{"id":300695,"date":"2017-03-26T01:46:13","date_gmt":"2017-03-26T00:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/ditching-the-deep-state-the-rise-of-a-new-conspiracy-theory-in-american-politics\/"},"modified":"2017-03-26T01:46:13","modified_gmt":"2017-03-26T00:46:13","slug":"ditching-the-deep-state-the-rise-of-a-new-conspiracy-theory-in-american-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/ditching-the-deep-state-the-rise-of-a-new-conspiracy-theory-in-american-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Ditching the \u201cDeep State\u201d: The Rise of a New Conspiracy Theory in American Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<div id=\"attachment_91123\" style=\"width: 520px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-91123\" src=\"http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2017\/03\/13859755804_3f99bf33c8_z.jpg\" alt=\"Photo by Nicolas Raymond | CC BY 2.0\" width=\"510\" height=\"340\" srcset=\"http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2017\/03\/13859755804_3f99bf33c8_z.jpg 510w, http:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2017\/03\/13859755804_3f99bf33c8_z-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 510px) 100vw, 510px\"\/><\/p>\n<p align=\"right\">Photo by Nicolas Raymond | <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\">CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The stratospheric rise of Mike Lofgren\u2019s \u201cdeep state\u201d critique has been matched only by its meteoric fall into the pits of conspiracy theory and caricature. What started off as a potentially interesting analytical framework, which sought to spotlight the U.S. corporate-national security-intelligence apparatus, has quickly devolved into a cartoonish absurdity. This decline was predictable considering that the \u201cdeep state\u201d analysis provided by Lofgren was such an expansive, vague concept from the start. The \u201cdeep state\u201d framework lacked the nuance of previous versions of \u201celite theory\u201d developed over the decades, so its adoption by various rightwing partisan stooges and conspiracy theorists doesn\u2019t surprise me. We have now reached the point where the \u201cdeep state\u201d rhetoric is no longer useful, and has even become harmful to informed political discourse on American politics.<\/p>\n<p>I will say from the outset that I admire Mike Lofgren, a former Congressman, for drawing attention to the rise of corporate power and the ever-expanding, runaway military state. His book, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0143109936\/counterpunchmaga\" target=\"_blank\">The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government<\/a><\/em>, appears to be a genuine, heartfelt effort to fight back against the reactionary forces that control American politics. And his main concerns with the American political system are warranted. He is right to focus on the dangers of the growing national security state, coordinated&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2017\/03\/24\/ditching-the-deep-state-the-rise-of-a-new-conspiracy-theory-in-american-politics\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photo by Nicolas Raymond | CC BY 2.0 The stratospheric rise of Mike Lofgren\u2019s \u201cdeep state\u201d critique has been matched only by its meteoric fall into the pits of conspiracy theory and caricature. What started off as a potentially interesting analytical framework, which sought to spotlight the U.S. corporate-national security-intelligence apparatus, has quickly devolved into [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-300695","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300695\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}