This week the US President will be visiting the UK at the behest of the administration department of our own ruling class. And of course, the usual chorus of sycophants have started singing their usual song across the internet, television, radio and newspapers; “don’t protest, don’t complain, do as you are told, show deference to the masters, respect your leaders”. There is something inherently nasty when the rich tell everyone else to passively respect their superiors.

Of course, it doesn’t help that at the same time the establishment is trying to incite nationalist hysteria, by carpet bombing the population of these islands with jingoistic propaganda around our collaboration in FIFA’s smash and grab in Russia. Which, much like at the end of the Italian Job, will inevitably come to a close with FIFA driving a coach across the Caucasus mountains, with a motley assortment of transnational corporations sitting amidst a huge pile of Russian state subsidies and tax breaks. Unfortunately, that aspect of it is unlikely to get much of an analysis on the tv. But that is another story.

One of the difficulties with pointing out the mechanisms that the ruling class use in ‘democracies’ to subordinate and manipulate the masses, is the knee-jerk cries of the apologists about “conspiracy theorists”. The deep state is one that falls foul of this diversionary tactic almost every time. The fact is the ‘deep state’ is only one aspect of wider system of social control. To argue that some say it is the only one, is yet another sleight of hand to draw attention away from the role played by the politicians and the celebrities in perpetuating division amongst the working class, and the mass-subservience to the ruling class.

All of the key studies on the Deep State and the researchers that spend their lives researching its various manifestations, to my knowledge, say nothing about it being some sort of shadowy cabal, of rich white men who spend an evening each month, masturbating furiously in front of each other with one trouser leg rolled up, while swearing allegiance to an all-seeing chartered surveyor, or is it an omnipotent town planner. Regardless.

For most people that study it, the deep state is a series of relationships and processes within the overarching state that are kept away from public scrutiny or legislative oversight. This is not particularly controversial. The intelligence services and politicians often meet in private, and make decisions that impact the general public. To assume that they are doing it for our benefit only, is a theory about a group of people planning in secret to affect our lives. Whether it is on our behalf or not, we only have their word on it. The news repeats conspiracy theories every time they talk about a conversation held in private that they have no direct evidence of what was said. Politicians and civil servants and bureaucrats can lie, like anyone else. To assume that they don’t is to promote conspiracy theories.

It is because of this that I think it is important to take a moment to think about what it is we are being told, and not focus too much on the cult of celebrity through which we are being told it. So ignore for the moment the paralysing embarrassment most of us feel when the likes of Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg are presented to the rest of the world as representative of the population of Britain. Instead ask yourself, what are we telling the rest of the world when we sit in servile silence in our living rooms hoping that tax-evading millions will give our lives meaning, while our ‘leaders’ use the taxes they have taken from us to lavish opulent luxuries on cruel and despotic regimes, all the while siphoning off a percentage for themselves to some distant tax haven. If you want to understand how the deep state functions, look at who is in control, how they behave, and who benefits. Not what their apologists claim by way of explanation.

I am writing this post to accompany putting up the second essay in the series called War On Drugs. The second essay, coming in again at just over 5,000 words, covers the period from 1961 to 1973. I would argue that this period is one of the defining points in recent US history, in terms of the relationship between groups within the US elite and the various roles that the illegal trade in drugs plays in maintaining their power and control both nationally and internationally. In his 1963 speech Kennedy stated that there would be no “Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war”. By 1963 the CIA had overthrown Arbenz in Guatemala, were up to the ears in opium trafficking in Laos and Vietnam, were supporting Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party in Iraq, and of course were pulling the strings across Europe through the Marshall Plan. At the time, none of this was public knowledge. Now however, we can see those same aspects, sub-groups and processes involved, that have since become known as the US deep state.

This essay outlines the period when sections of the US ruling elite, through a sub-group within the CIA really began to hit their stride, in terms of building an empire. The essay moves through the Bay of Pigs, the US military expansion across South America and South East Asia, the role of the CIA in the explosion of domestic drug use. And of course covers the Summer of Love, Assassinations, Civil Rights, McCarthy, Daniel Ellsberg, and Watergate. Znet was kind enough to publish this essay 8th September 2017. To read it here or to download a .txt version of it please click through to the page.