How the 'Epstein Class' Fails to the Top | The Chris Hedges Report (w/ Anand Giridharadas)

Dec 24, 2025

Anand Giridharadas, an author known for his exploration of elite power, joins to discuss the troubling intersections of privilege and responsibility. He criticizes how market elites, particularly in Silicon Valley, believe they can resolve societal issues while often perpetuating inequality. Giridharadas highlights the dangers of 'efficiency' in corporate practices that exploit workers and erode public services. He also examines elite forums that promote philanthropy without real systemic change, exposing a delusional belief in their role as agents of progress.

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INSIGHT

A Unified Neoliberal Ruling Class

A new ruling class spans finance, academia, media, government and philanthropy and protects its own permanence.
When principles conflict with staying in the network, the network wins.

ANECDOTE

Year In Consulting Shaped His Critique

Anand recounts taking a McKinsey-like consulting job in India to reach the country and learn, but left after a year.
The job exposed him to corporate rationalization and indifference that later informed his critique.

INSIGHT

The Moral Pitch Of Modern Employers

Corporations now recruit idealistic talent by selling a moral mission: join us and change the world.
That pitch reframes working elsewhere as morally inferior and consolidates elite power over social change.

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Noam Chomsky once said “The more privilege you have, the more opportunity you have. The more opportunity you have, the more responsibility you have.”

Today, this profound quote from an important figure is ensconced in irony, not only in light of Chomsky’s close ties with Jeffrey Epstein, but also regarding the entire ruling class structure’s facilitation of the pedophile’s rise to the top. Anand Giridharadas, in his book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, talks about this privilege and the elite delusions that capitalism and capitalists can save the planet from the very problems that they create.

Giridharadas joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report and shares how the world today, one of vast inequality and stark class divide, is perpetuated by the self-serving and egotistic mentality of oligarchs who see themselves as humanity’s figureheads.

Many of the elite class, especially those in Silicon Valley, believe they are shaping the world for the better. They believe, according to Giridharadas, “the way to solve gender inequality is through Silicon Valley tech companies. The way to solve the environment is through Tesla. The way to solve poverty in Africa is MasterCard and Goldman Sachs figuring out credit cards for rural people in Kenya.”

Their belief that they are the agents of change, efficiency and good in the world leads them to gut government programs and proceed to point “to the failures of government, failures they helped engineer, as evidence for why government cannot be entrusted with the solution of public problems, thus leaving only them, the private sector, to step in,” Giridharadas explains.

As for the Jeffrey Epstein-aligned elite, they are different because they can still function as good capitalists but have no reservations about the morality of their work. After Epstein’s conviction in 2008, Giridharadas spells out that Epstein surrounded himself with these people, those who do their business and have no trouble looking away.

“[Epstein] picked a group of people who are expert, if at nothing else, in putting fingers in their ears when people begin to scream.”