The Muscovite Candidate
For those of us old enough to remember it, the original film "The Manchurian Candidate" was chilling. It was released in 1962, but it was based on a 1959 novel, and described its fictional events as occurring within the previous decade's time frame.
It played to the paranoia of the era, and it had just enough reality in its basic premise to pack a considerable hook. Some of the places where reality and truth blurred together included:
1. Developing technology shrouded in secrecy and complexity- we "knew" the experiments with psychoactive drugs and psychophysiological mind-alteration techniques were really happening- but would "they" tell us just HOW real the premise of the film was?
2. The power of propaganda- It was the early "Mad Men" era, when we were becoming aware of just how easy it is to manipulate popular opinions, actions, and decisions with a well-orchestrated PR campaign. Just how big and how harmful a bill of goods could we REALLY be sold?
3. The influence of fear and paranoia on the electorate- The Korean War was one of the early "proxy wars" of the long Cold War nightmare, and the McCarthy hearings, the blacklisting, the execution of the Rosenbergs, were manifestations of overblown public hysteria that had its basis in a very real threat.
In the decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, we've learned a good deal about where Cold War threats had some basis in fact and where they were a product of carefully-inflated and manipulated fear, by both the US and the USSR governments.
The various Initials agencies weren't really very good at the kind of spy-thriller hijinks depicted in the popular fiction of the time. You can go to some of the contemporary "spy paraphernalia" exhibits at museums and see what emerged from the real-life versions of "Q Section." They were ingenious advances in technology and miniaturization, but they weren't "Mission: Impossible"-level omnipotence.
The memoirs, declassified documents and analysis from source materials of the era paints a picture of espionage based more on mind games and less on mind control. The art wasn't necessarily to steal top-secret information... but to make the "other side" believe it had been stolen- and then manipulate and use the results. The tangled web provided cover not just for plenty of political and ideological motivations, but for venality, corruption, criminal activity, and internal politics within the Initials agencies on all sides.
The ultimate take-away, as formulated by scholars, analyists, serious journalists and intell students decades later, was actually revealed with stunning clarity in the 1962 film: The real danger lies not in the actual puppet created for the operation, but in the millions of unwitting puppets created by fear and paranoia, and manipulated with shadows, propaganda, and lies.
Today, we have the Muscovite Candidate: Manipulated over decades with shady financial transactions, deals, loans, influence exerted on his behalf, and I suspect plenty of psychological 'button installation' based on narcissistic sociopathic traits, potent enough to keep him being aware of how thoroughly he's manipulated.
But that's only half of the operation. You have only to look at the troll farms, cracker collectives, the organized crime webs leading back to the sticky ex-KGB spider's nest at the center, to realize just how long and carefully and systematically the other half of the operation has been prepared. And how justifiably it has relied on a vast network of unwitting fellow-travelers who see political and financial benefit to themselves in creating and fanning fear, paranoia, and authoritarianism.
So what's actually changed since 1962?
ominously,
Bright
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