The conspiracy theorists convinced celebrities are under mind control
Wark believes conspiracy theories like MK-Ultra help us come to terms with tragic events by providing a convenient, pre-formed narrative about institutional agency and its ability to be corrupt – something that’s far easier to understand because it’s an idea with so much cultural capital, especially in recent years. He gives the example of Sandy Hook deniers entering into the mainstream thanks to controversial pundits such as Alex Jones.
“MK-Ultra is packaged in a narrative that’s a part of our popular cultural heritage,” he says. “We still tell these stories, in movies and TV shows and comics and books. So long as governments commit injustices and atrocities, conspiracy theories like MK-Ultra will translate these onto an individual scale. So long as politics are polarised, it’ll be all too easy to identify ‘them’, the other side, as this agency. MK-Ultra endures because it tells us a story about institutional power that we’re already primed to hear: ‘it was a cover-up.’”
The MK-Ultra program was officially a failure, with the CIA, embarrassed by its lack of concrete findings, shutting it down in 1973. The fact we’re still talking about it in 2019, suggests Jones, is the same reason we still share outlandish stories about a UFO crashing at Roswell. “With the internet, you have this free flow of information that has taken this nugget of our history and made it into this huge, huge entity,” she says.
“It’s really similar to how legends and folklore and myths are cultivated, where they have a nugget of truth at the core, but are made into something a lot bigger.” She wouldn’t be surprised if the 1950s mind control program continues to inspire future generations, likening it to enduring conspiracy theories such as the JFK assassination.
Yet Wark says the fact MK-Ultra has endured is something we should also be concerned about. “Conspiracies allow us to make sense of the inexplicable in a world that’s too complicated already,” he says. “MK-Ultra, with its themes of mind control, helps us to explain human-scale mystery. Otherwise, we have to grapple with abstract concepts—individuality, society, justice, whatever—that are always uncertain themselves. Mind control is easier to fathom.”
“However, MK-Ultra is also the canary for something all too apparent about the present: when it’s easier to blame a conspiracy about mind control than it is to face our political differences then something is very wrong.”
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