Latest news with #Rasputin
New York Post
6 days ago
- Politics
- New York Post
Epstein working undercover as a spy is nothing more than another conspiracy theory
A myth is a story that expresses the collective dreamworld of a culture: its fears, its wishes, its self-conception. Some myths refine themselves over generations. Others spring into consciousness in an instant. Advertisement A bit of story or news captures the imagination so thoroughly that the entire culture suddenly projects its hope or terror onto a single hero — or, more often, a villain. Jeffrey Epstein is one of these myths. Since his arrest and jailhouse death, the disgraced financier, socialite and pedophile has become America's most famous villain, an archetype who offers virtually all factions something to hate. Advertisement To some, he represents the hidden sexual depravity of elites. To others, a global conspiracy established through blackmail, espionage and intrigue. To still others, he is a weapon to be wielded against his onetime friend, President Trump. The omni-conspiracy Epstein embodies the omni-conspiracy. Advertisement To some critics, his connections to the world's most powerful people suggest membership in a cabal that runs elite institutions. And his houses, airplanes and islands — paired with the uncertain provenance of his wealth — all stand as proof that he profited from his corruption. The game, then, is to assign the blame and establish the meaning of his crimes. Epstein has captured the public mind, and the question is whether he will be cast as the Marquis de Sade or as Charles Ponzi. Advertisement A number of theories circulate: that Epstein was an intelligence asset who orchestrated sexual blackmail against the super-elite; that Epstein was a Rasputin figure who seduced the rich out of their fortunes; that he had enough kompromat on world leaders that he had to be secretly murdered in his prison cell. There is enough documentary evidence to raise suspicion, at least: the snapshots of Bill Clinton getting a massage in a private airport hangar; the bizarre contracts and transactions between Epstein and billionaire Les Wexner; the seeming disappearance of the 'tens of thousands of videos' of Epstein 'with children or child porn.' In each case, Epstein seems to transgress America's most deeply maintained taboos. He is a pedophile who abused scores of young girls. He is a criminal who defrauded others of billions. He is a serpent who twisted his way into high society through manipulation and deceit. He represents a complete repudiation of the virtues of America's Puritan culture — modesty, honesty, humility — and symbolizes all that is rotten with America's elite in a period of decadence and anxiety. Beware projections Thus, the intense public reaction. Advertisement Epstein allows us to project our hatreds and fears onto a single man. His biography contains sufficient mystery to allow us to fill in the blanks with our pet obsessions. Some, or all, of the conspiracy theories might be true. But the facts will never be enough. Advertisement On one side, it appears that many powerful people have a vested interest in burying Epstein's secrets; on the other, the public has grown so distrustful of officialdom that no report or accounting will ever be transparent enough. I've watched the Epstein case percolate through right-wing and left-wing media for years, without forming strong judgments. My sense is that the most elaborate fantasies — that Epstein was part of a cabal of pedophile cannibals, or that he was running world governments on behalf of the Mossad — are a deflection from a more banal, but perhaps even more disturbing, reality. Jeffrey Epstein was not a cannibal or foreign subversive but a depraved twist on an all-American archetype: the Jay Gatsby character. Advertisement Like Gatsby, Epstein was an arriviste who sought to dissociate himself from his humble origins, gained his wealth through fraud and artifice, and showered money onto others in the hopes of being accepted into high society. He amassed astounding wealth and cultivated an elite network. But the money, the parties, the islands, the brokerage accounts, and the snapshots with the rich were all empty symbols, bribes that temporarily masked the horror of a badly lived life. When it all came crashing down, no one attended Epstein's funeral — as no one attended Gatsby's. Stick to the facts Advertisement We should seek to uncover all the facts, but we do not need an omni-conspiracy, or an elaborate espionage plot, to identify the deepest lessons of the Epstein myth. Our elites are easily seduced by material wealth and, at a minimum, willing to turn a blind eye to a man who surrounds himself with teenaged girls. Epstein produced nothing of value, built his status only on perceptions and, for anyone who cared to look, bore all of the marks of a predator. But even America's wealthiest and most powerful could not resist a private plane or a few nights in the Virgin Islands. Epstein was a monster, but the people who helped him maintain his status were guilty of a very American style of nihilism. Epstein was just the dead man's switch, who, when his life blew up, sprayed the others in shrapnel.
Axios
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
Harper Steele takes center stage at SF Pride
Harper Steele isn't new to Pride parades, but this year's will feel a bit different when she takes on the role of celebrity grand marshal for what she calls "the mother of Pride parades." The big picture: The Los Angeles-based trans comedy writer and producer will anchor San Francisco's celebration of LGBTQ+ resilience amid an uptick in anti-trans incidents across the country. Steele's "visibility and vulnerability are a powerful reminder that queer people can and must be celebrated in every context," SF Pride executive director Suzanne Ford said in a statement on Steele's involvement. State of play: Steele's connection to the Bay Area runs deep. Since first hitch hiking to San Francisco in her 20s, she has often returned to see friends and spend time with record collections at Amoeba and Rasputin. Places like San Francisco are "beacons" for many LGBTQ+ people, she told Axios. "My own journey, much of that was true." Flashback: Steele grew up in Iowa City with "a skewed understanding of what it meant to be trans," as if it was "something psychologically deviant," she said. "I stuck to that for a while." After navigating gender dysphoria for decades, she transitioned at age 59 and started coming out to friends in 2021. "With a lot of trans people, that all-in moment happens three or four times, and then you retreat, advance, retreat," she said. "But at age 59, I didn't like the idea of getting older and not being authentic to myself." Between the lines: Steele became more widely known after " Will & Harper," a 2024 documentary that followed her and longtime friend Will Ferrell on a road trip across America. The film was Ferrell's idea, and it took her a while to agree. "I was thinking about anti-trans bills passing across the country, and then I thought, 'Well, there's some use I can get out of this very popular actor... maybe more people will see this.'" What they're saying:"I do think there's an environment where trans children can grow up in today's world... with less shame and guilt or no shame or guilt, which is the way we should all be allowed to grow," said Steele, who is now working on a memoir. Though she acknowledged it's "very idealistic thinking," she remains "hopeful we can change hearts and minds for those young people."
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Serious Immigration Law Enforcement Means Serious Destruction to American Liberty
Stephen Miller, the misguided immigration-obsessed Rasputin encouraging President Donald Trump's authoritarian overreaches to drive from the country people who the administration insists (but does not want to prove) are here illegally, has floated the administration's most tyrannical trial balloon yet: stabbing the very heart of what's decent in the Western legal tradition by saying the administration can and ought to eliminate the writ of habeas corpus in order to evade legal niceties preventing them from deporting as many people as they want, as fast as they want to. As Jacob Sullum reported at Reason last week, Miller's untrue attempt to define illegal immigration as the sort of "invasion" that the Constitution does allow as an excuse to suspend the writ (though constitutional construction strongly suggests only Congress can actually do it) is prerejected by multiple federal judges, who have noted that "Trump's understanding of 'invasion or predatory incursion' is inconsistent with the law's historical context and with contemporaneous usage, including the definition of 'invasion' reflected in dictionaries, correspondence among the Founders, and the Constitution itself." The writ of habeas corpus—in essence requiring the state to provide reasons and evidence before a court for holding someone in custody—is sensibly described commonly, as in this 1902 article in The American Historical Review as "one of the important safeguards of personal liberty, and the struggle for its possession has marked the advance of constitutional government." One may quibble because the original Magna Carta specifies this as applying to "freemen," the positive trend in Western law has been applying its best standards to all people and in America everyone ought to be in essence a "freeman." Centuries ago our English legal tradition explicitly included in that Magna Carta that the King agreed that no one should be "taken or imprisoned…or outlawed or exiled or in any way ruined, nor will we go against such a man or send against him save by lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land." The libertarian movement has been infected by a heresy in the past few decades, springing from the writings of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, that allowed people temperamentally opposed to changes in the ethnic background of the people who live in this country to square a desire to manage that variable to their preferences with a self-image as a complete defender of total liberty. The argument is more or less that a government should be able to, and ought to, behave as a private property owner of the public property it controls, especially when the restrictions it would impose seem to be wanted by a large number of the citizens of the country in whose name they manage the property. Following from that dubious proposition is the notion that it is no more a violation of the principle of nonaggression for a government to physically bar or remove someone from America who had committed no actual harm to any individual's person or property than it would be for you as a private homeowner to do the same barring or expulsion of someone you consider an intruder from your house or yard. It's a shoddy argument that proves far too much about government's alleged proper power over behavior on "public property," though for whatever reason the pro-immigration-enforcement Hoppean "libertarian" never applies this line of alleged logic anywhere else. As Anthony Gregory and Walter Block explained in a Fall 2007 article in the Journal of Libertarian Studies, "Hoppe's position that keeping illegals off public property because of their supposed 'invasiveness' could easily be extended to other matters, aside from free trade. Gun laws, drug laws, prostitution laws, drinking laws, smoking laws, laws against prayer—all of these things could be defended on the basis that many tax-paying property owners would not want such behavior on their own private property." Only with actual individual private property, a libertarian recognizes, can whatever problem a Hoppean sees with human migration be solved. But that solution, Gregory and Block say, is written off by Hoppeans as "unrealistic" in the state-ruled world we currently live in. But, the authors truthfully note, "even more [unrealistic] is the collectivist notion of the state keeping out immigrants in any way that emulates the market decisions and choices of the taxpayers. Since it is unrealistic, why even consider asking the government to do so? Between two unrealistic choices, why, on libertarian grounds no less, favor the one that necessitates state action?" Even if one as a libertarian somehow believes that border control and keeping noncitizens out of the country was a legitimate government function justifying the use of force, applying even a tiny bit of real-world practical wisdom toward the practices necessary to try (even though they'd always fail) to achieve that goal should lead to the inescapable conclusion, however regretful for the dedicated Hoppean, that no libertarian could sensibly advocate the government actually try to sternly enforce immigration laws in the real world (even if such laws are theoretically justifiable). Miller's announcement about eliminating habeas corpus for the purpose of kicking out who he wants to kick out makes perfect sense for his goals—though no sense at all for anyone with the slightest bit of respect for Western civilization or limited government. An 1988 article in The American Journal of Legal History provides interesting context to the Miller controversy today. It tells the story of California judges who, against opposition both popular and judicial, insisted on allowing fair consideration of the writ of habeas corpus, and often vindicating the rights to remain, for many thousands of Chinese victims of threatened exclusion or deportation under the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. Those who found such judges' concern for the rights of denied Chinese residents or would-be residents overly punctilious mocked their court as running a "habeas corpus mill." Indeed, many such mills will have to run if the U.S. government is to obey the law, and the Western tradition of justice, in its attempt to deport millions. (The 1868 version of the Burlingame Treaty between the U.S. and China, alas amended to be made far less libertarian in 1880 and paving the way for the Exclusion Act, in its Article 5 "provided for the reciprocal recognition of 'the inherent and inalienable right of man to change his home and allegiance' and the 'mutual advantage of the free migration and emigration' of people of both nations 'for purposes of curiosity, of trade, or as permanent residents.'") Allowing government to ban or punish behavior that is victimless in the libertarian sense (and if one wants to argue that anyone who uses government services is victimizing taxpayers, that argument applies equally well to all your fellow citizens born here, yet is never offered as a legitimate reason to deport everyone) will inevitably lead to violating a wide swaths of rights in order to punish people who rarely have victims reporting the "crimes," who mostly only the state wants to punish. If a law can't be enforced effectively while still honoring the basics of a limited government's responsibilities toward how to treat people it intends to physically harm, then it ought not be enforced—especially immigration laws, whose enforcement even beyond the procedural issues would be a devastating blow to American productivity and prosperity, all in the name of curtailing a practice that is overall more than fine for all Americans. Yes, on occasion an illegal immigrant commits a horrific crime that would not have happened had they not been here. Still, advocating barring any of a conceivable class that committed a crime proves far too much to preserve even a semblance of limited government, and violates true justice, which must be about individuals and individual actions, not mere membership in some conceived group whose other members did wrong. Immigration enforcement, like the enforcement of any law that mostly harms the harmless and prevents desired economic transactions that make things better for all sides, is impossible to do in a way that respects procedural or substantive justice. For the same reason drug law warriors want to toss away the Fourth Amendment, so do immigration hawks quickly reach the conclusion that the core protection of people from runaway government law enforcement is just an impediment to be wiped away in pursuit of their perverse goals. It is not surprising that a government goal as unlibertarian as strict immigration law enforcement should lead ineluctably to throwing away the most precious protection against tyranny the West has produced and mostly honored; and anyone who calls for strict immigration enforcement is in essence calling, as Miller recognized, for the destruction of the centuries-old core legal protection against malignant tyranny, the writ of habeas corpus. The post Serious Immigration Law Enforcement Means Serious Destruction to American Liberty appeared first on
Time Out
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
I took a ferry to New York's newest immersive show—it's a fun night out among comrades
Dressed head to toe in black—from jet black lipstick and a long, witchy wig to a edgy leather harness—I joined dozens of others like me en masse to board a ferry to Governors Island on Saturday night. It looked like we were part of some Millennial goth-cult, which is the required dress code of The Death of Rasputin, the new immersive production by Artemis is Burning—a female-led creative team—at LMCC's Arts Center. I've found that in the wake of Sleep No More 's closure, we're all looking for something to fill the void it left, a show that we feel a real part of, one that we can physically touch and turn over in our hands and express joy, excitement, concern and fear to the actors in front of us. Enter The Death of Rasputin. Was it a success? It certainly tries and for that, it's worth a fun night out. Once scanned in and bag checked, I made my way into a bohemian bar, Katya's, with jewel-toned hanging lanterns and anti-establishment posters plastered on its brick walls, where all my fellow darklings ordered drink specials like a delightful clarified white Russian and snacked on just-OK pierogis. The setting here is 1916 Petrograd (Russia) before the revolution and just as the mysterious mystic Rasputin is gaining (too much) influence with the Romanovs, especially the tsarina—a concept by Ashley Brett Chipman (Servant). The pre-show excitement was electric. My cult-mates and I enjoyed people-watching and checking out the dimly-lit room's little details by set designer Lili Teplan (Love, Brooklyn) and light designer Devin Cameron (The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart). Just before the show began, we were given some rules: no phones, no camera and no talking. We were about to experience. As described in a press release, it's not a mere play—' it is a descent into decadence, a fever-dream of power, prophecy, and betrayal.' 'This debaucherous satire unfolds as a lavish, unholy revel, conjuring the espionage and mysticism that danced at the edges of the Romanov dynasty in its twilight hour. Here, every character claws for dominion, every ambition is laced with poison, and every grasp for power pulls them closer to the abyss. With history and legend entwined, and the specter of Rasputin looming large, this production dares to reclaim the grand spectacle of immersive performance, shattering the mold long held by the few. The revolution is here. The prophecy is written. Will you heed the call?' Featuring an original cast member, directors and a producer from Sleep No More —Zina Zinchenko, Ashley Brett Chipman, Hope Youngblood and Kelly Bartnik, respectively — The Death of Rasputin aims to recreate the breathless excitement of the immersive show that had us returning again and again to the McKittrick Hotel for 13 years. With choreography by James Finnemore (TERRA), costume design by Eulyn Colette Hufkie (The Walking Dead) and sound design by Stephen Dobbie (The Burnt City), we were yanked into this new world like joining the whirling dance performed in the opening scene. We were actively part of it at times and largely fly-on-the-wall observers to this explosive moment in history—made more dramatic, romantic, sensual and mysterious for the production than it actually was in reality. Like Punchdrunk's Sleep No More, Emursive's Life & Trust (RIP) and 2023's The Great Gatsby (did you forget about this one?), we were free to choose our own adventure and follow whomever we wanted to—or choose what cult we were in—the cult of Rasputin, the cult of revolution that takes place in the bar or in the cult of opulence and follow the Romanovs. We got to roam around the two-story space and explore the rooms, which include the bar, a full cabin in the woods, a military tent, a study, the royal couple's boudoir, a garden, the Winter Palace's ballroom and a couple of hidden passages. It's smaller in scale, making for an easier time getting around and following fewer cast members. It could benefit for a smaller ticket cap, however, because it suffers from what a lot of immersive performances do: a swarm of audience members who block the view at times. I wasn't immediately aware of my freedom, so I stuck around in the bar for the first 10 or 15 minutes and enjoyed chanting about the right to food and healthcare with my comrades a little too much. I mostly followed Lohktina (Manatsu Tanaka) as she dealt with the fallout from choosing a life of magic and 'communing' with Rasputin (Jake Ryan Lozano) but had fun watching the priest Iliodor (Tim Creavin) lose his shit when he finds out the tsarina is also getting down and dirty with Rasputin—honestly, who wasn't? As a lover of history, I was surprised by this version of Rasputin, who in the performance is a raving and whirling madman, careening from room to room and womanizing with wild abandon. The character was missing the mesmerizing (read: sexy) quality that would explain why everyone was so entranced. Notably, The Death of Rasputin is different from shows like Sleep No More in one major way: it had dialogue. I did wonder if the broken silence signaled some to audience members that it was OK to speak—because some of them did and had no qualms about it. And unlike many other immersive productions, humor found its way into the script and in off-hand comments and in the delivery by the cast, which lightened the tension at times, which I enjoyed but impacted the tone. It turns out my Millennial goth-cult was actually a pretty fun hang and one that I'd recommend to those looking to live through a historic event that had nothing to do with us for once. Performances of The Death of Rasputin are on Thursdays through Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 2:15pm through May 31. Tickets are $148 and include ferry transportation to and from Governors Island, and a limited number of $44 student tickets are available.
New York Times
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Review: Will ‘The Death of Rasputin' Have a Cult Following?
There was an orgy in the next room. Or possibly a riot. Upstairs the aristocracy colluded. Downstairs the workers plotted. Norms were flouted, alternative medicine practiced. The world tumbled toward anarchy and decadence. Honestly, there are worse ways to spend an evening. This was 'The Death of Rasputin,' an immersive event created by the collective Artemis Is Burning and staged in an arts building on Governors Island. The much delayed closing of 'Sleep No More' in January and the more abrupt shuttering of 'Life and Trust' last month have left a vacuum in the immersive scene. 'The Death of Rasputin,' which runs through the end of May, is one attempt to fill it. (The bar offerings — pierogi, spicy pickles, an elevated White Russian — are another.) With 10 performers, this show is smaller in scale than those others, but even on a limited budget, it glimmers like a Fabergé egg. Especially if you don't look too closely at the jewels. Conceived and directed by Ashley Brett Chipman and written by Chipman and three others, the show is set, loosely, in St. Petersburg (a.k.a. Petrograd) in 1916. Most of the scenes, even the more outré ones, have some basis in fact, though Artemis takes a relaxed approach to language and chronology. Broadly, the shows is in thrall to Grigory Rasputin, the mystic who exerted an unhealthy influence on the Romanov royal family in the years just before the Russian Revolution. His sway unsettled several aristocrats, who conspired in his murder. Legend has it that he was poisoned, shot, bludgeoned, then finally drowned in the Neva River. (The real story is probably duller.) The performance begins with a ride to the island. Ticket holders are instructed to wear black and embrace Romanov chic, albeit in comfortable shoes, which looks a little funny in the electric light of the ferry, a cult afloat. After coat check and perhaps a drink at the bar, there is an introductory scene, then participants can roam at will across two floors and a dozen or so environments in a single building. In structure and style, 'The Death of Rasputin' doesn't diverge too much from recent immersive offerings. There are drawers to poke through, letters to read, eldritch items to caress, a secret passage or two, performers to chase. (Unless you are very, very fast, sightlines remain a problem.) There is also lots of dance fighting and hanky-panky, though in a welcome departure, the characters speak and pains have been taken to offer audiences a coherent experience. Even with fewer square feet, forking narrative paths remain. I arrived with one friend and ran into two more there. In the debrief in the bar afterward (a pleasure particular to immersive theater), we discovered that we all had significantly different evenings. I had missed, for example, a pig's head and something that a friend referred to as a 'rope sex magic thing.' Others had failed to spot the secret passages. Having been mesmerized once, it's obvious why someone might want to return — for the glamour, for the dancing, for the comfort that history, even violent history, provides. It's no surprise how this one ends. The parallels between 'The Death of Rasputin' and our country today aren't straightforward, and thankfully the collective doesn't contort them to fit this moment. As in most immersive shows, you can't really join the revolution or resist it — only watch from the margins and try to stay out of the way. Maybe that's true of most people during most real insurrections. And it's too much for a show to offer a real alternative. At least in this revolution you can dance.
