It has been nearly two years since the last episode of USA’s Mr. Robot and I can’t think of a single person who suffered from it. After all, we’re still bombarded with shows that denounce capitalism and Donald Trump. The last thing we need is a product of NBCUniversal telling us that corporations are bad. Sadly, the latest episode of the series did just that by tying corporations and various right-wing figures to a global terrorist conspiracy.
The October 13 episode “402 Payment Required” exposed the massive conspiracy behind the company E Corp. More importantly, it exposed the plan behind Whiterose (BD Wong), a transgender cyberterrorist who pulls the strings behind E Corp and also doubled as China’s Minister of State Security, Minister Zhang. That meant that Whiterose was privy to a lot of foreign information since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989. In fact, Whiterose used that knowledge to form an organization known as the Deus Group to create “a new world order.”
Given that this is a global conspiracy theory, it’s only natural to include recognizable world leaders as well. E Corp CEO Phillip Price (Michael Cristofer) describes the history of this group which seems to include, among others, Fidel Castro, Vladimir Putin, Fox News's Roger Ailes, and Koch Industries. In his monologue, he even tied his group to the First Gulf War in order to consolidate oil and military forces. Of course, this included a shot of Dick Cheney, because he will never not be a supervillain to the left:
Phillip: That was 1989. The world was up for grabs. All the money, power, natural resources, hell, even borders were negotiable. The Soviet Union, a great world super-power, was collapsing. And where some saw freedom, a young, imaginative Minister Zhang saw possibility. A new world order. So Zhang formed an investment group called Deus. The goal, bring together the world's wealthiest, most powerful men to consolidate control and manipulate global events for profit. Zhang courted dignitaries, world leaders, oligarchs, businessmen, and he was a damn good salesman. The potential profit outweighed anyone's moral reservations, which was proven true in an early endeavor; the First Gulf War.
News broadcaster: Something is happening outside. The skies over Baghdad have been illuminated.
Phillip: A few backroom deals, a promise here, a bribe there. Like that, the Deus Group was rich on oil and had a foothold in the military industrial sector. With the right players in place, running the world turned out to be surprisingly easy. I have to say, business was booming.
The show followed the usual conspiracy setup with everyone in power being part of an Illuminati-like group seeking destruction. To try and be edgy, it also had to include benign figures like the Pope and slam Fox News. Someone should tell Mr. Robot that if primetime sitcoms are already making your point, you’re no longer edgy.
Global conspiracies are hardly new to liberals. In fact, most days they seem to talk about the global conspiracy that Russia somehow hacked the 2016 election. Even the recent Ukraine deals have morphed into a kind of Russia 2.0 global scandal. If the source isn’t Alex Jones, it seems the left is perfectly fine with entertaining fantasy. All that matters is that the theory drags down the right or Fox News.
Fortunately, this is Mr. Robot’s final season, so we’ll soon stop hearing its nonsense even though the same can't said about the left.
