What is a Deep State? The U.S. Deep State is unlike any other, in
that there is no other global superpower bent on world domination. (Washington’s
political posture is also unique; no other nation claims to be
“exceptional” and “indispensable” and thus not subject to the
constraints of international law and custom.) Indeed, the U.S. is so
proudly and publicly imperialist that much of what should be secret
information about U.S. military and other capabilities is routinely fed
to the world press, such as the 2011 announcement that the U.S. now has a
missile that can hit any target on the planet in 30 minutes, part of
the Army’s “Prompt Global Strike” program. Frightening the rest of the world into submission -- a form of global terrorism -- is U.S. public policy.
However, arming and training Islamic jihadist terrorists to subvert
internationally recognized governments targeted by the U.S. for regime
change is more than your usual variety of covert warfare: It is a policy
that must forever be kept secret, because U.S. society would suffer a
political breakdown if the facts of U.S. and Saudi nurturing of the
international jihadist network were ever fully exposed. This is Deep
State stuff of the highest order. The true nature of U.S. foreign policy
in the 21st century, and the real character of the current
wars in Syria and Iraq, must be hidden from the U.S. public at all cost.
An alternative reality must be presented, through daily collaboration
between corporate media, corporate universities, and the public and
covert organs of the U.S. State.
What part of the New York Times coverage of the war against
Syria is a lie? Damn near all of it. What role does the Deep State play
in crafting the lies dutifully promulgated by the corporate media?
That’s impossible to answer, because the Deep State is a network of
relationships, not a clearly delineated zone or space or set of
organizations. The best way to describe the imperial Deep State is:
those individuals and institutions that are tasked with establishing the
global supremacy of the corporate ruling class. Such activities must be
masked, since they clash with the ideological position of the ruling
class, which is that the bourgeois electoral system of the United States
is the world’s freest and fairest. The official line is that the U.S.
State is a work of near-perfection, with checks and balances that
prevent any class, group or section from domination over the other. The
truth is that an oligarchy rules, and makes war on whomever it chooses
-- internationally and domestically -- for the benefit of corporate
capital.
Glen Ford, "The U.S. Deep State Rules – On Behalf of the Ruling Class" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).