Jared Yates Sexton begins his book, The Midnight Kingdom, talking about his grandmother's beliefs in the 1980s: "The center of evil in the world, she had been assured by those same preachers and a bevy of politicians, rested in Moscow; it wasn’t even debatable whether the Kremlin was in league with Satan. The Soviet Union was the kingdom of the Antichrist, she believed."
Where did that belief come from?
Decades ago, there was "Allen Dulles, a veteran of the Office of Strategic Services and the longest-serving and arguably most influential director of the CIA." When he took over: "The CIA became a force unto itself that acted upon the affairs of the rest of the world, engaging in secret activities that were unknown to its victims, the people of the United States, and even government officials as high-ranking as the president, all of it created, directed, and implemented by individuals who had never been elected and faced no possibility of electoral consequences."
He goes on:
"Under Dulles, the CIA carried out coups and subversive actions, traded in psychological operations that both skewed and obliterated truth, illegally experimented on and surveilled American citizens, orchestrated assassinations, and fought an undeclared secret war in pursuit of strengthening America’s political and economic interests, most often in assistance of the aims of wealthy individuals and the nation’s corporations. The battle against Soviet Russia, predicated on false and biased information and in service of the political and economic interests of a privileged few, meant deploying any measures imaginable, including overthrowing democratically elected leaders, carrying out coordinated assassinations, sacrificing entire populations of civilians, and creating wars out of thin air. The CIA was dedicated to achieving its objectives at any cost, all while obfuscating its methods and intentionally casting doubt on the very notion of objective truth. It’s hardly any wonder that, in this environment and in these times, paranoia as a cultural state and a political weapon became so omnipresent and so significant."
That's part of how the Soviet Union got linked to conspiracy theories and the idea of evil.
"As the Soviet Union was cast as the embodiment of Satan in the modern world," Sexton writes, "once more Americans saw evil spirits conspiring in the darkness and plotting the nation’s destruction."
You may also be interested to read about Christiana Spens's book, The Portrayal and Punishment of Terrorists in Western Media. See: "On the Ritual of Political Scapegoating". It's a 10-minute read on Medium.
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