For generations in the US, being accused of being a “conspiracy theorist” meant having one’s perspective devalued, relegated to the unserious, the deranged and the untrustworthy. Instead, in our book Conspiracy/Theory, we argued that hidden and not-so-hidden conspiracies are real and do organise our lives, at least in part. Conspiracies inhere, for example, in the workings of capitalism at large, in new structures of financialization, and can be found increasingly in the power of donors to influence the intellectual terms of university life.

Arguably, nowhere has conspiracy theorising been proven so blatantly valid than in the staggering revelations from the Epstein files. Near-daily reports have exposed the financial and sexual predator trading favours with a vast network of the most elite members of global society, including leaders in corporate finance, hospital administrators, academics, prominent lawyers, Hollywood executives and filmmakers, directors of art institutions, tech oligarchs, intelligence operatives, heads of state, and literal royalty.

The files reveal a privileged conspiratorial class that is shockingly unconcerned by the harm they do to others. Even though accusations of such a global conspiracy once seemed preposterous, the Epstein files attune us to the ways in which conspiracy theories can open up our own habits of thought to critical reexamination. They invite us to understand the potent force of narrative and to recognise how much of what counts as political power relies on stealth; they even give value to the outlandish theories that nonetheless refract some skewed aspects of what we’ve come to know as reality.

Take the example of Pizzagate: the Epstein files may not reveal that Hillary Clinton operated a child sex-trafficking ring in the basement of a DC pizza parlour. But they do document a global network of powerful people, including the Clintons, cosying up to Epstein, in many cases even following his 2008 conviction as a serial sex offender. His illicit activities may not have taken place in a pizza parlour, but take place they did in multiple locations around the world. And while no evidence has emerged that Hillary Clinton herself was involved in any wrongdoing, Bill Clinton’s notorious promiscuity, the photos of him with Epstein, and his numerous mentions in the files make the story more distressingly resonant than it otherwise would be.

Add to these circumstances the curious fact that the word “pizza” appears hundreds of times in the files, and Pizzagate becomes a perverse adumbration of the already bizarre story of a disgraced financier and his global cabal of famous enablers. Speculations are rife as to the actual meaning of the word in the Epstein papers, but without question it appears in contexts sexualising underage girls and children, with “cheese pizza” or “CP” serving as a shorthand for child pornography, along with “grape soda” as code for illicit sexual or otherwise illegal meetings. Maybe sometimes a pizza is just a pizza, but the frequency with which the word occurs has reanimated what was previously relegated to the ridiculous. Pizzagate is alive and well, which raises questions about how conspiratorial reason functions in a mass-mediated public sphere organised not around truth but by power and profit.

Take also the strange ongoing relevance of the QAnon movement: QAnon assumed the existence of a global paedophile ring protected by a “deep state”, portraying Donald Trump as a saviour figure devoted to setting the world right. These claims were amplified by Russian intelligence agencies via social media platforms and represent a key achievement of the alt-right media sphere, which Epstein monitored closely, no doubt with amusement. It taught followers to read signs in everyday life as proof of Trump’s on-going battle against paedophiles and the deep state, promoting a gamer’s view of reality.

Trump now appears as perhaps the single most prominent figure in the Epstein files, and his actions as president document an expansive effort to protect Epstein’s network, and surely himself, from legal jeopardy. In light of these revelations, Pizzagate and QAnon believers must now be read as sensitive to something dangerously real in the world, even while misrecognising the key players.

The questions that arise from the revitalisation of these discredited conspiracy theories turn out not to be the ones we were asking at the time we conceived of Conspiracy/Theory. They aren’t about understanding an informational climate in which the original Pizzagate felt true to large groups of people, or about the clickbait markets and disinformation campaigns that make our information sphere feel precarious.

The Epstein files reveal the actual networked agency of global elites conspiring with one another and operating above and outside the law for personal advantage while simultaneously dictating many of the terms for collective life. The Epstein network is nothing less than an infrastructure in global economy, politics, entertainment and science – a realisation that demands an even more suspicious orientation towards the ruling class and redoubled efforts to engage sympathetically with those attempting to theorise the current disorder.