The New Manchurian Candidates

Openness to outsiders is a liberal democracy’s greatest strength, but it can also prove a curse. Hostile autocratic powers such as China and Qatar have realised that throwing dollars around Washington, Ottawa, London, Sydney or Brussels can get results. How else do you get a proposed US-sponsored Qatari airbase in Idaho, and even a US commitment to defend the terrorist-sponsoring kingdom? China, for its part, often backs Democratic candidates like New Jersey’s Mikie Sherrill, who received $65,000 from a businessman with strong links to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

This may not be the programmed treachery portrayed in the 1962 thriller, The Manchurian Candidate, but foreign interests have gained growing influence across the West. At the same time, much of the far left lives off donations from CCP-allied Shanghai-based billionaire Neville Roy Singham. In 2028 we might see Gavin Newsom – California’s China-friendly governor – as a wannabe satrap at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Most foreign influence-peddlers are not partisans, but opportunists. China, often tied to the left, was recently found using an agent to penetrate Germany’s hard-right AfD. Authoritarian states see weakness in Western societies – particularly among an increasingly out-of-touch political class – as an opening to accentuate divisions within polarised publics. Influence-peddlers butter their bread on both sides, not minding that their fingers might get greasy.