class war

The Deep State is an idea that originated in Turkish leftwing circles, as leftwing activists in the seventies and eighties started to notice the links between the army, police, judiciary, certain political parties, organised crime and the intelligence services and how these various interests groups worked together to block unwanted democratic developments like the election of leftist parties and politician or later, the rise of political Islamistic parties. The Deep State has supposedly apolitical organs of the state working together with extra-governmental and even criminal or fascists groups to pursue their own political agenda, while keeping up the appearance of a democracy, through a largely informal network of likeminded people in positions of power both within the state as outside of it, sometimes even working against the interests of their own government.

Through it was first articulated this way by Turkish leftists, the idea of such a “deep state” is not unique to that country of course. As made clear by Watergate, the Lockheed Affair or the Gladio Network and other such scandals, deep state structures can be found in any western democracy, especially in its intelligence services. It’s inevitable. Those who join institutions like the army, police or secret services are more likely than not to have rightwing sympathies and especially in the higher echelons of such a service, contempt for “fickle politicians” is almost bred into them, as any Tom Clancy novel shows. Combine that with an outlook that’s designed to see reds under every bed and is professionally pessimistic when estimating threats and the temptation to do something about these threats must be high. All this doesn’t really need men in suits around a big table in some smoky backroom, though I’m sure some such scenes will have happened, just people of similar backgrounds and political opinion informally helping each other against a common enemy. The people at the top don’t really need to do anything, just turn a blind eye to what their subordinates are doing.

A perfect example of such a Deep State conspiracy is the current News of the World phone hacking scandal. You have journalists hacking the phones of mainly leftwing politicians, as well as the usual celebrity suspects in the service of finding sleaze to splash on the frontpages of rightwing newspapers and in Scotland Yard, a police service that is a) highly politicised already and b) is strangely reluctant to investigate these crimes or even inform victims that their phones had been hacked, to the point that even Gordon Brown had to ask if he had been a victim. Meanwhile Andy Coulson, the ex-editor of the News of the World, who had to resign back in 2007 when one of his journalists had been convicted of phone hacking, was deemed respectable enough to become and remain David Cameron’s spin doctor until he was scapegoated this weekend.

The mainstream spin on this is that this is all an awful example of Rubert Murdoch’s grip on the UK’s political classes but that since all newspapers are complicit, do not expect much to change. And sure, perhaps ninety percent of such hacking is just done for crass commercial interests: getting the scoop on the next Royal scandal, digging up dirt on the newest X-Factor celebrity, “getting” yet another MP playing hanky panky with somebody else’s husband, a rubber suit and a large orange and so on. This is bad enough, but it is also the perfect instrument for the intelligence services to keep a tap on “enemy” politicians. No need to set up your own, risky surveillance programme if you can get friendly journalists to do it for you. These services have long had ties with the more respectable British newspapers (see e.g. Spycatcher) anyway and the illegality of such phone taps, as well as the expertise needed to get that bit of hacking done (not always very great, admittedly) means that the papers won’t look too closely at who’s helping them get their material and sharing it either — one hand washes the other.

It’s not surprising then that Scotland Yard has been reluctant to look too closely into the phone hacking allegations, other than when they’re forced to through the courts. They have every reason not to.