Why Are Right-Wing Conspiracies So Obsessed with Pedophilia?

There is also the aspect to it that predation on children is generally the ultimate societal affront. We toil everyday not just for ourselves, but to create a world for our descendants better than our own. Pedophilia, in that sense, taps into the same aversion that make things like cannibalism of children a taboo subject.

Bored housebound carers of children.

I'm unfamiliar with the notion that child marriage is a conservative cause. Do you mean in the context of religious freedom? Are there conservatives who push for child marriage in unambiguous terms?

This lack of distinction is used to give this right-wing narrative more impact. People tend to think of prepubescent children when the word pedophile is used.

Not that this excuses Epstein in any way of course.

It is not safe to assume that. The fact that powerful person A and powerful organization B were both involved with pedophilia does not in any way imply that there was an overarching conspiracy involving them.

"It was found that from 1990 to mid-2018, abuse reports about 382 priests were made to the Church, with 625 children, mostly under 16, sexually abused by members of the Catholic clergy"

And that's just one country, Poland [0].

1,000 identifiable victims ... just in Pennsylvania [1].

So "occasional" is not the qualifier I would use. Maybe "pervasive" is more accurate?

But none of this explains why this is a central topic of right-wing conspiracy thinking. The Catholic Church in the US is almost exactly as politically polarized as the population in general [2].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sexual_abuse_c...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/us/catholic-church-sex-ab...

[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/23/u-s-religio...

The civil rights movements had people that did try to normalize pedophilia. They were thrown out at some point though. They were mostly active in the green party of Germany, but the party had a clear and complete break with them. To say they harbor pedophiles today would indeed be a conspiracy, although some proponents are still politically active. But also not very relevant.

I think it appeals to a certain right wing crowd because it is a trivial moral stance to be against child exploitation and aside from that they have few other stances that could be called moral. There was this craze in the 70s about sexual repression that went a bit too far in some directions, so it was difficult to call them out. It was a necessary movement, but you also had these crazies that took everything a little too literal and wanted to remove any form of shame or inhibition.

I think Epstein might have had sex with minors under the law that were basically teenagers, but I don't think there is evidence that he was a pedophile. He was just exploitative of young girls and perhaps the trusted pimp of some of the US and UK political class. Pedophilia is a sexual disorder. Children are ugly from a sexual perspective for people with a normal sexuality.