The Only Thing That Scares Capitalists
I went through the currently available Epstein Files and compiled references to socialism, communism, socialist states, and communist leadership.
The Cold War supposedly ended more than three decades ago. The Soviet Union collapsed, Eastern Europe privatized and liberalized, and the ideological conflict that once defined global politics was declared finished.
Yet if communism truly disappeared as a geopolitical threat, one question remains: Why does anti-communism remain so pervasive?
From sanctions and blockades to media narratives and academic discourse, socialist governments continue to provoke a level of hostility from the West that far exceeds the reaction directed toward other political systems. Authoritarian monarchies, military dictatorships, and oligarchic regimes coexist comfortably and are even supported within the capitalist global order. But perceived socialist states—whether Cuba, Venezuela, China, or North Korea—remain objects of intense scrutiny and relentless criticism.
This persistence suggests that anti-communism is not simply a relic of Cold War ideology. It functions as something deeper: a structural response to systems that challenge the fundamental logic of capitalist accumulation and labor’s relation to production.
The documents examined in this essay provide an unexpected glimpse into how that hostility circulates among “elite” networks. The correspondence comes from the Epstein Files. If you are at this point somehow unfamiliar, it’s a collection of emails and communications involving world leaders, financiers, academics, political strategists, and media figures, divulged reluctantly by the U.S. government as a result of Jeffrey Epstein’s international pedophilic sex trafficking and blackmail schemes among the most monied class. Within these exchanges, socialism repeatedly appears as a subject of commentary, speculation, and an ideological villain.
Individually, most of the emails look mundane, with the interesting or whacky few sprinkled throughout, but when viewed as a whole, there’s a consistent pattern: socialism is treated not as one political ideology among many but as a persistent problem that requires explanation, containment, or correction.
This interpretation vindicates political theorist Gabriel Rockhill’s description of the institutional production of anti-communist discourse within Western intellectual and media institutions. Within the framework of his 2025 book, Who Paid The Pipers of Western Marxism?, anti-communism operates through a distributed network of narratives that normalize the association between socialism and dysfunction while marginalizing alternative interpretations (Rockhill, 2025).
If capitalism truly represents the “natural and inevitable organization of modern society”, why does socialism continue to provoke such sustained opposition?
Anti-Communism, Imperial Strategy, and Ideological Production in the Epstein Files
Over the last month, I went through the currently available Epstein documents and compiled references to socialism, communism, socialist states, and communist leadership. The exercise started simply as a catalog of mentions, stemming from a curiosity. But once those references were compiled, a global anti-communism through-line became impossible to ignore and I had to write about it. (This article is by no means comprehensive, and I have left more references at the end of this note that can be viewed later with instructions on how to do so.)
Across dozens of emails, forwarded articles, and commentary from authors at the behest of Jeffrey Epstein, socialism repeatedly appears as a category of concern. Communist leaders are discussed as geopolitical threats. Socialist governments are framed as unstable, theatrical, or strategically problematic. Diplomatic engagement among them is interpreted through ideological language rather than conventional diplomacy.
The persistence of anti-communism is a default interpretive framework among elite networks with major global financial control. To understand why that pattern persists, it helps to revisit a theory written more than a century ago:
In Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Vladimir Lenin argued that modern capitalism inevitably produces global competition among powerful states seeking access to markets, resources, and labor. Once capitalism reaches the stage of monopoly and finance capital, to paraphrase Lenin, economic expansion becomes inseparable from political domination (Lenin, 1916).
To directly quote the first section of Imperialism, which will ground some additional points later in this note:
“Half a century ago, when Marx was writing Capital, free competition appeared to the overwhelming majority of economists to be a “natural law”. Official science tried, by a conspiracy of silence, to kill the works of Marx, who by a theoretical and historical analysis of capitalism had proved that free competition gives rise to the concentration of production, which, in turn, at a certain stage of development, leads to monopoly. Today, monopoly has become a fact. Economists are writing mountains of books in which they describe the diverse manifestations of monopoly, and continue to declare in chorus that “Marxism is refuted”. But facts are stubborn things, as the English proverb says, and they have to be reckoned with, whether we like it or not. The facts show that differences between capitalist countries, e.g., in the matter of protection or free trade, only give rise to insignificant variations in the form of monopolies or in the moment of their appearance; and that the rise of monopolies, as the result of the concentration of production, is a general and fundamental law of the present stage of development of capitalism.”
To directly quote the seventh section of Imperialism, in which Lenin defines imperialism by 5 of its basic features:
“(1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves, and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.”
Within this system, socialist states represent a structural problem. They attempt to organize economic life outside the profit-driven logic of global capital; human-focused societies.
That is why hostility toward socialism tends to be so consistent across time and across political administrations. More than mere ideological disagreement, it is systemic conflict required to maintain the hegemonic world order.
Socialism as a Reflexive Label
One of the simplest but most revealing moments within the files illustrates how reflexively the term “socialism” can be deployed.
In an exchange with Eva Dubin and several other members of hospital leadership, discussing labor relations within the staff union at Mount Sinai (NYC) that prevented volunteers from performing unpaid work that would displace paid labor, Jeffrey Epstein responded with a single word:
“socialism”
(Epstein, 2012, EFTA00709757)
The remark is brief, but it captures an enduring rhetorical structure. Socialism here is not used as a technical description of an economic system. Instead, it becomes shorthand for any institutional constraint on private authority. (In a side note, this interaction itself brings up the question of why he was trying to get authorization for a “Russian girl” to “volunteer” at Mount Sinai.)
Organized labor is seen as ideological interference.
This reflex has long been present in more legitimate American political discourse, where policies ranging from labor protections to public healthcare are frequently described as “socialist,” regardless of whether they actually alter the underlying structure of capitalist ownership or labor relations.
Socialism and the Natural Order
Another exchange illustrates how anti-socialist arguments often appeal to ideas about natural hierarchy.
In correspondence with Noam Chomsky, Epstein speculates about the relationship between biological systems and socialism:
“in a predator prey system, all biology (adverse to socialism fundamentals?)”
(Epstein, 2016, EFTA00822037)
He continues in the same message:
“I want to fund some seminars on POWER… financial, physical, military.”
(Epstein, 2016, EFTA00822037)
The juxtaposition is interesting, although the language throughout the message reads as strung-out. Socialism is questioned as being potentially incompatible with biological hierarchy, while financial and military power are treated as neutral objects of study.
This framing echoes a long western intellectual tradition that treats capitalist competition as a reflection of “natural law” while falsely portraying collective organization and community based movements as artificial or coercive.
Venezuela and the Narrative of Socialist Collapse
The Venezuelan “crisis” appears repeatedly in the correspondence, often portrayed as evidence that socialism inevitably produces economic disaster, despite Venezuela not meeting the requirements to be considered a socialist state.
In one exchange, Noam Chomsky responds to a question by Epstein about whether Venezuela represents “socialism at its finest”:
“Wasn’t remotely like socialism… the entire set of private institutions was left untouched.”
(Chomsky, 2016, EFTA02390417/EFTA02390418)
He also describes the country’s economic situation as a “major disaster,” emphasizing the country’s reliance on oil exports.
The broader political context, however, complicates this narrative. Congressional oversight materials circulating within the archive discuss U.S. sanctions policy toward Venezuela and its role in undermining the Maduro government (U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform, 2019, HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_032836).
Sanctions and blockades imposed on Venezuela’s oil sector and financial system significantly reduced the country’s ability to generate foreign currency. Because heavy crude oil exports historically account for the overwhelming majority of Venezuela’s export revenue, these restrictions had immediate consequences for the country’s ability to import food, medicine, and industrial equipment.
The resulting economic crisis is presented as evidence of socialism’s failure. Yet the material conditions of economic siege—sanctions, financial isolation, and asset seizures—are minimized in public narratives.
This is a common strategy in conflicts involving socialist or anti-imperialist governments. Economic pressure is applied, and the resulting crisis is attributed to “ideology” rather than the material consequences of direct intervention at the command of the United States.
Cuba and the Long Shadow of Embargo
The Cuban case illustrates how economic pressure can shape the development of a socialist society for decades, as well as define its resilience.
The archive contains several references to Fidel Castro, including one message circulating recent photographs of him:
“These are recent pictures of Fidel.”
(Epstein, 2012, EFTA01145814)
Two weeks later, another email, written after Castro’s death, reads:
“Fidel Castro died now a lot of possibilities for me.”
(Sulayem, 2012, EFTA02669363)
The remark reflects a long-standing expectation among foreign observers that political change in Cuba might open the country to new economic opportunities once its leader was out of the way, and believe me, the West tried to get him out of the way (Fidel Castro reportedly survived 638 attempts on his life).
Since the early 1960s, however, Cuba has operated under a comprehensive U.S. embargo designed to isolate the island nation’s revolutionary socialist government from global markets. Restrictions on trade, financial services, and investment have profoundly shaped the country’s economic development.
When shortages occur within that system, they are presented as evidence that socialism itself is unsustainable, even though the Cuban economy has functioned for decades under the illegal and inhumane conditions of enforced isolation. I will expand on that in the next section.
Cuba: Blockade, Energy Siege, and the Politics of Scarcity
Recent developments in Cuba illustrate how economic pressure operates in practice. The U.S. embargo against the island, first imposed in 1962, has been repeatedly intensified, effort spearheaded by Batistaist and Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, through sanctions on shipping, finance, tourism, and fuel imports. In recent years the strategy has expanded into what analysts increasingly describe as an energy blockade, targeting the oil supply that sustains Cuba’s electricity grid, transportation system, and healthcare infrastructure.
This is a topic that I couldn’t possibly fit into one Substack article, so I have attached individual links after each paragraph with relevant information, as well as in the reference section after the article. Please read them if you are interested.
Because more than 80 percent of Cuba’s electricity generation depends on imported fuel, restrictions on oil shipments have immediate and cascading effects across the entire economy. When fuel imports collapse, the consequences are felt everywhere: transportation stops, food distribution slows, electricity production declines, and hospitals struggle to operate essential equipment. (Read More Here)
Recent reporting illustrates the scale of the crisis. Fuel shortages have produced widespread blackouts, forcing schools to close, reducing public transport, and disrupting the country’s food distribution system. Power outages have also affected water pumping infrastructure and sanitation systems, threatening access to safe drinking water for millions of residents. (Read More Here)
The healthcare system has been particularly affected. According to Cuban officials, fuel restrictions have hindered ambulance services, disrupted hospital power supplies, and complicated the delivery of medicines and medical equipment. Shortages have affected treatments for chronic illnesses and cancer patients, forcing medical facilities to ration resources and rely on improvised solutions. (Read More Here)
The energy crisis has also produced broader economic consequences. Public transportation has been reduced, agricultural production has slowed due to lack of fuel for harvesting and distribution, and entire neighborhoods experience prolonged power outages lasting many hours each day. (Read More Here)
These material conditions are not abstract policy debates. They shape everyday life. Food distribution systems struggle to function when trucks cannot operate. Garbage accumulates in cities when fuel shortages halt waste collection. Schools close when electricity is unavailable. In response to the worsening crisis, international aid shipments have begun arriving from countries such as Mexico, which recently sent more than a thousand tons of food and basic supplies to the island, but no fuel. (Read More Here)
At the same time, humanitarian organizations and international activists have begun organizing relief initiatives such as the Nuestra América Convoy, a planned international effort to deliver aid to Cuba in response to the deepening economic emergency. Destination Havana, 21 March 2026. (Read More/Donate Here)
The political logic behind these policies is not hidden. Economic sanctions are frequently justified by U.S. officials as tools designed to pressure the Cuban government into political change. Critics, however, argue that the practical effect is to impose economic hardship on the population in order to destabilize the political system. Collective punishment is illegal under international law.
Within the broader framework of imperial political economy, this strategy is common. Economic warfare through sanctions, embargoes, and financial exclusion function as a method of disciplining states that attempt to operate outside the dominant structures of global capital.
The Cuban case therefore illustrates a recurring dynamic in the history of anti-communist policy. Economic isolation produces material shortages, and those shortages are then presented falsely as evidence that socialist governance itself is unsustainable. In German, this is called a “Teufelskreis”; a devil’s circle, or a vicious cycle.
In practice, the line between ideological conflict and economic siege becomes difficult to separate.
Coordinated Narratives and Ideological Framing
When the emails in the Epstein archive are read sequentially, a recurring narrative structure emerges. Socialist governments are consistently discussed through a set of recognizable themes: dysfunction, theatricality, ideological rigidity, or geopolitical threat.
These narratives appear across different correspondents and contexts.
In one thread discussing diplomatic engagement between China and North Korea, Epstein speculates about the broader geopolitical implications:
“curious to see what the reaction from Trump’s administration and from Europe will be… Reunion of three socialist countries?”
(Epstein, 2018, EFTA02488684 {Interestingly, this document has been removed from the DOJ website as of 24 February 2026, but can still be viewed on JMail.world})
The language is telling. The situation is not described simply as diplomacy among states. Instead, it is portrayed as an ideological alignment among socialist governments.
A similar framing appears in another email recounting an anecdote referencing Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin:
“We are brothers, we are Communists.”
(Epstein to Steve Bannon, 2017, EFTA00850125/EFTA00850126, {As far as I can tell, this quote only comes from Former Israeli President, Shimon Peres, which is also odd to say the least.})
Whether historically accurate or not, the anecdote reinforces the perception that communist leadership forms a cohesive political bloc.
The repetition of these narratives suggests that anti-communism functions as a default interpretive framework through which international events are understood.
Steve Bannon, Jeffrey Epstein, and Socialist Diplomacy
This tranche also shows direct correspondence between Jeffrey Epstein and far-right political strategist Steve Bannon concerning geopolitical developments involving socialist states.
One email forwarded by Bannon discusses meetings between Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, discussing how both Jeffrey Epstein “and Kim (Jong Un) have upgraded their advisors”:
“when I was on the trilateral commission. I always took along my very pretty american looking california blonde assistant that was silently fluent in the three main dialects. I loved it when they smiled to me as they said to each other . be careful of the jewish dog (referring to himself).”
(Epstein, 2018, EFTA00813342)
Bannon’s reply in the thread—“Always”—suggests that this exchange was part of an ongoing conversation.
The significance of these communications lies in their context. Bannon was at the time deeply involved in building transnational far-right nationalist political networks across Europe and the United States, with Marine le Pen in France, Victor Orbán in Hungary, Nigel Farage in the UK, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and later, allegiances with Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) party in Italy, and the German Alternative für Deutschland (which at the time of writing has had its “extremist” label put on pause). Bannon’s correspondence with Epstein shows that hostile discussions about socialist governments circulated within the same elite networks that were shaping contemporary political movements.
These emails provide a glimpse into how geopolitical narratives travel within elite circles. News articles, anecdotes, and commentary about socialist states move through informal networks of political strategists, financiers, and media figures, reinforcing ideological interpretations of global events.
Imperialism in Practice: Sanctions, Blockades, Economic Warfare
The ideological framing of socialism cannot be separated from the material instruments used to contain it, even outside of physical intervention.
Throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, socialist and anti-imperialist governments have faced a recurring set of economic pressures:
Trade embargoes
Financial sanctions
Asset seizures
Covert destabilization efforts (coups and internal corruption)
Diplomatic isolation
These tools operate as mechanisms of economic discipline.
In Cuba, the U.S. embargo has restricted trade and access to financial services for more than six decades.
In Venezuela, sanctions targeting the oil sector and financial system have dramatically reduced government revenue and limited the country’s ability to import essential goods. Last month, their president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were kidnapped from their home in Caracas during a limited invasion by the US and imprisoned in New York’s Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, alongside Luigi Mangione. Maduro is currently being prevented from accessing Venezuelan based funds in order to pay for legal counsel, illegal under the sixth amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
In North Korea, international sanctions have restricted trade, technology transfer, and investment for more than half a century. Developing Nuclear Arms, and sticking to their self-reliant and reclusive but principled Juche ideology has likely kept them from being deposed like Maduro, or entirely blocked from the rest of the world like Cuba, given the small island nation’s 90-mile proximity to Florida.
In China, containment strategies increasingly involve technology bans, export controls, and supply-chain decoupling.
Seen individually, these policies appear as discrete foreign policy decisions. Viewed collectively, they resemble what Lenin described as the political management of a global economic hierarchy.
States that attempt to organize economic life outside the framework of global capital face pressure designed to reintegrate them into that system, and allowing their resources to be privatized, purchased, and controlled.
The cases discussed above portray a recurring pattern in the global treatment of socialist states. Cuba faces a decades-long embargo that constrains energy, finance, and trade. Venezuela has experienced sweeping sanctions targeting its oil sector and access to international credit and shipping lanes. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea remains subject to one of the most comprehensive sanctions regimes in modern history, restricting everything from banking to industrial imports. China, while too economically integrated to be isolated in the same way, increasingly confronts technological embargoes, export controls, and supply-chain decoupling efforts designed to slow its development.
These policies may differ in scale and context, but their strategic logic is consistent. Economic pressure is applied to states that challenge the dominant structure of global capital, and the resulting economic disruption is then interpreted as evidence that alternative systems cannot function. In this way, ideological conflict and economic coercion become mutually reinforcing; one to justify the other.
Why Socialism Provokes Hostility
Across the digital webbing of one prolific sexual predator and power broker, socialism appears in three distinct roles:
First, it functions as a domestic ideological label used to discredit labor institutions and social protections.
Second, it appears as a geopolitical category used to interpret alliances among states such as China, Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela.
Third, it becomes an explanation for economic crises in countries subjected to external pressure.
What unites these uses is the assumption that socialism represents an illegitimate or unstable political order.
Lenin’s analysis suggests an alternative interpretation. If capitalism depends on the global expansion of profit-driven production, then systems that attempt to organize economic life outside that logic inevitably pose a challenge to the existing hegemonic power.
From that perspective, anti-communism can be seen as a structural response, more than an ideological disagreement. This explains why socialist governments continue to attract such intense scrutiny and hostility. There may be many political ideologies, but only one directly challenges the ownership structure on which capitalism depends.
And that is why, more than a century after the Russian Revolution, there is still only one thing that truly scares capitalists.
References
Bannon, S. (2018). Email correspondence regarding Kim Jong Un and Xi Jinping. Epstein Archive (EFTA00813334).
Chomsky, N. (2016). Email correspondence regarding Venezuela and socialism. Epstein Archive (EFTA02390417).
Epstein, J. (2003). Email correspondence regarding labor unions. Epstein Archive (EFTA00709757).
Epstein, J. (2015). Email correspondence with Noam Chomsky regarding power and socialism. Epstein Archive (EFTA00822037).
Epstein, J. (2016). Email correspondence referencing Fidel Castro photographs. Epstein Archive (EFTA01145814).
Epstein, J. (2017). Email correspondence referencing Mao and Stalin anecdote. Epstein Archive (EFTA00850125).
Epstein, J. (2018). Email correspondence discussing a “reunion of three socialist countries.” Epstein Archive (EFTA02488684).
Lenin, V. I. (1916). Imperialism: The highest stage of capitalism. International Publishers.
Rockhill, G. (2025). Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism?. New York University Press. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781685901370
Sulayem, S. B. (2016). Email correspondence referencing Fidel Castro’s death. Epstein Archive (EFTA02669363).
U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform. (2019). Congressional oversight materials regarding Venezuela sanctions policy. Epstein Archive (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_032836).
Cuba Links
CEPR – Oil blockade analysis
Weisbrot, M. (2026). Trump’s oil blockade of Cuba is economic violence. It must end. Center for Economic and Policy Research.
https://cepr.net/publications/newsweek-trumps-oil-blockade-of-cuba-is-economic-violence-it-must-end/
UN Human Rights Office – Cuba economic crisis briefing
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. (2026). Concerns over Cuba’s deepening economic crisis.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-briefing-notes/2026/02/concerns-over-cubas-deepening-economic-crisis
Associated Press – Cuba healthcare crisis
Associated Press. (2026). Cuba’s health care system pushed to the brink by U.S. fuel blockade, Cuban minister says.
Australian Institute of International Affairs – economic warfare analysis
Naranjo Cáceres, J. Z. (2026). Economic warfare in the Caribbean: Cuba’s fuel crisis and the unravelling “rules-based order.” Australian Institute of International Affairs.
Associated Press – humanitarian aid shipments to Cuba
Associated Press. (2026). Mexico sends humanitarian aid to Cuba amid energy and food shortages.
https://apnews.com/article/cuba-mexico-aid-shipments-food-energy-8153dbee4e33d792cd8bea4f738670e1
Nuestra América Convoy – solidarity aid initiative
Nuestra América Convoy. (2026). Nuestra América convoy: An international solidarity mission to Cuba.
https://nuestraamericaconvoy.org/
EFTA Documents
Quick Tip on how to search these directly, without using JMail. Take the following link, highlight the section with the document number (Ex: “EFTA00813341”), and replace it with the document number you want to view.
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA00813341.pdf
EFTA00413694
EFTA00652667
EFTA00659962
EFTA00692779
EFTA00709757
EFTA00713824
EFTA00720531
EFTA00725932
EFTA00753206
EFTA00768970
EFTA00772835
EFTA00813334
EFTA00822037
EFTA00843351
EFTA00850125
EFTA00862567
EFTA00872105
EFTA00876099
EFTA00953916
EFTA01018221
EFTA01018235
EFTA01018239
EFTA01139679
EFTA01145814
EFTA01196458
EFTA01840445
EFTA02361840
EFTA02390417
EFTA02422060
EFTA02488684 (deleted document referenced in article)
EFTA02498042
EFTA02553801
EFTA02555461
EFTA02597370
EFTA02617427
EFTA02618315
EFTA02618381
EFTA02669363
EFTA02669375
House Oversight Documents
Similar to the EFTA process on searching these directly, without using JMail. Take the following link, highlight the section with the document number (Ex: “032836”), and replace it with the document number you want to view.
https://epstein-emails.sfo3.digitaloceanspaces.com/docs/HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_032836.pdf
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_024384
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_024395
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_025926
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_029497
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_032836
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_033414
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_033416
Excellent. Makes total sense. Thanks
Justice for Palestine