Trump supporters have imagined that Donald Trump would expose in the swamp they call ”The Deep State”. These are economic and other special interests, which create and utilize structures and systems in the state’s activities for their own gain – without being bothered by election results and current political power relations. A classic in this context is the so-called military-industrial complex, where the arms industry acquires influence and power through informal contacts and channels. Since the activities of the modern state are very extensive and sometimes the largest in society, there are financial resources to fish for, which go alongside party politics and government decisions.
The deep state is not a new phenomenon. It is corporatism in a new language. In the 1960s, this type of exploitation of the state was widely discussed within left-wing circles and was then called corporatism. Jörn Svensson, a well-known left-wing politician, wrote the book ”Corporatism and the bourgeois class dictatorship” in 1969.
Trump and his supporters accuse government officials of leaking information to the media, that the FBI and CIA systematically opposed Trump, that officials with contacts in the media world scrutinized Trump’s private economic affairs, contacts with Russia, that Barack Obama is one of those who coordinates the deep the state’s conspiracy against Trump. Trump’s lawyer and Republican politician Rudy Giuliani (former mayor of New York) claims that there is a national conspiracy from the deep state against Trump.
Individuals, groups and companies, who want to benefit from the state (and the municipalities) in a formal and also informal way, are probably found in all societies and in history. In modern, democratic societies, the ways of holding back such corporatism are manifold, for example through national audits and other scrutiny of the authorities, through the media, which must act as the third state power and not least because civil servants have a high moral stance and do not accept corruption. This is the classic meaning of bureaucracy (as the sociologist Max Weber describes), ie a corps of irreplaceable officials, who strictly follow the law and regulations for impartial and secure handling of cases – unlike politicians who can be expected to act on different interests.
It is a little strange that the right has taken over the criticism of corporatism and calls it the deep state. But at least in the United States, it makes sense given their hostility to the state. We should not think that the talk about the deep state aims to get a state free from acting special interests. No, their purpose is to suspect and undermine citizens’ trust in the state and to limit the state’s activities and influence as far as possible. How then a lot of people in the United States think that it is Donald Trump, a rock capitalist, who lies and fiddles in every possible way to promote his own interests, would be the one who reveals in the swamp they call the deep state, which he himself rather is a part of, is incomprehensible! It is not possible to put it together into a rational thought, but it is well too much to ask. America First means Trump’s interests first!
Kritikern Alf 