Manchurian candidate

English

Etymology

From the title of the 1959 novel or 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate, in which the son of a prominent US political family is brainwashed into being an unwitting assassin for a communist conspiracy. This etymology is incomplete. You can help Wiktionary by elaborating on the origins of this term. When was it first used generically?

Noun

Manchurian candidate (plural Manchurian candidates)

1. A person, especially a politician, who has unknowingly been convinced to act to benefit some interest.
   • 2008 February 11, Roger Cohen, “No Manchurian Candidate”, in The New York Times‎^[1], →ISSN:

     The attacks, mainly anonymous e-mails, have woven together various threads […] —to portray Obama as the Muslim Manchurian candidate.

   • 2009, Arthur Goldwag, Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies‎^[2], Vintage Books, →ISBN, pages 108-109:

     Most of the conspiracies covered in this book are different. For one thing, they have a much wider scope. They may involve thousands or even millions of plotters (Freemasons, international Communists, Jesuits, the Illuminati, wealthy financiers, the Jews) working over the course of generations, and their goals may be as vague and as all-encompassing—as satanic, let us say—as "the destruction of freedom" or "world domination." The plots themselves run the gamut from planting a Manchurian candidate in the White House to aiding and abetting alien space invaders.