The deep state. A propaganda tool cast into the spotlight by far-right conspiracists. Particularly white political extremists. It’s based on the belief that the federal government has a secret, nefarious plan to subvert white people and their children. From secret facilities such as those exposed by former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura in 2010 to the use of old Walmarts in the Jade Helm exercise, both conspiracy theories evolved during Obama’s presidency. Prior to that era and continuing even today, we’ve been watching white people freak out for decades.
They referred to the closed Walmarts as “concentrations camps” that were being set up as part of a federal takeover of Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, and parts of California. They also regurgitated the nonsensical claims made by Ventura in an episode of TruTV’s “Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura” which aired in 2010. They argue that FEMA camps have been set up for their internment when the federal government inevitably declares martial law.
Yes, they thought the first Black U.S. president was waging a war against the South.
Yet, most said nothing when similar facilities were later used to cage migrant children of color separated from their parents who legally sought refuge in the U.S. via the Southern Border. They remained silent when they found out equivalent facilities were actually private prisons that now house mostly non-white people for victimless crimes. Nothing is more telling about modern society than current events and recent history. And as white America panicked at the thought of being caged, they showed us that as long as it isn’t them being confined, it doesn’t matter.
While the deep state does exist. It’s not what extremists and white people who fear the baseless and racist white replacement theory think it is. Essentially, the deep state is our three-letter intelligence agencies along with military intelligence that keeps the U.S. safe from foreign and domestic enemies. The latter being a job they routinely and intentionally fail at. No purposeful failure has been bigger than usurping the United States’ very own democracy in an attempt to install far-right Christo-fascist leadership.
What the world watched on January 6 is only the beginning.
Extremist groups have been signaling through various social media outlets where they hide (Telegram, Signal, Gettr, Gab, and Parler) that several events are set to occur on the anniversary of the insurrection. Chatter over the last few weeks has been high, however, not as high in the lead up to January 6, 2021. As I often say, it only takes one extremist to cause a mass casualty event. Vigilance is of the utmost importance right now because another domestic terrorist attack on the United States is imminent.
The Cops
Let’s start with the cops we all witnessed move barriers and step aside allowing the mob to gain entry into the U.S. Capitol building in an effort to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory. Police officers aren’t special. As easily as anyone else, they can fall victim to conspiracy theories and propaganda. It could be argued, with great success, that cops are more susceptible to propaganda due to the inflammatory rhetoric routinely used by union bosses.
Police in the United States live in a bubble where their union leaders convince them that there is a war against them, that they’re subject to being ambushed at any time, and that the public they are tasked to serve is their enemy. Police unions promote statistics out of context to present a narrative that Black people and people of color are more dangerous than white people. Despite drug use and crime being similar in nearly every community throughout the country, communities of color are overpoliced and Black people and people of color are incarcerated at disproportionate rates than white people.
All of this is the result of propaganda perpetuated by far-right radicals, echoed by police, and bolstered by media narratives. Federal agents are no different when it comes to being subjected to lies and negative cultural stereotypes. It wasn’t long ago that the FBI labeled Black activists for racial justice as Black Identity Extremists while turning a blind eye to far-right neo-fascists culminating in the mass killing of Latinos, Jews, Asians, and Black people across the country.
Many in the law enforcement community at the local, state, and federal levels are members of hate groups and extremist elements throughout the United States. Earlier this year I reported on a story that exposed even more police officers, judges, and politicians as members of these groups. This is not new. Police were routinely associated with the KKK in the 1950s and 1960s as were many elected officials who did no more to hide it than extremists today.
Police have protections average citizens don’t. If they’re caught in any form of misconduct they are regularly allowed to resign keeping their pensions and in most cases, disability benefits from mental health issues caused by their own illegalities. Yes, cops who murder and commit crimes often claim PTSD from their own actions — justified or not. Since cops are rarely prosecuted, they go on to live peaceful, financially stable lives in the aftermath of committing violent crimes.
The law enforcement apparatus in the U.S. can be as dangerous as any extremist group.
The Intelligence
The vast majority of people in the United States knew what was coming in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2020. The extremists who bought into Donald Trump’s hateful rhetoric and lies about the election being stolen made it abundantly clear what their intentions were on that specific date. Trump and his cohorts validated their beliefs by stoking the mostly white mob to attack the U.S. Capitol using inflammatory and inciteful language during their rally at the ellipse.
The Trump administration did a good job of latching onto what was happening online in social media spaces and exploited it. They went even further by appointing dictatorship-friendly people in valued positions in the intelligence community. One, in particular, was Joseph Maher. Maher worked in the intelligence branch of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). It was him who single-handedly changed protocols about the dissemination of open-source intelligence gathering — leaving DHS to ignore warnings that were out in the open about January 6, 2021.
The watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), drew attention to a memo dated October 20, 2020. In the memo, Maher informed DHS officials that open-source intelligence reports on election-related threats had to be approved by (Trump-appointed) DHS leadership and legal counsel prior to releasing the information. This alone left the U.S. Capitol exposed as a real threat was posed to lawmakers in both Senate and House chambers.
This purposeful lapse in intelligence led to the nearly successful attack on January 6.
The lax security, police allowing insurrectionists to enter the Capitol, the delays in deploying more police resources and the National Guard were all intentional. As more evidence continues to come to light, it’s clear that Trump and his cronies knew what was to come. They knew that because the loyalists they put in place assured it. Those same associates ensured that what was taking place stayed within the parameters of the plan laid out by advocates of a totalitarian state under Trump.
Even I issued dire warnings of what was to come on that day and was widely ignored by the intelligence community, the media, and the public at large. What that showed me and others like me is that people prefer to shrug their shoulders in a display of complicity through complacency. Most of the people in the U.S. are indifferent to the plight of Black people and people of color at the hands of hate groups, so it’s fitting that those same people would ignore warnings of white extremists about to conduct a full-scale terrorist attack on the United States.
The Plan
Supporters of a Cuban-styled Trump dictatorship made their plans clear: stop the certification of Joe Biden by any means necessary. Even if that meant killing elected officials. What many don’t realize is how deep the plan goes and how many prominent people were involved. While the far-right screams about the deep state coming for them, remind them that it’s there to protect white people and white supremacy. From the FBI to the CIA and everything in between, that’s what they’ve always been used for. In fact, the deep state employs them in their strategizing.
We saw it with the use of COINTELPRO to surveil, infiltrate, disrupt, and discredit civil rights groups and their leaders. At the time, the FBI financed, armed, and controlled an extremist far-right group to target activist groups and their leaders. Similar actions occur today. We saw it happen throughout the summer of 2020 during the civil rights movement for Black Lives protests that took place across the country. The protests were infiltrated by cops and extremists who caused damage in major cities in an effort to discredit the movement.
The abilities of the deep state intelligence apparatus are extensive. What they were able to accomplish in the 1960s and 1970s without the use of modern technology pales in comparison to how much power they have today. Using countless new agencies with excessive power, they routinely subvert the constitution by surveilling and intimidating activists, journalists, and civil rights leaders. Even local police deploy surveillance technologies meant for the battlefield against its own citizens — typically Black civil rights leaders. Many of whom have been disappeared.
Then there’s the 79 Days Report. A wargame of what was to occur after the 2020 election. The report was put together by the Claremont Institute and the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) who “brought together 35 Constitutional, legal, political, foreign affairs, and law enforcement experts to simulate the post-election period, carrying the contest to the furthest Constitutional endpoint.”
The report detailed the authoritarianism of the political right based on the typical drivers of white rage and extremism: paranoia and white extinction anxiety. The script plays out using scenarios such as, “Riots break out in more than a dozen major cities, including Seattle, San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Houston, Louisville, Miami, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. 14 law enforcement officers are known to have been shot, with one confirmed death. There are unconfirmed reports of a car bombing of a police precinct building in Philadelphia.” It lays out a plot that includes the invasion of the Capitol and all-out civil war.
If the terrorism on January 6, 2021 seems scripted, that’s because it was. As is the continuing plot to subvert democracy by far-right actors with the assistance of Russian cognitive warfare.
The Actors
Aside from bigger names such as Mike Flynn, Mark Meadows, Ted Cruz, and Paul Gosar, there are dozens of others in positions of power helping orchestrate the continued undermining of democracy in the United States. For example, some of the authors behind the 79 Days Report are Donald Trump’s lawyer who crafted the memo advising Mike Pence to block the certification of Joe Biden’s victory, John Eastman; former California State Assemblyman, Chuck DeVore; former Deputy National Security Advisor under Michael Flynn, K.T. McFarland; former Texas State Representative, Jason Isaac, and many more.
It’s worth noting that most of these people are also higher-ups in think tanks and policy institutes across the country. John Eastman is a Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute, DeVore is Vice President of TPPF, and Jason Isaac is the Director of Life: Powered, at the TPPF. Others behind the plan include Facebook board member Peter Thiel’s protégé Jeff Giesea, a secret funder of the alt-right, and Ron Simmons, the former Texas State Representative and current Senior Fellow at TPPF. The current head of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts was also involved in the extensive planning.
In addition to those characters, Peter Navarro admitted to coordinating with Steve Bannon, who corresponded with the above-mentioned players in a last-ditch effort by Republicans such as Cruz and Gosar to prevent the certification of the 2020 election results. Yet, there are still countless others like Jim Jordan and Scott Perry, who are complicit in the attempted, and still ongoing, coup in the United States.
Yes, you read that right. This is far from over.
The Republican Senate Committee on Intelligence report indicates that the vast majority of these actors worked to undermine the 2016 presidential election even Donald Trump didn’t think he could win. Their work seems to have produced the desired results. Therefore, they took it as a sign they could do it again. They even repeated the same language from 2016 suggesting the elections were rigged. In other words, what we’ve witnessed since the 2020 election is what Trump would have done had he lost to Hillary Clinton. The idea was to create a constitutional crisis using chaos — which they almost succeeded in doing.
That crisis would then be used to steal the election away from tens of millions of voters. Since that didn’t work, lawmakers in several key states are now changing the rules to vote. Their efforts resulted in making it harder for non-white people to cast their ballots. In addition, they’re giving themselves the ability to overturn the will of the people in many statehouses across the country. If successful, the winner of the next presidential election will not be the person with the most votes. Particularly, in the states that have made targeting future elections their focus.
The Pawns
Over the last decade, I’ve written extensively about billionaire elitists who fund hate groups as means to an end. A finale they envision keeps them in power even if that includes the murder of innocent people. From hedge fund magnate Robert Mercer funding racist and bigoted content through Breitbart to his daughter, Rebekah Mercer funding Parler, a social media app for hate, the wealthy funding hate groups is nothing new.
However, it has exploded exponentially since the Citizens United verdict in 2010.
Therefore, it was only fitting to see the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and Three Percenters (among others) present at the terrorist attack on the Capitol. The commonalities you will find among the vast majority of these funders is that they’re conservative, climate-denying, religious and political extremists of the Christian variety. One of the more common ways money from the bank accounts of the wealthy trickles into the coffers of hate groups is through donor-advised funds (DAFs).
Hate groups would like you to believe they are self-funded. But years of investigatory work have shown me that nothing could be further from the truth. Steve Bannon couldn’t be what he is today without Robert Mercer’s money. Other prominent far-right voices and the hate groups they operate among wouldn’t exist without billionaire cash. The DeVos family was funding extremists while Betsy DeVos was still working for Trump in the White House.
The pawns of today are being played just as the pawns of yesterday were.
Funders of extremism like instability. They help foster propaganda that suggests a rise in violent crime even when it’s at all-time lows. They throw money at chaos agents such as Candace Owens and her Cuban doppelganger, Enrique Tarrio along with Ben Shapiro, Charlie Kirk, and other Tucker Carlson wannabes to sow discord. It’s all intentional and it’s motivated by animus towards marginalized groups. Racism starts with those who fund it.
As long as the United States continues to see unfettered cash flowing into the hands of bigoted and racist think tanks, so-called “foundations,” and media outlets as well as hate groups and extremists, there is no end in sight. With unlimited amounts of money, extremists in the U.S. have us outgunned. We can call it out until we’re blue in the face. But, as long as their membership numbers keep growing bolstered by mountains of moolah we’re falling behind.
Adding in the conversations about the growing extremism in law enforcement and federal agencies, the picture becomes even bleaker. The broad lack of accountability regarding the usurping of the Republic is beyond problematic. It’s institutional. Cops are held to account no more than federal agents and politicians even less. Particularly, former presidents. In all likelihood, Trump will die of old age before he’s held accountable for his actions.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take the rest of his cast of characters down.
The Deep State
Yes, the deep state exists (sort of) and it’s used by far-right extremist elements all over the country to usurp democracy. Elected officials, judges, police officers, federal agencies, wealthy elites, and extremist hate groups are coming together to bring us into a fascist totalitarian dictatorship where elections mean nothing.
When the few, like me, who study these elements at the intersection of politics and race tell you that this isn’t over, this is what we’re talking about. The big names you hear in the news being investigated are but the tip of the spear. The planners and their cohorts who facilitated the actions of so many have yet to be mentioned and they may not ever be. The onus is on us to ensure put pressure on those responsible for making sure they are held to account and never allowed into positions of power again.
However, if our current Congress doesn’t pass legislation to protect the right to vote then you can kiss all of this goodbye. We are as Barton Gellman said in The Atlantic earlier this month, “Technically, the next attempt to overthrow a national election may not qualify as a coup. It will rely on subversion more than violence, although each will have its place. If the plot succeeds, the ballots cast by American voters will not decide the presidency in 2024. Thousands of votes will be thrown away, or millions, to produce the required effect. The winner will be declared the loser. The loser will be certified president-elect.” Congress needs to get their proverbial shit together.
In the meantime, while we may not be able to stop the so-called think tanks that manipulate data and remove context from facts to fit their narratives, we can counter them by calling it out when we hear their language of hate from those within our proximity. That means white people need to confront those around them as this is by and large a white people problem. It’s up to them to call out the hate they see and hear from their friends, family, and coworkers.
Because you can’t beat hate with love if you’re not calling it out.
If they’re not calling it out, they’re complicit when someone they know, whether directly or indirectly, is involved the next time there’s an assault on the Capitol; a mass killing; or an attack on any non-white group occurs. Just like those that came before them.
