Another Turn Of The Screw - Part 2

 (A Continuation Of My 1/27 Posting)

Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories

               Conspiracy theories have always been with us in America, but they've grown in number and intensity in recent years. They seem all-pervasive nowadays on both the right and the left.  And they've gotten a bad name too because so often they drift off into the most outlandish fiction. In most people's minds,  conspiracy theories have become inextricably bound up with kookishness. The fastest and laziest way to discount a narrative threatening one's own ideas is to label it a "conspiracy theory".

               Yet real conspiracies do occur. In fact, much of modern human history can be said to have originated in conspiracies because political movements, wars and revolutions usually arise from behind-the-scenes machinations.

               I'm going to suggest a conspiracy theory here for which I have, in one of our era's newly-fashionable catch phrases, "no evidence". I'm presenting it because for me it's the only way that's starting to make a degree of sense in explaining the chaotic and seemingly contrived pattern of events that now engulfs us.

               Our Democrats, while always eager to mock rightwing  conspiracy theories, have been only too happy to buy into the notion that Vladimir Putin somehow stole the 2016 election away from Hillary Clinton and handed her rightful prize over to Donald Trump.  The Republicans, for their part, myself included, have lampooned this proposition as a perverse mix of sour grapes and fancy.

               However, what if the Democrats were actually onto something?

Russia And China

               The Mueller Investigation was originally designed to probe possible collaboration between Trump and the Russian government in defeating Mrs. Clinton. And while nothing actionable was uncovered that in the end threatened Trump's presidency - they had to come up with a totally different angle to initiate the first impeachment - Mueller's sleuths did turn up numerous instances of contacts between Trump's organization and the Russians. There was never reason to believe the Russians were really on Trump's side,  but they indeed seem to have been busy beavers during the months leading up to the 2016 election. What were they doing?

               Another potentially relevant development has to do with China and the growth of that nation's espionage and influence-buying in this country in recent years. The arrest of the chairman of Harvard University's chemistry department last year for secret and illegal contacts with China should have been an eye-opener for all of us. It was a weird story. It follows a couple of decades of accelerating reports of Chinese spy activity and technology theft mostly targeting American defense-related research. The Harvard story was surely the tip of an iceberg.

               Moreover, given the expansion of China's geopolitical aspirations, there's no reason to consider China's ambition as being limited to the technology sphere. They're bound to be examining ways to target our social and political institutions as well.  In this endeavor they would share common cause with Russia.

               There have in recent years been countless reports of highly sophisticated computer hacking campaigns aimed at stealing the personal data of individual Americans. The mysterious stories always imply the involvement of foreign governments but then stop there. It's never evident what such intrusive state actors might actually have in mind.

Science Of Subversion

               During the Cold War years I read quite a bit about the Soviet Union and about the early days of communism. Marxist-Leninism was the Soviet Union's official ideology, and it was a self-described body of "scientific" doctrine focused on analyzing and advancing "class struggle" in capitalist countries. This was, of course,  Soviet-speak for subversion of foreign governments.

               One of the Soviets' early triumphs after consolidating their own power under Joseph Stalin was in assuring success of the Maoist revolution in China.  They performed a singular feat in grafting the Western and industrial-oriented theories of Karl Marx onto what was at the time China's primitive agrarianism. The two nations were hardly natural bedfellows, but they established a formidable alliance that disrupted the geopolitics of the latter half of the twentieth century. Formally, they stuck to their ideology and did it all in the name of "worldwide proletarian struggle".

               Today neither Russia nor China remain communist countries in any respect that Marx, Lenin or even Mao would have recognized. Russia has abandoned the ideology and China has radically transformed it. Both nations, however, retain those elements of their "communist"  DNA that still serve their purposes. They remain dedicated to state dominance over their own societies,  and they manage aggressive foreign policies aimed at extending their influence abroad. Powerful intelligence agencies are the primary institutions they have developed for pursuing these objectives.

               Following the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Lenin established what came to be known as the Third Communist International, or Comintern. The Comintern maintained the fiction of proletarian internationalism but was always in fact an instrument of Soviet foreign policy focused on the destabilization of target governments. Fearful of antagonizing his WWII allies, Stalin disbanded the Comintern in 1943, but in doing so he was only biding time. Following the War's triumphant conclusion, he re-invigorated the Comintern's activities but now without any pretense of "international" decision-making. He took direct control of the Comintern's apparatus and subsumed it into the Soviet intelligence service which, shortly after Stalin's death in 1953, emerged as the notorious KGB.    

               The KGB was literally everywhere during the Cold War years. The KGB kept a tight lid on disloyal tendencies domestically within the Soviet Union, and its agents did their best to infiltrate and control any foreign organizations which appeared vulnerable and in position to advance Soviet interests around the world. They suborned journalists and bribed government officials in western nations, including the United States. In "third world" countries,  they armed guerrillas and helped launch "wars of national liberation" aimed at installing Soviet-leaning  governments in Latin America, Africa and Asia.  In pursuing their objectives, the KGB  employed the full range of dirty tactics, including disinformation,  forgery, blackmail, assassinations and false-flag attacks.

Deep Cover

               One of the more sophisticated techniques the KGB developed was in deploying "deep cover" agents into target countries, most importantly the United States. These people were trained at special schools in the Soviet Union to speak, look, act and even think like Americans. Their accents became flawless. They were then dispatched to the U.S. with no missions initially other than to take root somewhere, make friends, get jobs and learn how to blend in. Once they were in place long enough to have established verifiable identities, a process that took years,  they were normal American citizens for all intents and purposes. They could then be activated and deployed as needed to implement covert actions assigned to them by strategists in Moscow.

               The TV series "The Americans" that ran for 6 series on the FX channel in the early 2000's dramatized this program. The storyline was fictional, but the background for it was most assuredly the real deal. In the show, two agents - a man and a woman - infiltrate into the U.S, marry, have two children, build careers, establish personal relationships, all while maintaining contact with their KGB controllers and eventually executing missions.

               This was a reasonably accurate depiction of how the KGB "illegals" program actually functioned within the United States.

               When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and communism was repudiated, the KGB would seem to have lost its raison d'etre. It's loyal personnel, however, needn't to have feared, because one of their own was coming to power within Russia. Vladimir Putin was a KGB man through and through, and he of course knew all about the "illegals" program and would have fully appreciated its value. The KGB was disbanded once again but not really. Most of its people were redeployed into the newly-established Federal Security Service (FSB) and several other Russian intelligence agencies that went on performing their traditional work. 

               The deep-cover cells implanted into the United States would initially have been left high and dry by the Soviet implosion, but the agents had self-supporting  lives here, and it seems likely most of them would have remained in place,  albeit probably without much direction in the beginning. However, once Mr. Putin had consolidated his power within the new Russia, it seems virtually certain he would have re-established control over them via his Foreign Intelligence Service, or SRV, which - analogous to the American CIA - is charged with coordinating espionage and direct action campaigns outside the Russian Federation.

My Conspiracy Theory

               One of the characteristic patterns of KGB destabilization campaigns in the old days was to identify disruptive factions on both sides of the political spectrum within target nations and to seek out ways to encourage them both. During the 1960's, for example, operating mainly through the Soviet Union's Cuban proxies, the KGB was able to influence the American so-called "New Left" of the day, and there was some evidence they succeeded at the same time in planting  agents  within extreme right-wing groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party. The objective of such both-sides-against-the-middle campaigns was always to frighten a nation's population with the specter of violent chaos surrounding them and make them lose confidence in their own government.

               Such campaigns are, of course, difficult to implement successfully, and timing is everything. One of Marxism's key analytic phrases is "correlation of forces", which refers to the delicate balance of political power operating at any point of time in a nation. Marxist practitioners study the correlation of forces always with the objective of identifying the optimal timing for revolutionary action. They know that if they move too soon, they're in danger of being be crushed, and if they wait too long, their moment will have passed. In Russia, for example, the 1918 birth of the Soviet Union occurred when it did because Vladimir Lenin and his Bolsheviks understood that the time was exactly right for the quick push that was soon to topple the floundering Kerensky government.

               Fast-forwarding to our own era, it's my theory that both the Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies have been analyzing the correlation of forces in the United States very carefully now for a long while. And I believe that sometime prior to Donald Trump's arrival on the national political scene,  they concluded that the time was ripe for them to expand their influence in this country.

Is Trump A Russian Agent?

               True revolution was obviously too ambitious a goal, and not really the point anyway,  but their objective would rather have been gaining sufficient influence in America to force its disengagement from those parts of the world where America's meddling presence was interfering with their own ambitions. For the Russians, this would mean primarily the former Soviet republics, an area they call their "near-abroad"  and the infuriating loss of which Mr. Putin blamed primarily on the United States. For the Chinese, it would mean, for now, primarily Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the South China Sea. The Chinese want a free hand in these potential hot spots, and as a rising hegemon,  they no doubt see themselves as laying groundwork needed eventually to gain a free hand elsewhere as well. They want to force America into minding its own troubled business closer to home.

               Donald Trump is most certainly not a Russian agent as some of the zanier speculation emanating from our political Left has suggested. However, both the Russians and the Chinese would have recognized two aspects of Trump's orientation that must have looked promising to them. The first, obviously, was his isolationism, which would tend to restrain American adventurism abroad.  Secondly, it would have been clear to them that Trump, if elected, would become a polarizing force. If they could encourage violent factions to take to the streets here, he could be counted on to respond aggressively, if only through his trademark inflammatory rhetoric. Domestic instability would distract America from goings-on outside of its borders.

               There was always something a little fishy about the unrest that started gaining steam in so many American cities around the time of Trump's election. There was a pattern to the events. Most of the disorder seemed to be triggered by killings of black men in confrontations with police. Historically, there was nothing unusual about such killings because it is the job of police to patrol high-crime areas, and high crime areas in the U.S. are populated by disproportionate numbers of the young black males. In such environments, violent confrontations are inevitable and have always occurred.

               What has changed, however, is the ubiquitous presence of cell phone cameras.  Journalists on the spot are no longer needed for there to be a video record of protests and street violence. Reporters compiling their stories for the evening news or the Internet can count on a wealth of dramatic footage coming their way courtesy of  bystanders only too happy to upload memory cards for the benefit of an encouraging newshound. What once might have been a story for the back pages of a local paper now makes national and even international news.

               A vicious circle then ensues as video footage, which gets repeated continuously for days and even weeks on end,  provokes outrage in other cities and triggers more police confrontations and additional videos. The dynamic thus established becomes the social analogue to a nuclear chain reaction, and from the perspective of professional political saboteurs, it's manna from heaven. All that's required for them is to have a few agents  planted in organizations who haunt urban trouble-spots and to assign them standing orders to inflame any violence materializing around protest activity. This is pretty easy work for professionals who have funding and know what they're about.

               Posted YouTube videos are instructive because they display the standard pattern that's been at work, which is for relatively small groups to break away from a larger demonstration and attack bystanders, set fires, invade buildings, smash windows, etc. Who are these agitators? There seems to be nothing spontaneous about their behavior. They're methodical, good at what they do, and they appear to be following protocols.

               Even fishier than the urban unrest, of course, was the so-called "right-wing insurrection" that occurred in Washington on January 6. One theory that afterwards became fashionable in some conservative circles is that Antifa had infiltrated the Trump rally and that is was actually their operatives who initiated the Capital invasion. While this idea was always a little far-fetched,  videos make it clear what prompted it.  Here too a very small group broke away from the much larger rally, which had until then had been enthusiastic but peaceful. The agitators carried incendiary signs and Confederate flags that looked like stage props positioned there for the benefit of cameras. The crowd of masked invaders had  the look of an Antifa mob, but wearing different costumes and shouting different slogans.

               However, it's unlikely that Antifa itself has the wherewithall to have executed such an action. In my opinion, conservatives who voice this theory are missing the deeper underlying pattern that may be at work. It's my opinion that superficial resemblance between the Capital riot and an Antifa action probably reveals the presence of a hidden third party that is manipulating both groups. This third party, if it exists, is likely to be a foreign intelligence agency or a coalition of such agencies charged with creating disorder in America's homeland.

               Russia and China are the two most likely manipulators, with Iran possibly functioning as a subsidiary player.  Long-hidden sleeper cells may have been turned loose to blend into the action and give it on-the-ground authenticity.           

And Where Does This Leave Us Now?

               If this speculative theory has substance, the implications are unsettling. It would mean that a new international Cold War is already well underway of which Americans are largely clueless. What's worse is that we're all playing into the hands of our adversaries by lining up exactly where they want us, which is at one another's throats. Liberals seethe with hatred for Donald Trump and nowadays pretty much anybody perceived as being to the right of Hillary Clinton. Conservatives mirror all this and see the wicked George Soros lurking behind any public figure questioning any of their positions. Both sides are coming view compromise as betrayal, and political problem-solving is on its way out the window.

               The strength of Democracy is, of course,  precisely in its ability to broker compromise and nurture mutual respect among people with differing, and sometimes sharply differing, worldviews. Democracy and free speech are coessential, and one can't survive without the other. People who respect one another actually want to hear from the other side because the very definition of mutual respect is in the understanding that the other side may have something useful to say. Only fools believe that they themselves have all the answers.

               Our international adversaries hope to turn us all into fools because fools are easily manipulated. Furthermore, they fully understand the self-reinforcing strength that a functioning democracy provides to any nation enjoying it. Democracy and free speech therefore have to be undermined if the target nation is to be made vulnerable.

               If my speculation here is accurate, it becomes a legitimate function for our own intelligence agencies to root out foreign agents among us and to short-circuit the dynamic they have set into motion here. The problem is that such exercises easily morph into witch hunts,  and witch hunts must be avoided because they fuel the very fires they try to dampen. Hence, while our intelligence agencies have a job to do, they must be guided by law and proceed with extreme caution.

               As individual citizens, about all that any of us can to is to understand that mutual suspicion and hatred work against all of us.

               In times like these we therefore need to be bending over backwards to understand the difference between true enemies -  meaning the willful saboteurs - and other people whose worldviews simply differ from our own.