Front Burner - Understanding the 'Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself' meme

Episode Date: November 20, 2019

A conspiracy theory about the death of millionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has been turned into a meme. The phrase "Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself" is appearing in tweets, TikToks, on live television, even on ugly Christmas sweaters. The New York City Medical Examiner's Office conclusively ruled Epstein's death in jail was a suicide. But that hasn't stopped the conspiracy theory from thriving on both the left and right sides of the political spectrum. Today on Front Burner, Anna Merlan, author of Republic of Lies: American conspiracy theorists and their surprising rise to power, on why she thinks this conspiracy theory has morphed into a widely shared, macabre meme.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. So we're working on the show on Monday, and our executive producer, Nick, pulls me into the studio. Do you have your phone?

Yeah. Okay, I'm going to send you something. Okay. Okay, open that up when you get it. Okay. It was this image. People are sharing it on Facebook. What is this?

Okay, can you just describe it? It looks like a piece of modern art. It had these black crisscross lines, some thicker patches. It almost looked like a QR code. Now, I'm going to tell you to do something with your phone. Mm-hmm. Okay, so tilt the screen back. Okay.

Close one eye. Does it matter which eye? No, I don't think so. I'm really bad at these. You know how it's supposed to be two faces or something? I never really see the two faces. Hang on. It was clearly one of these optical illusion things.

Oh my God. There it was. With one eye closed and my cell phone tilted way back, the optical illusion snapped into place, forming the words, Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself. Different versions of this meme are everywhere on Twitter, on Facebook, on cable news. What policies stand out to you in this court?

I would say mainly just the no-nonsense policies, and especially since Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself. Also on late night television. Hillary, I have to ask you a question that has been plaguing me for a while. How did you kill Jeffrey Epstein? But the fact that this Epstein meme has gone mainstream isn't the only reason that we're doing this episode today. Memes cross over from online to the real world all the time. Known as the Tide Pod Challenge, still causing concern across the country and today

YouTube is hoping to stop the videos. People have been anticipating for months Storm Area 51, the movement that started as an internet joke then became an actual phenomenon for people searching for aliens. We are doing this episode because this meme is rooted in a conspiracy theory. It crosses political lines. And it seems to be drawing in people beyond the Pizzagate and Area 51 crowd. Today, I'm talking to Anna Merlin, author of Republic of Lies, American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power,

about how we should understand Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself. This is FrontBurner. Anna, hello. Hi, thanks for having me. Thanks so much for coming on to the podcast. So I think I first noticed this was becoming a thing when a former Navy SEAL inserted it into a segment about military dogs on Fox News earlier this month. You decide I want one of these dogs either by a finished trained, you know, fully trained and finished dog from a professional or just just don't get one at all. And Epstein didn't kill himself. And since then, I feel like I've been seeing it everywhere.

You know, how about you? Yeah, that was the first time that a lot of people heard the meme, but it had been circulating for a few weeks before that. And really the, you know, accusations or suspicions that Jeffrey Epstein didn't die by suicide emerged really quickly after his death. It just took a little while for them to reach meme form. Almost immediately. You know, another weird one that stuck out to me, you know, here in Canada,

we had the firing of Don Cherry. That was a big story over the last couple of weeks. And, you know, at a protest over the firing of Don Cherry, someone held up a sign that just said Epstein didn't kill himself. It was like a poster board. Yeah. And we should say right off the bat, you know, you mentioned there was suspicion initially that Epstein didn't kill himself. But, you know, the New York chief medical examiner has ruled that his death was a suicide. And now Attorney General William Barr, with some foreboding words saying that just because Epstein won't have his day in court, Epstein's alleged co-conspirators, quote,

should not rest easy. I will say that, as I said before, we have found serious irregularities at the center. But at the same time, I have seen nothing that undercuts the finding of the medical examiner that this was a suicide. But, you know, when we're talking about people who are sharing this meme, like we're not just talking about the dark corners of the Internet here. Like I saw congressmen tweet it. Arizona, did a series of tweets about the impeachment inquiry against President Trump. And the first letter of those tweets spelled out the phrase, Epstein didn't kill himself. It's also appearing on TikTok videos. It's being sold as a phrase on ugly Christmas sweaters. There's a ton of memes being shared, including by really high profile people

like Joe Rogan. It is sort of everywhere. Can you tell me more about what this meme is? Does it seem to follow a format? So the sort of classic format of the Epstein didn't kill himself meme is that that phrase is embedded in an otherwise innocuous context. that phrase is embedded in sort of otherwise innocuous context. So one version of it that I have seen is Bob Ross, the painter who is popular in public access TV, posing in front of his easel sort of beaming with the words, Epstein didn't kill himself on the canvas behind him. Or a picture of a deer that's been field dressed and the words say, I'm going to name this deer Jeffrey Epstein because he obviously didn't kill himself either. So the idea of the meme is fundamentally to insert that

phrase in a surprising way into sort of an otherwise banal or unexpected context. And what's the motivation for sharing it, do you think? So a lot of conspiracy theories are fundamentally about saying that you are skeptical enough and awake enough and aware enough not to buy the official story. And so that's certainly what the Epstein didn't kill himself meme does. It says, I don't believe that he died by suicide in jail. I know that larger, more powerful forces were at work behind his death. But the reason why we're seeing it everywhere is because people on both the right and the left can say that. They can come up with explanations, alternate explanations for his death because

Jeffrey Epstein was, of course, close to high profile, powerful people on both the right and the left, Bill Clinton, as well as Donald Trump. Yeah. And, you know, Prince Andrew, who I know this is a sidebar who gave a train wreck of an interview about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein this week. It was a convenient place to stay. I mean, I've gone through this in my mind so many times. At the end of the day, with the benefit of all the hindsight that one could have, it was definitely the wrong thing to do. But at the time, I felt it was the honourable and right thing to do. Is that unusual that a meme like this or conspiracy like this would have such wide buy-in? Yeah, it's not super common for them to jump a political spectrum like this, especially in a place like the United States where the political spectrum is so extremely sort of ionized and highly, highly charged. And there isn't a ton of agreement on on the two sides. So yeah, seeing a kind of bipartisan meme like this that raises a general question about the so-called official

story that everyone can seemingly agree on is, yeah, is very unusual. Like, can we talk a little bit more about why you think so many people are buying into this? Like, less than a third of Americans believe Epstein died by suicide, according to a poll taken back in August. And beyond that, like, other prominent people on the left and right, Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, MSNBC's anchor Joe Scarborough, Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe.

This argument over whether he was on suicide watch or not is like silly, because if he wasn't on suicide watch, he should have been on watch. The guy was a high-risk prisoner, wasn't he? Something doesn't fit here. It just doesn't make sense that the highest profile prisoner in America, someone forgot to guard him. Why do you think that this is being embraced by so many people? Well, I mean, there are a few reasons.

One is that a lot of people were not really paying attention to the Jeffrey Epstein story until his most recent arrest. And so for a lot of people, their first sort of introduction to Jeffrey Epstein was his most recent arrest followed almost immediately by his death. And one thing that we know about conspiracy theories is that we tend to believe them because cognitively our brains want sort of big events to have big causes and we want things to sort of make a kind of narrative sense that they sometimes don't. So this idea that Jeffrey Epstein would finally be arrested, would finally be not just brought to justice for his crimes, but would also have to reveal

what he knows about other people who had committed crimes against children. To have all of that sort of be within our grasp and then have it be taken away to some extent because he died is sort of too much for people narratively, cognitively. It doesn't make sense. It feels very frustrating. It feels like we are being denied some kind of closure. And so for a lot of people, the impulse is to lean into a conspiracy theory to explain why that could happen. That's such an interesting perspective. You know, I was thinking,

and I don't know what you think about this too, but like, if I think about other conspiracy theories, like Pizzagate, you know, you have to like, buy into a bunch of stuff in order to believe Pizzagate, like you have to believe that there were underground tunnels beneath a pizza parlor and that child sex abuse symbols were displayed there. All this sort of unsubstantiated stuff they called evidence. But then in the Epstein conspiracy, it also feels like to me like the so-called evidence that people are pointing to, like some of it is just agreed upon fact published in the New York Times and the Washington Post, you know, that he'd been taken off suicide watch, that he was supposed to be checked every 30 minutes and then he wasn't for about three hours. The guards who were supposed to be watching him, you know, they've just been charged. Like according to Reuters, the cameras outside his cell may have malfunctioned. A pathologist hired by his brother

said there was evidence of strangulation. I wonder if you think that that is also contributing to the prevalence of this conspiracy and these memes that we're seeing. Well, so first of all, on the last point, it's important to point out that the independent pathology report commissioned by Jeffrey Epstein's brother is disputed by the autopsy that was done by the authorities. It's heavily disputed. The city medical examiner today said the manner of death was suicide. We stand by that determination. So there is no question that Jeffrey Epstein died, for instance, which some conspiracy theories really require faith in a lot of things for which there is no evidence. You know, Pizzagate is a really good example. In order to believe

in Pizzagate as a conspiracy theory, you had to believe that there was a pizza parlor that had underground tunnels beneath it, that there were child sex slaves in those tunnels who were being victimized by high level members of the Democratic Party, that somehow all of these people were working together to cover it up. You had to believe in a really large cover-up with many elements that sort of defy common sense. Whereas with the Epstein death, you can definitely say that he died. You can definitely say that he was a high-level person who did incredibly inhumane and unethical and illegal things, and it was not held to account for it. And so, you know, it already is based in some level of

reality that allows people a little bit more room to generate conspiracy theories that are slightly more, yeah, rooted in fact. What do you think it says about where we're at as a society right now that so many people are buying into this conspiracy theory? Like, what does it say about us, you think? Right. Well, we know that conspiracy theories are common and that they tend to sort of wax and wane and become more prominent at times of social upheaval, social change, times when we're asking ourselves, you know, really big questions about what we believe or what our values are. And so I don't think it's actually super surprising that this is coming up at a time when the Me Too movement sort of brought to the fore again, the fact that there are a lot of high level sexual predators who get away with what they're doing for a very long time and who are aided or abetted or at the very least sort of conveniently ignored by the justice system. And so to see such a stark

example of someone who got away with his crimes until he was unable to flee any longer and apparently decided to take the last way out is really stark for people. And it really is just a frustrating reminder of how unequal and unjust our justice system sometimes is. So it like fits into that narrative as well. Do you think like you mentioned conspiracy theories aren't new? Are we in like a particularly conspiracy prone time? I mean, we're in a time where we're talking a lot about conspiracy theories and their effects on sort of the public conversation because, you know, the president of the United States is a conspiracy theorist. And so we are able to see much more easily and more directly how fringe ideas sort

of move from the fringe to the mainstream and how they affect us. The other thing about conspiracy theories is that most of them have a sort of political element to them, or the ones that become really successful become that way because they have some kind of political utility. And so this is why we're seeing conspiracy theories, for instance, about Ukraine in the impeachment hearings being promoted by Republican representatives. It is politically useful for them to do so. And so the Epstein conspiracy theories have political utility for people on both the right and the left,

which just gives them so much more use than they would ever have if they were only politically valuable to one side. Right. And you're talking about the Ukraine conspiracy theory. This is the CrowdStrike conspiracy theory, which basically contends that the Democratic National Committee hack was a setup designed to cast blame on Russia. Senior State Department official George Kent was asked about it yesterday.

To your knowledge, is there any factual basis to support the allegation that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election? To my knowledge, there is no factual basis. No. The president brought this theory up in this like now infamous July phone call with Ukraine's president. So do you see this being different than the Epstein conspiracy theory because it doesn't have the same kind of like bipartisan appeal? Yeah, the Epstein conspiracy theory has bipartisan appeal because when people say, or put on a Christmas sweater or put in a meme, Epstein didn't kill himself, they aren't saying who they think actually did it, right? Like all you have to do to post an

Epstein didn't kill himself meme is to say, I don't believe the official story, but you don't have to say what your personal narrative of what you believe happened is. So a lot of people could when they post that they could mean I think the Clintons killed him or they could say mean, you know, I think Donald Trump killed him. And all of those people can come together under the banner of making this unsubstantiated claim about his death. Right. And you're like, this is why or one of the reasons why this has so much fuel. Like, have you ever seen a meme or like a conspiracy theory like this before one that has like such a wide base of support? I mean, it's very uncommon for conspiracy theories to sort of apply equally on the right and left. This is a pretty unusual

one. You know, one thing that we can say is, for instance, like anti-vaccine conspiracy theories about, you know, vaccines being bad for our health or, you know, some kind of a sinister tool of, um, the deep state or the government, uh, those have like some bipartisan appeal. You see people on both the right and the left that apply those to their lives. But, um, fundamentally most of them are just not taken up by this many people in the way that the Epstein meme has been. It is unusual. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection.

Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. You know, one thing about this, and I have to be honest, like, you know, I've joked about this meme myself. Like, I found that Fox, I've watched the Fox News clip a few times. I've laughed. But, like, there is also something very dark going on here, you know. And why do you think there is this impulse to turn this serious, sad, repulsive thing,

the jailhouse pre-trial suicide of a powerful man who had been accused of molesting dozens of girls, young women, and sex tracking into a joke. I mean, I have argued that I think the process of turning it into a joke takes the attention away from Jeffrey Epstein's victims. I think that it makes him into almost an object of pity to imply that he was somehow taken care of by powerful forces because he knew too much. You know, I would also point out that a lot of people promoting this meme talk constantly about how prisons should be safe places, which they're not.

They are not these hermetically sealed should be safe places, which they're not. They are not these hermetically sealed, extremely safe places that people seem to assume that they are. And the idea that somebody would die by suicide in prison is actually not uncommon. But yeah, the main thing that specifically is, I think, difficult about the Epstein meme is that it almost disappears his victims. It makes him into the focus of the story again. At the same time, I will say that, you know, a new accuser came forward and, you know, said that she was sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein. She's calling herself Jane Doe 15. Epstein took my sexual innocence in front of a wall of framed photographs of him shaking hands and smiling at celebrities and political leaders. I was only 15 years old.

And in the press conference that she gave with her attorney, Gloria Allred, she was wearing a bracelet that said Epstein didn't kill himself. Was she really? I didn't know that until you said that right now. So at least one of the victims appears to believe this conspiracy theory as well. I mean, at least one victim, yeah, wore a bracelet that said that publicly. So that was really fascinating for me. I would not have expected that. If we were to reorient our attention to the victims, what would you want us to think about here? our attention to the victims? What would you want us to think about here?

I mean, I think one question is, fundamentally, how do we make sure that this doesn't happen again? But also, who do we have to hold accountable for this happening in the first place? How did Jeffrey Epstein get away with this for so long? So part of the question that we have to ask ourselves is about the justice system and the ways that justice is unequally applied. But the victims are living. They are right in front of us. So we can ask them what they need. You know, we can ask them if they are getting the access that they would need to victim impact services, that they are getting the legal and mental health advocacy that they need. Like there are a lot of things that we can do for the people who were forever impacted by his crimes that don't sort of involve making Epstein himself into either a joke or even something of a figure of pity. We can definitely

do that. And I thank you so much for this conversation. It was really fascinating. Thank you so much for having me. I mentioned in my conversation with Anna that train wreck of an interview the BBC did with Prince Andrew. So you're absolutely sure that you're at home on the 10th of March. She was very specific about that night. She described dancing with you and you profusely sweating and that she

went on to have bath possibly there's a slight problem with the sweating because I have a peculiar medical condition which is that I don't sweat or I didn't sweat at the time and, or I didn't sweat at the time.

And that was, oh, actually, yes, I didn't sweat at the time, because I had suffered what I would describe as an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War when I was shot at. Well, in the wake of that interview, some charitable and corporate sponsors are backing away from their relationship with the Prince. KPMG and Standard Chartered have both cut ties with the Royal's business mentorship initiative. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening and see you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.