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Comment by joebiden2 | Hacker News Reader

Politicians are mostly corrupt, though degrees vary. Most relevant child abuse was covered by famous politicians¹²³⁴⁵. Nevertheless, the same politicians cut budgets for police to do actual investigation work, because that could harm themselves, then want to cut the last line of defense the public has to do actual investigation and journalism (which requires free speech and privacy) by declaring that this is required to fight pedophilia.

We need to do something against this. We really do.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein

² https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336831983_Understan...

³ https://time.com/2974381/england-land-of-royals-tea-and-horr...

⁴ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Dutroux

⁵ https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/past-pedophile-...

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Politicians are just ambitious people, sharing full spectrum of other traits. Most people would become equally corrupt if presented the opportunity. Being ambitious just amplifies the temptation.

You underestimate the selection pressure. While I agree that many people would become corrupted, the profession (so to speak) attracts certain people. It is even to the point where you need some negative traits (explicitly: skeletons in the closet) to rise up, because it means you're easier to control.

> Most people would become equally corrupt if presented the opportunity

Bold claim, without anything to back it up.

If you downvote, please at least state a reason. All of the links are reputable and verified. And all of them were covered by famous, reputable politicians.

Two good reasons to downvote this would be 1) that it's a conspiracy theory and 2) that reading about pedophilia every time one turns on the internet is exhausting.

It's not a conspiracy theory. It's a collection of links that describe actual conspiracies.

Not all of them - the Time one from 2014 (link number 3) actually links to the Wikipedia article that has a section about the VIP paedophile ring claims (that the article is mostly about) being discredited in 2015 [1]. (The page title was changed from 'Scandal' to 'Hoax' after the article was published and redirects)

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elm_Guest_House_hoax

Not everything that's uncomfortable and swept under the rug is a conspiracy theory. Calling the revelations about Jeffrey Eppstein and his shady connections in 2023 conspiracy theory comes off as dismissive.

Relevant standup bit https://youtu.be/b6NmjK2pgiQ

But I sort of get your #2.

Unlikely the garbage dreamt up on 4chan is the truth. Sure the government lies. Doesn't mean your interpretation is correct.

Nobody said that on this thread, I hope you know that.

Critical thinking and scepticism are essential, both when you read things from traditionally reputable sources, like WaPo, NYT, state media, politicians, and alternative media, like Youtube opinion people, online forums, or your friends, family and colleagues.

My point is simply that "distrusting the government" doesn't mean you should believe the theories. The theories are probably less trustworthy. They can be less trustworthy than a untrustworthy government!

> Critical thinking and scepticism are essential, both when you read things from traditionally reputable sources, like WaPo, NYT, state media, politicians, and alternative media, like Youtube opinion people, online forums, or your friends, family and colleagues.

And I never said otherwise :)

>it's a conspiracy theory

Are you disagreeing with the information in GP's links? As far as I can tell this is all looks pretty legit and the onus is on people like you to prove that all this evidence is somehow fabricated.

He seems to be disagree with how they are characterizing the info in the links.

>"reading about pedophilia every time one turns on the internet is exhausting"

That's because politicians keep bringing this up.

"it's a conspiracy theory" Is not a fact a good reason.

Why do conspiracy theories get a bad rap? it's because there's people who think the moon landing isn't real and the earth is flat. These are what jumps to mind when anyone says "conspiracy theory". Here you are using that association to try to cover for corrupt politicians, which is not exactly a very far out there concept.

> Why do conspiracy theories get a bad rap?

Because it's usually speculation without evidence, and because no matter how much evidence contradicts a conspiracy theory people continue to cling to it like a religion.

I'm not sure what "Most relevant child abuse was covered by famous politicians" is supposed to mean, but most child abuse isn't committed by politicians, there is no evidence that most politicians are child abusers, and there have been several insane conspiracy theories about child abusing politicians in recent years so it's pretty natural to be skeptical when it looks like someone's starting down that path.

I expect there's already people who'd say "The crazy conspiracy theories about child abusing political figures were intentionally spread online by child abusing politicians so that anyone on social media talking about politicians abusing children would only be met with eye rolls"

Didn't downvote. But saying we need to do something about corrupt politicians isn't novel. I'm also not sure how pedophilia and Jeffrey Epstein is meaningfully related to the topic at hand.

Politicians usually go with the "think of the children" persuasion tactic when they want to do some nefarious stuff (and when they don't "fight terrorism" or recently "misinformation").

If “novel” comments were really what this site was about, it would have been dead years ago.

You state that "Most relevant child abuse was covered by famous politicians" and list 5 examples. This does by no means prove your claim. For all I know, the rate of child abusers could be much lower among politicians than in the general population.

I assume he meant covered up, right? Anyway there is a lot of gross stuff happening, but he hasn't substantiated that point.

This powerful "pedophile network" is likely politicians who shopped online at Tesco in the early 2000s and had their credit card numbers used by criminals for fraudulent purposes, and likely got caught up in Operation Ore and falsely accused of having purchased child pornography online. Thousands of people in the UK were raided by police and had their life destroyed over this, and the majority were entirely innocent.

At the time the News of the World, a Rupert Murdoch owned tabloid, was stoking the moral panic over pedophiles and creating an atmosphere of fervour over this issue. Maybe other News Corporation owned media worldwide might have started this whole panic around child pornography in the first place, in the early 2000s? With Murdoch seeing the Internet as a large threat to his dominance over the media?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ore

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/apr/26/comment.s...

https://www.duncancampbell.org/content/operation-ore

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/the_home_office_cover...

And rooting out hidden enemies within is typical of what happens during a moral panic. Same with McCarthyism. In reality it's very unlikely that there are pedophile networks within the UK government.

My reason to downvote will be: Around half the girls I've met in my life were molested by adults as children, and it wasn't by famous people or politicians. It was by neighbors and family members in the suburbs where they grew up. It's fine to call out hypocrisy in the ruling class that covers up for their own while claiming to be trying to address the problem, but at the end of the day the vast majority of the millions of daily cases of child abuse are taking place right nextdoor or even in the same houses as the people who make a lot of noise about corrupt politicians. I'd even go as far as to say that an obsession with famous child abuse cases is a good indicator of someone who's either committed or thought about committing that sort of crime.

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