Donald J. Trump and the Deep State

[red dog 1]

By Peter Dale Scott
(via Who.What.Why.org)

The following is an excerpt from Part One of a two-part series by Professor Peter Dale Scott, author of "The American Deep State: Big Money, Big Oil, and the Struggle for U.S. Democracy" (2017) By Peter Dale Scott



On February 3, 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported President Trump's plans for a broad rollback of the recent financial reforms of Wall Street.
Although no surprise, the news was in iconic contrast to the rhetoric of his campaign, when he spent months denouncing both Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton for their links to Goldman Sachs, even when his campaign's Financial Chairman was a former Goldman Sachs banker, Steven Mnuchin (now Trump's Treasury Secretary).

Trump was hardly the first candidate to run against the banking establishment while surreptitiously taking money from big bankers.
So did Hitler in 1933.

However, Trump's connections to big money, both new (often self-made) and old (mostly institutional) were not only more blatant than usual, some were also possibly more sinister.
Trump's campaign was probably the first ever to be scrutinized by the FBI for
"financial connections with Russian financial figures," and even with a Russian bank whose Washington influence was attacked years ago, after it was allegedly investigated in Russia for possible mafia connections.

Trump's appointment of the third Goldman Sachs executive to lead Treasury in the last four administrations, after Robert Rubin (under Clinton) and Hank Paulson (under Bush), has reinforced recent speculation about Trump's relationship to what is increasingly referred to as the deep state.
That is the topic of this essay.

But we must first see what is really meant by "the deep state."

WHAT IS MEANT BY THE DEEP STATE?

Since 2007, when I first referred to a "deep state" in America, the term has become a meme, and even a topic of a cautious essay in The New York Times.
Recently it has been enhanced by a new meme, "the 'deep state' versus Trump," a theme that promoted Donald Trump as a genuine outsider, and entered the electoral campaign as early as August 2016.

More:
http://whowhatwhy.org/2017/02/06/donald-j-trump-deep-state-part-1/



About Peter Dale Scott:
http://www.peterdalescott.net

[Thomas Hurt]

1. The tea party and the deep state are just rebranded versions of far right paranoid nuttery....

that has been part of the far right ideology since McCarthyism, and the John Birch Society.

The boogeyman changes, Jews, communists, liberals, atheists, brown folks, the poor, and now Muslims.

In other words the usual characteristics of fascism. Militarism, scapegoating, racism/bigotry, nationalism, misogyny, anti-intellectualism, paranoid, etc.

[emulatorloo]

2. Yes, and 'deep state' is an alt-right term to describe the patriots in our govt who won't bow down

to their god emperor Trump.

Trump's own criminal actions are why he's being investigated by the FBI. Whether they Like it or not the constitution and laws matter. Their Daddy is not exempt.

[red dog 1]

5. See reply # 4

Peter Dale Scott is a lifelong progressive - in no way is he "alt-right"

[emulatorloo]

6. I didn't say he was. My comment was clearly about the alt-right's use of the term.

[JCannon]

3. You may have misunderstood Scott

Professor Peter Dale Scott is a former Canadian diplomat, a professor at Berkeley, and a respected poet. Over the decades, he has strongly opposed conservative administrations from Nixon to Reagan to Dubya. He wrote groundbreaking works exposing connections between the CIA and organized crime. He is well-known for his work on the CIA's disastrous coup in Indonesia, for his pieces exposing American links to neofascist states (such as Chile), and for his opposition to the Vietnam war.

In short: For many years, his name was associated with progressivism, anti-interventionism and anti-militarism.

Scott borrowed the term "deep state" from Turkish politics. (The phrase is commonly used there.) I know that he defined the oil industry as a key component of the deep state -- thus, he would surely point to the appointment of Rex Tillerson as an example of the deep state in action.

A quick skim of Scott's latest piece will show you that he identifies Donald Trump as an exemplar (or tool) of the deep state who deceptively ran for office as an opponent of same. In this regard, Scott likens Trump to Hitler.

It is true the far rightists in this country fastened upon Scott's work and appropriated the term "deep state" for their own purposes. Scott is not responsible for that. He should have known better than to appear on Alex Jones' radio program some years back. Scott has also appeared -- far more often -- on shows run by leftwingers and socialists. (I first encountered him via the Pacifica network.) I guess that some people believe that a microphone is a microphone. Personally, I think that life is easier if one strives to avoid "guilt by association" accusations.

I chatted with Scott a few times more than twenty years ago; he probably would not recall. I definitely would NOT classify him as any sort of right-winger -- quite the opposite. That said, I've not really followed his work in recent years; it is possible that he has written cringe-inducing material during that past decade or so. If he has, I hope that someone reading these words will enlighten me.

There used to be a robust tradition of left-wing anti-CIA, anti-militarist, anti-fascist criticism. If you are old enough to recall publications like Covert Action Information Bulletin and CounterSpy, you may be familiar with that tradition. The situation is very strange now: Some of the rhetoric employed by those old-school lefty writers has been commandeered and perverted by the far right.

I'm an old dog, and I find these new tricks to be both infuriating and perplexing.

[red dog 1]

4. Your comment should be directed at replies # 1 & 2, not at me

I've known about Professor Peter Dale Scott since the 1980s, and I would never refer to him as "alt-right".

I also recall Covert Action Information Bulletin, from being a regular listener to Dave Emory when he and Nip Tuck had the weekly 4-hour radio show on KFJC-FM in Los Altos Hills.(Foothill J.C.)
In fact, I taped most of the shows, (the show was called "One Step Beyond&quot

It was on "One Step beyond" that I heard them reading from the excellent JFK assassination book, which Scott co-edited with 2 others, titled "The Assassinations: Dallas and Beyond"

(As a footnote, about a year & 1/2 ago, I emailed Professor Scott, and he was kind enough to reply to me)