen, politicians, and organized crime figures.
What she saw there broke her.
Jiménez was found outside a hotel in a state of hysteria, shouting about cannibalism and naming powerful people. She was quickly taken away by authorities. Her case remains unsolved. She remains disappeared—either silenced or destroyed by what she witnessed.
Claims about child-raping cannibal elites may have seemed like madness at the time. But in the post-Epstein age, many of us realize we dismissed her too easily.
The Logic Laid Bare
Someone recently framed it simply: “Imperialism is the logic of the pedophile.”
The statement is jarring. It is meant to be. We are trained to discuss imperialism in grand abstractions—geopolitics, economics, the rise and fall of civilizations. But strip away the academic language and what remains is this: imperialism is the project of taking what you want from those who cannot stop you. It is the logic of predation, scaled up. And the ultimate predation—the final expression of absolute power over absolute powerlessness—is the rape of a child.
Indeed, Imperialism—stripped of its historical grandeur—is simply the hunger for the power to rape children with impunity.
This is not metaphor. This is mechanism. Centralized, unaccountable power attracts those who wish to exploit without consequence. It elevates them because the traits that enable exploitation—ruthlessness, manipulation, the absence of empathy—are precisely the traits that facilitate climbing hierarchies built on domination. Again, the system does not merely fail to filter out predators. It selects for them.
The pedophile seeks access and impunity. Empire, church, and capital provide both. The plantation owner had access to enslaved children and total impunity. The priest had access to altar boys and the protection of the Vatican. The billionaire has private islands, private jets, and prosecutors who return his calls.
Why Nothing Changes
A bitter truth circulates among those who study these patterns: in capitalism, capitalists do not get punished. The system will not reform itself because the system is functioning as designed. It concentrates power. It insulates that power from accountability. It provides those at the top with what they have always sought: the freedom to take what they want.
Epstein is not an aberration. He is a glimpse behind the curtain—a rare moment when the machinery became briefly visible before the curtain was yanked shut. His death ensured that curtain would stay closed.
The files will be released, parsed, discussed. Opinion pieces will be written. And nothing will happen to the powerful men whose names appear in those files. Nothing ever does.
What Would Change Require?
To end this would require dismantling the very structures that enable it. Not reform. Not oversight committees. Not task forces. Dismantling.
It would require the end of wealth concentration that places individuals beyond the reach of law. It would require the destruction of institutions that prioritize their own survival over the bodies of children. It would require a world in which no one—no president, no prince, no pope—is untouchable.
It would require us to stop telling ourselves comforting lies.
The question is whether we have the stomach for that truth. Whether we can look at the empires we’ve inherited, the systems we participate in, the leaders we elect, and see them for what they are: structures built by predators, for predators, maintained by our collective refusal to see.
The children who were threatened, raped, and silenced could not refuse to see. They lived it. Many still do. The least we owe them is the courage to name what happened. And what continues to happen.
Imperialism is not grand strategy. It is not civilizational destiny. It is a pedophile’s logic, dressed in flags.
(Substack)
Prof. Karim Bettache acquired his BSc and MSc in psychology at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, and his Ph.D. in psychology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has worked as a postdoctoral fellow with the cultural psychologist Professor Chi-yue Chiu and as a lecturer for Monash University. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor for the Faculty of Social Science at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
He specializes in cultural, political, and social psychology. His work attempts to connect individual psychological phenomena (e.g., racism) to broader sociopolitical and historical developments of human societies (e.g., colonialism or capitalism). Hence, his work strongly overlaps with a multitude of social sciences such as sociology and the political sciences.
