What is the Deep State? Does it really exist?
These questions are hard to answer. I had heard the term ‘Deep State’ over many years, and I connected it with all sorts of conspiracies – not just about U.S. politics and intelligence systems, but with wild ideas about satanism, reptilian shapeshifters, the antichrist, child-trafficking, blood harvesting – and all connected with extreme right-wing and pro-Trump propaganda. So I just dismissed and ignored them – there was no such thing as the Deep State!
It is not that simple.
If you start delving, the term Deep State takes you back to Turkey, over 100 years ago, where the concept of a “shadow government” a “secret state within the state” was a real thing. In more modern times the Deep State is defined as:
“The deep state conspiracy theory in the United States is an American political conspiracy theory that posits the existence of the deep state, a clandestine network of members of the federal government (especially within the FBI and CIA). The theory argues that there exist networks of collaborators within the leadership of the high-level financial and industrial entities, which exercise power alongside or within the elected United States government.”
So, OK it’s still only a theory – a conspiracy theory pushed by Donald Trump’s supporters in order to discredit USA’s Biden Democrat administration? And various extreme religious and other wacky groups tacked the more sinister stuff onto it.
The trouble is, as with many problems, there is some truth in it. Over the decades since World War 2, successive U.S. Presidents have turned to secret discussions with unelected officials from the CIA in particular, but also from other agencies and business circles, relying on their advice to make decisions. The decisions were then pretty much rubber-stamped by a complacent and oblivious Congress.
The following (annoying advertisement-afflicted) video from early 2024, is unmistakably a propaganda piece for the Trump campaign. But it does contain some telling information. Even from its first example, we see that J.F. Kennedy, in the Cuban missile crisis, went not to his advisors, but to a social group of very secret members of the CIA. The development of the very powerful, very secretive CIA, in partnership with military leaders, rocket scientists from Germany, media and business leaders, produced a clandestine information network on which Presidents relied for decision-making. The CIA’s spying powers that were appropriate in war against the enemy are now directed also against the American public, even in peacetime. Huge, well-funded, resources went to secret activities that included misinformation and disinformation against civil rights and peace activists. Congress accepted these secret programmes in the name of security.
That video – however pro-Trump it might be, does not mention satanism, etc. If you separate that wacky stuff from the Deep State story – it is all remarkably convincing. To an American public, fed up with the secrecy, the endless expensive pointless wars – Vietnam, Iraq Afghanistan… Donald Trump’s promise of change, and of dismantling the Deep State, sounded attractive. It sounded attractive even to some on the Left, even some Democrats.
And hey – presto! Trump is doing it! He’s sacking those unelected officials, thousands and thousands of them. He’s purging law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and plans to cut 70 per cent of staff from various government agencies – freezing of billions of dollars in funding.
Ain’t that great!
Actually, no.
We might welcome the disruption of a Deep State system based on militarism, with the USA forever fomenting trouble overseas, and spending unknown $squillions on military gimmickry. A phrase springs to mind – “Throwing the baby out with the bath-water”. That’s a very corny metaphor. But what is really happening is this:
Trump’s aim is nothing to do with unravelling the “Deep State”. Trump’s goal and methodology was set out, detailed in Project 2025, the Center for Renewing America and the America First Policy Institute. The goal is the destruction of democracy – removing, or rendering useless, the laws, regulations, protocols and rules that prevent autocratic power. No more compromise, limited power, checks and balances and accountability. He made a good start in getting control over the Supreme Court.
And I don’t know if everybody noticed two salient points in Trump’s “defeat of the Deep State”:
- the power, and unaccountable funding of the Pentagon, will continue.
- Trump’s getting rid of “unelected officials” – but taking orders from unelected Elon Musk.
The President Trump phenomenon will end eventually, for sure in chaos. Western world leadership is in the hands of a powerful, but unhinged, dictator, who is taking the advice of another powerful unelected unhinged billionaire, Elon Musk.
The whole process is far too much to pay for the destruction of the Deep State. Yes, it is welcome that the secretive decision-making by unelected officials and business leaders – taking the USA into endless wars – has been stopped. But its replacement is a terrifying fascism.
And at the end of it all, after the chaos, what will emerge? If we’re lucky enough to avoid catastrophes of global heating, and war, will we again get a government of men that are happy to have decisions made by macho men in bureaucracy and industry, who are itching for war – another Deep State in the name of “security”.
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Mob Boss Donnie’s Deep State is a shallow puddle of sewerage.