Is There an American "Deep State"?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
 
Mike Kelly, a Republican Congressman from Pennsylvania, got into political trouble for declaring, in a March 4 speech to an audience of fellow Republicans in Mercer County, that former President Barack Obama has remained in Washington “to run the shadow government that is going to totally upset the new agenda.”

White House press secretary Sean Spicer confirmed that the Trump administration believes it is being undermined by people who “burrowed into government during eight years of the last administration,” during a press briefing on March 10.

They, and other Republicans, like Representative Steve King of Iowa, have essentially been arguing that their own government is being subverted by what they have taken to calling the “deep state.”

They point to various accusations of Trump officials of being in collusion with Russia. In one case, it led to the Feb. 13 resignation of National Security Advisor Mike Flynn, amid a flow of intelligence leaks that he had secretly discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador to Washington.

Kelly, Spicer and King were thoroughly chastised and accused of peddling “conspiracy theories.”
But there’s nothing “conspiratorial” about it. We know Obama thoroughly disapproves of Donald Trump and threw his support behind the protests opposing Trump’s new administration.

In any case, why is the notion of a country having a so-called “deep state” suddenly considered so ridiculous?

Marxists and other leftists have always theorized that there is a “ruling class,” in America as elsewhere, which through various means controls a state apparatus that in effect does its bidding. Though unelected, it wields power with little to no public accountability.

They see the national security apparatus, arms companies, major media outlets, and corporate interests as the true guiding hand in American politics.

Academics like G. William Domhoff and C. Wright Mills decades ago popularized the notion of a “power elite.”

The theory posits that members of the financial elite, along with parts of the military and policy-planning networks, exercise power that is independent of the nation’s democratically elected officials.

Mills, a sociologist at New York’s Columbia University, introduced the term “power elite” in his 1956 book by that name. It described the relationships and class alliances among America’s intertwined political, military, and economic elites.

Domhoff, who taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in his 1967 book Who Rules America?, argued that a “power elite” wields power in America through its support of think-tanks, foundations, commissions, and academic departments.

In fact, even outgoing President Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell address to the nation on January 17, 1961 expressed concerns about the growing influence of what he termed the “military-industrial complex.”

Ordinary journalists and writers have always talked about something called “the establishment.” It refers to those who exercise ideological hegemony and power over society – something the noted Italian Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci wrote about.

In Britain, for example, when the Labour Party won the 1924 election in Great Britain, they failed to accomplish much because, as some writers contended, they were “in office but not in power.”

The term “deep state” refers to something that the very people on the left who now consider this to be a form of “conspiracy theory” have themselves always spoken about in the past.

The distinction between deep-state meddling and acceptable protest is difficult to draw in the United States today, according to Amy Zegart, the co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.

While the degree of opposition to the Trump administration is very unusual, she told the New York Times on Feb. 16, “I don’t think you can say in advance what inappropriate deep-state activity would look like, because we haven’t seen this before.”