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-Great Cultural Revolution

The new Manchurian candidates

2025-10-23

Hat tip HotAir

[Spiked] 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.

In his classic transactional manner, Trump’s family members and associates are getting rich off deals with Middle Eastern monarchs. Top administration officials like Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and FBI head Kash Patel have strong connections with Doha. Trump, no stranger to impropriety, has even accepted a gift of a jumbo jet from Qatar, which is to be refitted for use as Air Force One.

At the same time, many prominent GOP figures — including former House speaker John Boehner — have signed up to a lobby firm that pushes for China’s interests. Trump allies on Wall Street also lobby on behalf of China, cashing in on investments that strip America’s productive capacity — even amid the Trumpian trade wars that are supposed to rein China in.

Over the past decade, much of the largesse from abroad has gone to universities — bulwarks of ’progressive’ politics. Qatar alone accounts for more than a third of all foreign donations to US universities. This is the same nation, lest we forget, that funds Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.

China’s university gambit includes its so-called Confucius Institutes, which openly push the CCP line on campus. Other funds have been used to promote access to US technological know-how. Harvard alone attracted $560million in gifts from China between 2010 and 2025. Similar patterns can be seen in universities in the UK, Australia and Canada.

This influence extends to culture, too. Hollywood stars now denounce Israel and Trump as genocidal maniacs, but ignore the systematic suppression of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. The CCP bans any film that threatens its ideological hold. Despite all the kowtowing in Hollywood, Beijing is rapidly replacing vacuous Hollywood blockbusters with its own vapid films. Qatar, for its part, appears to have financed the movie career of Mira Nair — mother of nepo-baby and likely next New York mayor, the socialist Zohran Mamdani.

Some of this largesse goes directly to Democratic politicians who, like the Trumpistas, are no less lured by foreign lucre. Timmy Davis, Joe Biden’s ambassador to Doha, last month landed a lucrative job at Irth Capital Management, a fund controlled by the ruling al-Thani family. This despite having no experience in finance. But what does that matter among friends?

As befits the world’s other superpower, China’s influence is even more pervasive. The late Dianne Feinstein’s driver was apparently an agent, while congressman Eric Swalwell — a consistent critic of Trump’s alleged Russian ties — was involved with an alleged Chinese femme fatale. Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, had extensive business dealings with Chinese interests, while his brother, James, hired an ex-Secret Service agent to assist a Chinese client.

Many of the Democratic Party’s favoured oligarchs also tend to be pro-Beijing. The very billionaires who see themselves as defenders of democracy had no trouble clinking glasses in San Francisco last year with China’s brutal dictator, Xi Jinping. To them, a real, committed autocrat, it seems, is preferable to a mercurial, term-limited one.

Democratic mega-donor Michael Bloomberg once described China as ’ecologically friendly, democratically accountable and invulnerable to revolution’.

…all three points being completely wrong.

He even claimed that Xi is ’not a dictator’.

And, of course, that one. Why did he bother?

Apple’s Tim Cook, whose products are largely made in China, waxes lyrical about a ’common future in cyberspace’. The relentlessly self-promoting hedge-fund manager Ray Dalio, who made much of his wealth in authoritarian China, attacks Trumpian authoritarianism while envisioning American decline and Chinese ascendancy. One leading Silicon Valley VC firm, Sequoia Capital, even employs the offspring of Politburo members.

So the chosen ones get lots of money, but what does the firm get out of the situation?

Canada, too, has been targeted. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has identified relentless efforts to gain inside information about Canada’s raw materials, defence and AI industries. It has also documented China’s use of agents, including Canadian citizens, to influence MPs and to blunt criticism of the Middle Kingdom.

Similar patterns have emerged in Australia, where Chinese operatives, sometimes working with local ethnic minorities, use political donations from CCP-linked businesspeople to sway the China policy of major parties. One senator was expelled from parliament after being caught pandering to Chinese-language media on South China Sea policy and warning his CCP-linked patron about government surveillance.

Rest (long)at the link

Posted by:Grom the Affective

#1 comments); ?>werwer

Posted by: Skidmark 2025-10-23 09:17

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