Many of us on the Left owe an apology—sort of—to the QAnon movement that was influential during the first Trump term. If you forgot or were unaware, QAnon is an online movement that originated on 4chan. QAnoners believed that a cabal of Satan-worshipping Democrats was in control of every facet of American society and secretly running a cannibalistic child sex-trafficking ring, which was—ironically—to be exposed by Trump, a close friend of sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein.
While these claims caused horrible real-world violence—namely, the “pizza gate” shooting at a restaurant in Washington, D.C. and the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol—the recent releases of files related to Epstein have revealed that there actually might have been a cabal of pedophiles, albeit a bipartisan one. Emphasis on the “might” here. According to the FBI, it cannot be confirmed that any person was involved in sexual abuse, besides Epstein and his partner, Ghislaine Maxwell.
Despite the unconfirmed nature of these claims, according to PBS, there is overwhelming evidence that others were involved: namely, Epstein’s emails with billionaires such as Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Howard Lutnick, collected by the FBI. We know that as many as one thousand young girls were forced into sex acts by Epstein in the ’90s and ’00s. Whether or not the billionaire class worships Satan is another question.
Internet conspiracy theorists have thrown around the idea of a cult worshipping Moloch, a dark false idol from the Old Testament. This figure, usually depicted in statue form as a man with a bull’s head, was condemned in the Book of Leviticus as a god of the Ammonites whose worship included sacrificing babies in fire. The only evidence supporting Moloch worship is from a separate 2015 email leak, in which an email to Hillary Clinton mentioned sacrificing a chicken to the deity. Whether or not this was a joke is unclear. The through line is that sacrificing babies is similar to the sexual abuse of underage girls uncovered in the Epstein case.
However, we do not need to pin the horrifying behavior of Epstein and friends on some sort of occult religion. That is not fair to the victims, who were traumatized and violated by human beings with free will. No demon possession or antisemitic trope is necessary to explain what happened, or what continues in sex trafficking around the world. The real devil is not in a hidden file waiting to be redacted, but in the details of what is already apparent, and he has a name.
Buddhist mythology offers a much less mysterious view of the devil. In the Lalitavistara Sutra, this deity is known as Mara, and he was instrumental in the Buddha’s final tribulation before reaching awakening. The night before his experience of Nirvana, Mara appeared before the Buddha with an army of “a zillion” demons. Previously, he had a nightmare where, upon the Buddha’s awakening, his heavenly regime crumbled due to the gods converting to Buddhism and moving away from hedonism. To prevent this fate, he sought to avert the awakening, first by attacking the Buddha, then by threatening to enslave him, then by sending his daughters to seduce the Buddha and then by violence again. After all of these attempts failed, Mara surrendered. Throughout the rest of the Buddha’s lifetime, Mara would haunt him, often in further attempts to instill desire in the Buddha’s heart.
Desire, or Tanha in Pali, is seen as a destructive force, as it hypnotizes all of us into thinking there is something beyond us that we need to be happy. It can also be a response to the fear of impermanence, such as the fear that Mara had in the sutra. In traditional Buddhism, Mara is both the incarnation of this desire and a high god in heaven. The concept of Mara can be viewed as both a metaphor and a literal cosmological being who rules our world and others.
Instead of placing the blame on Satan or Moloch, it is much more realistic to blame Mara as desire itself. Epstein, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and others sought to exert their power over vulnerable girls. That is an expression of Tanha. Behind closed doors, they decided to give in to a disgusting hedonism. Unfortunately for them, their crimes against dignity are coming to light. Even without looking at the Epstein case, it is apparent that the world is governed by desire.
An example is this recent war with Iran, which, based on Secretary Marco Rubio’s explanation, seems to be pointless. So far, the American and Israeli aggressors’ justification has been a confusing preemptive retaliation, which is totally unacceptable grounds to bomb a girls’ elementary school, where 180 were killed. Around 1,500 are dead as a consequence, with many more injured in the region. This war is being waged out of the United States’ fear of a multipolar world, and out of Israel’s desire for greater dominance over the Middle East. It is that simple: Tanha on a geopolitical scale. In reality, every “casualty” is an informal sacrifice to Mara.
Whether Mara is merely a psychological reality or a literal supernatural entity is irrelevant. This clinging to desire fuels the exploitation and violations of human rights and dignity we see today. If Mara truly rules the world, then the way to fight against him is illustrated in the Lalitavistara Sutra. While the Buddha sat under the tree, beaming with a radiant wish for all beings to be free from suffering, he said to the Evil One, “The king of mountains, Mount Meru, may move and all beings may cease to be; All the stars, the planets, and the moon may fall from the sky to the earth; It is possible that all beings may think and act in unison and the great oceans may dry out; But it is impossible that someone like me would ever move from the king of trees.” If we are committed to preventing another Epstein Island or an imperialistic forever war, we must be unshakeable in our compassion towards all beings. We must eternally recognize our neighbor’s worth as a living being and put that recognition over our desires and fears.
With all respect, Israel did not go to war with Iran to achieve greater dominance in the Middle East. Iran has attacked Israel repeatedly in the last few years, both directly and through proxy groups, including Hamas (1200 murdered and 250 kidnapped on 10/7), Hezbollah (rockets fired into northern Israeli towns, forcing tens of thousands of Israelis to evacuate their homes), and Houthi missiles. Israel, without question, has just cause to degrade Iran’s military capacity in return.