Talk:Deep state in the United States

RFC on the use of "conspiracy theory" in Wikivoice in the opening sentence

Does the WP:WEIGHT of the currently cited sources support characterizing the concept of a deep state in the United States as a "conspiracy theory" in Wikivoice in the opening sentence? Philomathes2357 (talk) 23:00, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

• No - The prominence of certain viewpoints within the article should be determined by those viewpoints' representation in the cited sources.

I have reviewed all 59 sources currently cited in the article. Only two of them refer to the concept of a deep state in the United States as a "conspiracy theory" in the author's voice. A 3rd source says that the term is regarded as a conspiracy theory by "Trump's critics", but does apply that label in the author's voice. There are two or three other sources among the 59 that use the words "conspiracy" or "conspiratorial" somewhere within the source, but not as an attempt to characterize the concept of a "deep state" in the United States.

Out of the additional 56 sources, some of them treat the concept with skepticism, while others treat the concept as important and valid. Some take no position (such as presentations of polling data) and others engage with the concept in a serious, thoughtful way without promoting a particular POV on the concept's validity. A variety of potential definitions of a "deep state" in the United States are offered by the sources, with some conceding that the term is conditionally valid while objecting to specific invocations of it. The point is -wide a range of positions is expressed by the sources. However, none of them characterize the concept of a deep state in the USA as a "conspiracy theory".

Therefore, I think the answer to the RFC is clearly "no".

Several counterarguments have been presented, such as...

"well, there are some sources that do not not call it a conspiracy theory, so we can read between the lines and assume that they regard it as such, even though the sources don't say so"

and "there are other sources out there, somewhere, that the article does not cite, and my gut feeling is that, if we assembled all of them in the article, that would change the weight".

I do not find either of those arguments to have any bearing on the specific question posed by the RFC, and I have addressed them both in the above thread, so I will not discuss them further unless they are invoked again in this RFC.

I hope this will lead to a fruitful and nuanced discussion about how to apply WP:WEIGHT. Philomathes2357 (talk) 23:04, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

• Yes. I came here from the RfC notice, and I don't want to vouch for whether or not the page cites all the sources that it should, but I've read the talk section directly above this one, and it seems obvious to me that there is sufficient sourcing "out there" to describe it as a "conspiracy theory". --Tryptofish (talk) 23:11, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

  I don't understand how WP:WEIGHT can be determined by vague references to unnamed sources that might be "out there somewhere", which hypothetically support a certain POV? No editor, to date, has even offered a single one of these hypothetical sources, except for me. How can that claim be assessed measured by other editors? WP:WEIGHT must be determined by the sources that are currently cited to make the statements currently made in the article. Philomathes2357 (talk) 18:19, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

  Other editors have already explained this below, but the flaw in your argument is that you are claiming that if a source does not refer to whether or not it is a conspiracy theory, that would supposedly count as a source that asserts that it isn't a conspiracy theory. The way to determine weight correctly is to balance reliable sources that say that it is a conspiracy theory against those that say explicitly that calling it a conspiracy theory is incorrect. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:50, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

  I am not claiming anything even remotely approaching what you've described. I have never said that sources that do not mention the term "conspiracy theory" should be understood as "assert(ing) that it isn't a conspiracy theory". I'm trying to be polite here, but I'm so baffled by how you could reach the conclusion that I have claimed any such thing, so I'm not sure how to engage with that.

  And your theory that weight can only be determined by sources explicitly rejecting the specific phrase "conspiracy theory" was already acknowledged to be faulty reasoning. Sources must be read for content, not just for keywords - that is what I was just told. See the "Israel is a terrorist state" analogy in the preceding discussion. Philomathes2357 (talk) 23:37, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

  I don't mean for you to be baffled or upset, but I also hope that you will read WP:1AM and think seriously about how you are coming across to uninvolved editors. As I said above, I came here from the RfC listing. I'm not here as some sort of partisan involved with this page, just coming here with what I hope are fresh eyes. I've gone through your lengthy comment below, in which you quote from multiple sources. Here is something that I take from what I've read in the quotes you provided. There are certainly multiple reliable sources that say things that I could paraphrase as follows: "Some people talk about a "Deep State". In fact, there really are a large number of career government workers. There is a legitimate concern that these people are not elected by the voters, and that they are not directly answerable to the public. However, these government workers are also hard-working people who are non-partisan and who are not part of some sort of organized conspiracy." It's a misrepresentation of the source material to present these sources as saying that the "Deep State" is something real and not just a conspiracy theory. The sources acknowledge that the term exists, but are actually making the case that the conspiracy theory that is designated by the term "Deep State" (that these civil servants and poll workers are putting microchips in vaccines and controlling Trump's trials from the shadows) is not what is going on with career civil servants. Sources that argue that there should be more public oversight and accountability for civil servant actions are not endorsing the "Deep State" as something that exists, but rather, distancing themselves from the conspiracy theory while pointing out what the sources consider some legitimate issues. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:09, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

• Yes. Only RS lend weight to a POV here. For example, thousands of fringe sources do not weigh more than two RS. There is no good evidence for the existence of any form of effective deep state in the United States. The existence of an extensive free press and lack of a dictatorship make it impossible. We have leaks, and they would undermine attempts to establish such a deep state. Therefore, the claims by Trump and Co. (that they are the victims of a deep state) are a conspiracy theory, and that's what this article is about. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 23:27, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

  I agree that "only RS lend weight to a POV here". That is the whole point of the RFC - the currently cited RS do not lend enough weight to the POV being promoted to make a Wikivoice statement in the opening sentence. As for the rest of your comment, it is an expression of your personal opinions about US politics, and does not address the question posed in the RFC. Philomathes2357 (talk) 18:16, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

• Yes. Surely there would be leaks from the massive number of people it would require to hide the “fact” that the country is controlled by a cabal. I don’t see any RS subscribing to this theory and some specifically use the term “conspiracy theory”, presumably because it is a theory about a vast conspiracy. For editorial style reasons, some may use different words. But what RS say it is true or even plausible? Do we now suggest that Trump’s repetitive claims that Biden has instructed the FBI to assassinate him is possibly true? This meets DUE and the body text passes NPOV. O3000, Ret. (talk) 00:28, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

  Do you think it would be helpful to the discussion for me to post a list of the RS that "say it is true or even plausible"? Even though that's not directly relevant to the due weight that should be given to the term "conspiracy theory", perhaps that would help clarify the conversation and move it in a less opinionated, more source-based direction? Philomathes2357 (talk) 00:32, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

  On second thought, this RFC is already drifting from the question posed, and into generalized opinion-sharing about whether or not some form of a deep state is "real". Perhaps the question of how, exactly, the weight of RS should be used to characterize the concept of a deep state in the United States should be left aside for now, until we precisely clarify the question of whether or not the use of "conspiracy theory" in Wikivoice is justified by the currently cited sources. Philomathes2357 (talk) 00:35, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

• Yes. Reliable sources that do not mention those terms do not cancel those that do. Such canceling could only be done by reliable sources that explicitly say the terms do not apply. --Hob Gadling (talk) 08:48, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
• Yes - Reliable sources support the phrasing, and no actual counter-argument has been offered beyond "I don't like it". The most compelling argument is that we need to add more sourcing, but that's easy enough for anyone to add over time. The idea that sources who don't explicitly use the term "conspiracy theory" are supporting the claim that the deep state exists in the United States is ludicrous. People who engage in careful consideration of the concept of a deep state are not endorsing its factual existence, they're treating it as an intellectual exercise, much like those who carefully analyze the concept of Russel's teapot do not claim there is actual pottery orbiting the sun. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 12:07, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

  Yes, two reliable sources out of 59 support the phrasing. Obviously, a counterargument has been offered beyond "I don't like it" - the counterargument is that 2 out of 59 sources is not sufficient weight to characterize the concept with a Wikivoice statement. That is a very clear and straightforward counterargument. You are choosing to ignore it.

  Nowhere has anyone implied "The idea that sources who don't explicitly use the term "conspiracy theory" are supporting the claim that the deep state exists in the United States." - that would, indeed, be ludicrous, but your comment is a straw man, as that argument has not been made by anyone.

  Numerous reliable, cited sources engage in "careful consideration" of the concept in a manner that is in no way analogous to Russell's Teapot. Your remark is simply untrue and has no relationship to the cited sources.

  In short, your comment does not actually respond to the RFC - it responds to several unrelated ideas that were not brought up in the discussion. Philomathes2357 (talk) 18:13, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

  As I have demonstrated below, Philomathes' "two out of 59" construction absolutely does, straw poll fashion, count sources that don't use the term "conspiracy theory" as votes against the deep state conspiracy theory (even if they are used to source statements in the article that aren't about "is it a conspiracy theory?"). I have discussed this at greater length above. Newimpartial (talk) 21:53, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

• Yes - as I noted in my contribution to the discussion in the previous section, Philomathes' methodology is fatally flawed. Their approach excludes sources not used in the article - which is most of the good ones - and then interprets sources in the article that don't address the question whether the Deep State in the US is a conspiracy theory as though they were saying it isn't one. Thus the method produces an outcome convenient to the RfC creator but not grounded in Wikipedia policy or the actual content of relevant sources. The answer to the question posed in the RfC - at least the real question, do the sources support "conspiracy theory" in wikivoice - is therefore "yes".

Also, the RfC mover seems inclined to respond to each !vote with which they disagree. Based on my own experience, this is a bad habit that can lead to editing restrictions and that almost never nudges others towards the intended outcome. The cultivation of healthier habits is difficult but ultimately worthwhile, IMO. Newimpartial (talk) 20:08, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

Agree with User:Newimpartial about the the RfC responses. Once the RfC is running best let it take it's course. Lukewarmbeer (talk) 09:18, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

• Yes The reasons stated by other editors above stand up for me. Lukewarmbeer (talk) 09:22, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
• Yes of course. I didn't realise there was an RfC when I made a couple of edits today, so thanks to Philomathes2357 for alerting me while reverting, and apologies for adding sources while under dispute. There is, though, no doubt that the overwhelming majority of RSs use this term and pretty much no RSs contradict that or use it as a serious descriptive term. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:59, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
• No. The term "deep state" doesn't necessarily refer to a conspiracy theory. Here Francis Fukuyama argues that the deep state should be defended, and David Rohde published a book about it arguing that it's a real idea that can help us think through some legitimate issues. This is not to deny that conspiracy theories about the deep state exist, but the article should cover all the uses of the term.

Alaexis_¿question? 11:46, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Neither of the sources you have cited supports the existence of a clandestine network of members of the federal government (especially within the FBI and CIA), working in conjunction with high-level financial and industrial entities and leaders, to exercise power, which is the conspiracy theory described in this article. The sources are talking about other things (including the false claims by conservatives, which they also describe as false). Newimpartial (talk) 14:36, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

This is a circular argument. If the article describes a conspiracy theory then it should be called "US deep state conspiracy theory". I'd have no problems with it. However the article as it's named now is supposed to cover all uses of the term. Alaexis_¿question? 21:00, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes it should be called "US deep state conspiracy theory" as that's what the article is about. We can't get it done. O3000, Ret. (talk) 21:29, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

I, too, find this circular and unconvincing. The passage that @Newimpartial cites is from our Wikipedia article. But Wikipedia is not a reliable source. How the article defines "deep state in the United States" should be determined by RS, not by current or previous iterations of the Wikipedia article. I think it's been established that there are multiple significant points of view in the body of RS, and it's been established that those RS have different working definitions of the term. If RS's working definition of the term does not precisely align with the Wikipedia article's current opening sentence, that does not mean that those RS are irrelevant, it means that our current opening sentence is not an adequate summary of what the literature says. Pecopteris (talk) 19:26, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

There are other definitions of deep state that RS have discussed, which are documented elsewhere. This particular article is about the conspiracy theory that there is a clandestine network of members of the federal government (especially within the FBI and CIA), working in conjunction with high-level financial and industrial entities and leaders, to exercise power alongside or within the elected United States government. Says so right at the top. O3000, Ret. (talk) 19:45, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

As I said: circular and unconvincing. If you wish to change the article to reflect that POV, you can attempt to get a consensus to change the name of the article to "Deep state in the United States (conspiracy theory)". Until then, you are factually incorrect. As you allude to in your previous comment ("we can't get it done"), you have tried, and failed, to achieve this consensus. That being the case, continued efforts to constrain this article's scope to post-2016 coverage is a thinly-veiled attempt to push a POV. Sorry if that sounds mean, but that's how I see it based on the discussion so far. Happy to reconsider if you think I'm missing something. Cheers. Pecopteris (talk) 19:54, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

We have failed to change the name of the article to what the article is clearly about as stated in the lead because some editors believe this nonsense is true. RS don't. Your argument is with them. There is nothing circular about what we are saying. O3000, Ret. (talk) 21:39, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm afraid we disagree. I find this line of argument to be circular, at best. Like I said, you're free to change what this article is about by getting consensus to change the title, or to create another article called "Deep state in the United States (conspiracy theory)" that focuses exclusively on the post-2016 literature, if you think that would be appropriate. Until then, the article is, by definition, about all the significant points of view that RS have discussed regarding "deep state in the United States", regardless of editors' opinions about the conclusions those RS reach. Any attempt to arbitrarily limit the article's scope to post-2016 coverage is undue, and, to be very honest, appears POV-motivated. Like I said, I'm wide open to the idea that I'm missing something, but I'm not seeing it so far. Cheers. Pecopteris (talk) 21:59, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

You are the one going in circles. You fail to understand what the article is about. It is stated in the lead. The RfC is currently 13-3 against your view. Read WP:AGF. I'm done. O3000, Ret. (talk) 00:09, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Remarks like "Enough" and "you fail to understand what the article is about" are not constructive. I am not a stupid man, and I have not failed to understand what you are saying. I understand what you want the article to be about, and I understand the justifications you have offered for your desired framing.

I find the underlying logic to be fallacious, discordant with the relevant literature, and unaligned with Wikipedia's norms and policies. When I asked for clarification to try to make sense of your position, you have not pointed out any relevant policies or MOS guidelines to support your interpretation, and your tone has drifted in an uncomfortably combative direction. So I'll step back now and let the closer sort things out. Take care. Cheers. Pecopteris (talk) 00:31, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

The reason I quoted the lead of the article is because it states what the topic of this article is. And the recent (since 2017) reliable sources about "the deep state in the United States" overwhelmingly describe their topic as a conspiracy theory, as false claims, or as right-wing/far-right tropes. This article is about that topic, and (mostly) reflects those sources.

There are indeed literatures about other things, such as Yes, Minister!-style bureaucratic stonewalling, and state permeability by outside interests à la Military-industrial complex. But to the best of my knowlege (and I dabbled in this as a reasearch area as a younger feminist), the "deep state" isn't the COMMONNAME applied any of these topics, at least not in a US context. And as far as I have seen, none of the sources presented on this Talk page, whether from pre- or post-2016, have indicated otherwise in any significant sense, and most of them essentially play with the "deep state" framing while actually making an argument that is tangential, at best, to the claim that the US polity is best understood as having a "deep state" at all.

Also, whether or not other editors agree or disagree with this argument, I am appealing to a corpus of external discourse for adjudication - it ain't a circular argument, and I am beginning to lose patience with editors who misrepresent it as such. Newimpartial (talk) 01:09, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, @Pecopteris, this is absolutely circular reasoning. Please don't let insults and snark cause you to back away from your position. From my perspective, the conversation has gone something like this:

Me: The lede does not accurately summarize the significant viewpoints offered by RS.

Yes voters: Yes it does. Practically all RS regard it as a conspiracy theory.

Me: No they don't. Review the literature and you'll find that a minority of sources use that term, it's only used from 2016-2024, never used before that, and quite a few sources either directly state that the term doesn't apply, or they implicitly imply it, including some of the most acclaimed political science scholars to have ever written in English.

Yes voters: Well, fine, but THAT literature doesn't matter, because this article is exclusively about the conspiracy theory.

Me: What basis do you have to claim that this article is only about one recent viewpoint, and not about all of the the significant viewpoints offered by RS?

Yes voters: Because practically all RS regard it as a conspiracy theory.

Me: No they don't, review the literature and you'll find otherwise.

Yes voters: Well, fine, but THAT literature doesn't matter, because this article is exclusively about the conspiracy theory.

Me: What basis do you have to claim that this article is only about one recent viewpoint, and not about all of the significant viewpoints offered by RS?

Yes voters: Because practically all RS regard it as a conspiracy theory.

Me: But...that's demonstrably false, as you would know if you thoroughly reviewed the literature. Am I the only one who has done so?

Yes voters: Fine, point taken, plenty of RS implicitly or explicitly reject the conspiracy theory framing, but it doesn't matter what THAT literature says, because this article is exclusively about the conspiracy theory.

Me: Based on what?

Yes voters: Based on what the lede currently says.

Me: Huh? That's not how it works. The lede does not accurately summarize the significant viewpoints offered by RS, so it's a bad lede - that's the whole point!

Yes voters: Yes it does. Practically all RS regard it as a conspiracy theory, and even if they don't, it doesn't matter, because this article is about the conspiracy theory, because the lede says so and we say so. So shut up, or else we'll try to get you banned.

Me: *facepalms and sighs deeply*

This could be printed in a textbook about circular reasoning and goalpost shifting. I really don't know what to make of it.

Looking back on this article's history, it appears that a group of editors unsuccessfully attempted to turn this article into a POVFORK by changing the title, and, when that failed, simply decided to claim collective ownership of the article and internally agree to enforce the notion that the article is "about" something other than what is suggested by the title, body, and reference list.

I've never read any other articles on Wikipedia that are "about" something other than what the title, the body, and the references say - maybe someone could point one out, if this is a quixotic convention I'm unaware of.

I strongly suspect that the reason for this whole "the article is really about X" approach is something like "if we don't grab readers by the shoulders by using the "conspiracy theory" label in Wikivoice, then the article will be insufficiently anti-Trump, and that might indirectly contribute to the rise of Fascism in America." I don't like Trump either, guys, and I'm not accusing other editors of bad faith - trying to stop a Fascist takeover in America is a laudable goal, but it looks like a case of WP:RGW superseding WP:NPOV. I hope the closing admin will note this, even if they think the sum total of arguments made by the majority are superior.

PS - since it's recently been determined that pinging relevant WikiProjects is not canvassing, I plan to do so soon. It will lead to a few more substance-free +1s, I'm sure, but I trust the closing admin to apply WP:DETCON. Philomathes2357 (talk) 01:29, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Well, @Philomathes2357, I agree with you 80-90%, while still keeping an open mind to the possibility that I am missing something. With that said, I'm seeing eyebrow-raising levels of hostility from multiple editors that disagree, and I really don't want to get sucked into a battleground. So, I'll leave it at this: I agree with you, I voted accordingly, and I find the counterarguments to your position to be lacking, but I will not comment here any more unless pinged and directly asked for comment. Please do not ping me unless you think something really phenomenal has taken place that might change my vote. Cheers. Pecopteris (talk) 01:43, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Philomathes2357, your cartoonish rewrite of what other editors have posted including including the odd accusation that an editor said: "So shut the f*ck up, or else" is a gross violation of WP:PA WP:CIV WP:AGF I suggest you strike it. O3000, Ret. (talk) 10:27, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Philomathes, I find that the term "viewpoints" in this long comment is doing a lot of work in the background, especially in obscuring necessary distinctions. For myself, I am not convinced that any of the questions at issue are best examined in terms of "viewpoints", at least not as a primary lens. It seems to me that this discussion has addressed (or, more often, not addressed) two key questions:

• does "the deep state" refer to a network/conspiracy of government intelligence officials and corporate executives/oligarchs, or does it refer to something else? (e.g. ethical bureaucrats or the MIC)
• in the context of the United States, is "the deep state" (as defined in response to the first question) a real thing or a trope/conspiracy theory?

It seems to me that different responses to the first question aren't actually different "viewpoints" so much as they reflect different literatures, divided both before and after 2016 and in relation to different contexts and objects of inquiry. And - as I have pointed out more than once in this discussion with no contrary evidence offered - the only one of these literatures that uses "deep state" as its central term and concept is the network/conspiracy.

And for the second question, in the context of the United States, I haven't seen any suggestion that the intelligence agencies and captains of industry in the United States actually form a real network/conspiracy, whether pre- or post-2016. This appears to be a conspiracy theory, where the only alternative viewpoint since 2016 appears to be people who believe in or deploy tropes of the conspiracy theory. There isn't really a BOTHSIDES about this, in terms of RS, and editors who return to the first question to say, "sometimes people who write about the deep state in the United States are talking about something else, something real" are only muddying the waters, IMO. Newimpartial (talk) 11:48, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

As is so often the case, it seems much of the difference of opinions here is based on differing understandings of what are "reliable sources" and legitimate forms of "the literature". Philomathes2357 has a history of defending The Grayzone, an infamous, and literally deprecated, source of disinformation and false POV. Yet Philo doesn't see much difference between it and mainstream RS. That's a worrying lack of ability to vet sources for reliability and says a lot. When Philo says "review the literature", they are including that type of source in their study of the topic, and without naming the other sources, they may well be including more of the same, hence their confusion of the facts. (I wouldn't be surprised if the unreliable sources include the likes of Aaron Maté, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, John Solomon, etc.) Mainstream editors do not include such unreliable sources in their study of the topic, instead saying "Practically all RS regard it as a conspiracy theory", and they mean ONLY RS. That's how we end up with these tendentious and time-wasting discussions opened by Philo. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:52, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Remember, BLP applies to talk pages, so you might want to either substantiate, strike, or outright remove the part about "Russophile propagandists".

I have not cited The Grayzone in this discussion, and my views on The Grayzone's work are both unknown to you and irrelevant. There are 28 citations in my hatted comment, most of which are from sources widely acknowledged as reliable. I'm happy to provide more upon request. Philomathes2357 (talk) 23:11, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

I only looked at the first 22 of those sources this time (the ones for which links were provided). Of those, number 10 is paywalled for me and I can't access it.

Of the 21 remaining sources, all fall in to one of the following categories:

1. WP:RSOPINION pieces,

2. references to the "deep state" that don't state that it is "real" in the voice of the publication,

3. Newspaper articles from 1963.

I don't see any support from this corpus of sources (most of which date from 1963-2015) for describing the deep state in the United States as real, which would be necessary to cast into doubt the mass of post-2016 sources that say it isn't. A few op-eds by or interviews with people who disagree with this consensus doesn't cast doubt on the factual situation, IMO. Newimpartial (talk) 23:36, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

• Yes. The deep state is certainly a conspiracy theory per multiple high quality sources. Binksternet (talk) 13:20, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

  How is this source reliable, it is an opinion, not fact 65.242.61.18 (talk) 15:58, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

• Yes The deep state is most certainly a conspiracy theory. BootsED (talk) 02:37, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
• Yes. This is not a question of whether the majority of all sources in total use the term "conspiracy theory". It is a matter of whether the real-world consensus among those sources that do address the nature of the "deep state in the US" idea conclude that is it a conspiracy theory, whether using that exact phrase or using other language that amounts to the same thing. This is not any different from any other sort of WP:FRINGE analysis, nor any other MOS:LABELS one. For example, it is fine to label a white-supremacy hate group as one, even if various of the sources use alternative wording like "racist", "neo-Nazi", "white nationalist", "ethnic-purity-obsessed", etc., etc., and even if various sources skirt the question and just say something vague like "controversial organization", "racially charged pressure group", etc. There is no principle by which sources that fail to address the question being asked can be used to suppress the aggregate answer provided by the sources that do address that question.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:23, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
• Yes - Per many comments above. The lead would feel strangely euphemistic if it avoided plain language. One problem with conspiracy theories is that their proponents will latch-on to such ambiguity to bolster these kinds of ambiguous claims. Our goal is to explain things clearly. Simple, direct language should be our first choice when trying to achieve that goal. Grayfell (talk) 06:38, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

• No. First of all, this RFC is not worded very well. The answer to the question, exactly as posed, is obviously no. But most respondents have answered a better question, which is something like "does a detailed literature review on the topic of 'deep state in the United States' give enough weight to the label "conspiracy theory" to support its use in Wikivoice in the opening sentence?" Quite a few of the sources OP cites in the discussion section are not currently in the article, so I suspect that OP concedes this error in framing.

My answer to the real question is still a strong "no". I had to think about this one for a while, given the nearly unanimous support for "yes". But I think OP makes two very strong observations.

One, it's undeniable that there are multiple significant points of view in the body of RS.

The term "deep state" has been used, non-dismissively and un-ironically, as a framework for understanding US politics for about 50 years. And not by fringe figures, but by the likes of Francis Fukuyama, John Mearsheimer, Hans Morgenthau; in other words, some of the most widely cited scholars of political science and international relations of all time. George Friedman and Peter Dale Scott are no slouch, either, and they've both emphatically stated that a "deep state in the United States" exists, although they may each have slightly different working definitions for the term. Sure, Morgenthau used the term "dual state", but he was clearly talking about the same thing - undue influence on elected members of government by unelected members of the security apparatus, particularly intelligence agencies. And there are dozens of non-scholarly publications, such at the New York Times, the ACLU, the Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, the Financial Times, and others, that have presented points of view on a "deep state in the United States" that are incongruent with the "conspiracy theory" framing.

Two, the term "conspiracy theory" does not appear in the literature prior to 2016, and is used almost exclusively in coverage of Donald Trump

I've done a date-specific search on Google and Google Scholar, and came up empty, except for the one New York Times piece that OP mentioned. So, arbitrarily limiting this article's scope to the "conspiracy theory" framing really means "arbitrarily limiting this article's scope to 2016-2024", which really means "arbitrarily limiting this article's scope to negative coverage of Donald Trump". That would indeed appear to be recentism, among other things. I cannot fathom why that would be a good thing for our readers. If I look up the "deep state in the United States" in an encyclopedia, I expect a thorough, encyclopedic expose of the ideas of many different scholars and commentators, not just what Donald Trump and his media critics have said in the past 8 years.

If there's a consensus to make that arbitrary post-2016 limitation anyway, the page needs to be moved to "Deep state in the United States (conspiracy theory)", following the pattern of Shadow government (conspiracy theory) and Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory. Until that happens, any attempt to limit this article's scope in that way is undue. "Conspiracy theory" is a very tricky phrase, anyway. Some scholarly literature has found that describing something as a "conspiracy theory" has a measurable effect on a reader's perceptions and beliefs, independent of the other facts presented. It should be avoided if there are multiple significant points of view among RS, and there clearly are in this case.

This looks pretty straight forward to me, so I'm perplexed why the majority of votes have gone in the opposite direction. If any of the "yes" voters want to address this and point out what I'm missing, I'm happy to hear you out and reconsider my vote. Pecopteris (talk) 02:15, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for this thoughtful RfC comment, and for inviting responses, which is why I decided to reply to you. First of all, I was very interested to see your link to Shadow government (conspiracy theory), which seems to me to overlap a lot with the discussion here. If you look above, at my last reply to Philomathes2357, you'll see that I, too, agree that there are mainstream reliable sources that refer to "Deep State" as something that exists, without describing it in conspiracy-like terms. As I see it, they present it, in part, as defending the integrity of career government workers – that yes, there are such people in the government, but they are not the evil cabal that the conspiracy theorists claim they are. And in part, these sources also raise a serious criticism, that there are parts of the government that are not elected, and not sufficiently accountable – but again, not what the conspiracy theorists describe them as. It occurs to me that one can make the argument that there are both conspiracy-theory forms and mainstream forms of both "Deep State" and "Shadow Government". --Tryptofish (talk) 21:36, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, @Tryptofish.

You say "I, too, agree that there are mainstream reliable sources that refer to "Deep State" as something that exists, without describing it in conspiracy-like terms. As I see it, they present it, in part, as defending the integrity of career government workers"

That is definitely true of some of the sources, like Francis Fukuyama's piece "In Defense of the deep state". Sources like this take a related but slightly different view, while other sources, like this, this (by the executive director of the MIT Institute for International Studies: not a fringe character), and this, take the view that a deep state exists in the United States, although a careful reading suggests that they may all define the term in slightly different ways, which should be reflected in our article.

I can't speak for OP, but it seems like that's their point: multiple significant points of view exist in RS, which makes putting one (recent) point of view in Wikivoice a violation of NPOV. If that's not OP's point, it's my point, at least.

You also say "It occurs to me that one can make the argument that there are both conspiracy-theory forms and mainstream forms of both "Deep State" and "Shadow Government""

I think that's right. I don't love the fact that our page on "Shadow Government" is called "conspiracy theory", but it's possible (haven't done a literature review) that the overwhelming majority of RS call it a conspiracy theory, and only a few non-notable fringe figures give the notion any credence. That is definitely not the case with "deep state in the United States". Happy to engage with any follow-up observations you might have. Pecopteris (talk) 18:39, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

I've gone through the sources you provided, and to a large extent, I think that you and I are seeing the same information, but making different conclusions from it. I can place every one of the sources that you link to, into one of two groups: (1) those that explicitly acknowledge what editors here are labeling a "conspiracy theory", and present a view in reaction to it, or (2) those that seem to me to be buying into the conspiracy theory and defending it to various degrees. It still leaves me as a "yes" for purposes of this RfC. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:50, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

• Comment. Yes. Indeed, this is mostly a conspiracy theory because the deep state as such does not exist in the US [1]. But the term is occasionally used with respect to US bureaucracy in general. In addition, during the Trump presidency, some of the members of his administration indeed quietly resisted, as much as they could, to the destructive efforts by Trump, simply by doing their job, hence presenting the alleged "deep state", although not exactly as the conspiracy theorists would imagine. One of the examples: [2]. Perhaps this should be clarified on the page. My very best wishes (talk) 20:55, 23 June 2024 (UTC)

I restored this [3]. This RfC is about the opening sentence. There is nothing wrong with improving the body of the page during the standing RfC. My very best wishes (talk) 21:24, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Extended discussion

This is a lengthy comment in which I respond to the 5 arguments that I have seen from the "yes" voters. I rebut them, with RS and extensive references to policy, and make note of WP:DETCON and WP:VOTE. Philomathes2357 (talk) 06:33, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Comment - I hope an uninvolved administrator will consider the following before closing: Please do not determine this RFC purely on the basis of a vote. Please also consider the relative merits of the arguments presented, per WP:DETCON. Most of the statements made in this RFC vote, and in the preceding discussion, are either 1) personal opinions about the deep state that are immaterial to the RFC, or 2) verifiably false. These statements have been asserted with such confidence, and in such overwhelming numbers, that it will take a great deal of text to refute them, per Brandolini's law. Five "arguments" have been made by the "yes" voters: 1) No reliable sources take the concept of a deep state in the United States seriously/scholarly consensus is that it is a conspiracy theory. 2) This article is not about the concept of a "deep state in the United States", it is exclusively about Donald Trump's conspiracy theories about the deep state. 3) No reliable sources have explicitly said "the deep state is NOT a conspiracy theory", so it is an uncontested factual assertion. 4) If we look at ALL the available RS, not just the ones cited in the article, we will find that there is a clear consensus among RS that the deep state concept is purely a "conspiracy theory". 5) It is my personal opinion that a deep state does not exist in the United States/I think Philomathes is a POV-pusher. None of these arguments stand up to scrutiny, as I will demonstrate below: 1) - No reliable sources take the concept of a deep state in the United States seriously/scholarly consensus is that it is a conspiracy theory. @Valjean said "Do RS make a valid case for the existence of a "deep state in the United States"? No. Only unreliable sources make a serious attempt to do that." and "There is no good evidence for the existence of any form of effective deep state in the United States." @Newimpartial - "...(this article) is about the clandestine network of members of the federal government (especially within the FBI and CIA), working in conjunction with high-level financial and industrial entities and leaders, to exercise power alongside or within the elected United States government, which is regarded by scholarly consensus as a conspiracy theory...(there is) no reason to redefine the article as though the existence of this shadowy network of intelligence officials and financiers were a simple matter of opinion, or an issue on which the HQRS are divided." @Objective3000 said - "I don’t see any RS subscribing to this theory...what RS say it is true or even plausible? Do we now suggest that Trump’s repetitive claims that Biden has instructed the FBI to assassinate him is possibly true?" @HandThatFeeds - "People who engage in careful consideration of the concept of a deep state are not endorsing its factual existence, they're treating it as an intellectual exercise, much like those who carefully analyze the concept of Russel's (sic) teapot do not claim there is actual pottery orbiting the sun." @BobFromBrockley - "There is, though, no doubt that the overwhelming majority of RSs use this term and pretty much no RSs contradict that or use it as a serious descriptive term." This argument is unequivocally and demonstrably false. Here's a list of RS that contradict these assertions - the list is not even close to exhaustive. 1) The Wall Street Journal - "The Deep State" - "I have come to wonder if we don’t have what amounts to a deep state within the outer state in the U.S.—a deep state consisting of our intelligence and security agencies, which are so vast and far-flung in their efforts that they themselves don’t fully know who’s in charge and what everyone else is doing." 2) Boston University School of Law - "Bureaucratic Resistance and the National Security State" - "These “deep state” and “benevolent constraints” approaches to bureaucratic behavior track debates in the scholarship over the legitimacy of the administrative state more broadly, and are used as rhetorical devices to challenge or defend current allocations of power." 3) The New York Times - State Within a State? Is the Central Intelligence Agency a State Within a State? 4) The Huffington Post - "The Quiet Coup: No, Not Egypt. Here. - "The United States is partially governed by a deep state: undemocratic, secret, aligned with intelligence agencies, spying on friend and foe, lawless in almost every respect. If this doesn't constitute a coup d'etat, it's hard to imagine what would." 5) The Boston Globe - "Vote all you want. The secret government won’t change." - "The people we elect aren’t the ones calling the shots, says Tufts University’s Michael Glennon...He uses the term “double government”: There’s the one we elect, and then there’s the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy...And he’s not a conspiracy theorist: Rather, he sees the problem as one of “smart, hard-working, public-spirited people acting in good faith who are responding to systemic incentives”—without any meaningful oversight to rein them in." By Peter Dale Scott: 6) - "The Fates Of American Presidents Who Challenged The Deep State (1963-1980)" "In the last decade it has become more and more obvious that we have in America today what the journalists Dana Priest and William Arkin have called two governments: the one its citizens were familiar with, operated more or less in the open: the other a parallel top secret government whose parts had mushroomed in less than a decade into a gigantic, sprawling universe of its own, visible to only a carefully vetted cadre—and its entirety . . . visible only to God. And in 2013, particularly after the military return to power in Egypt, more and more authors referred to this second level as America’s “deep state.” 7) The American Deep State, Deep Events, And Off-The-Books Financing "In the last chapter, I described an ambiguous symbiosis between two different aspects of the American deep state: 1) the Beltway agencies of the shadow government, like the CIA and NSA, which have been instituted by the public state and now overshadow it, (but also including private corporations like Booz Allen Hamilton (Edward Snowden’s employers) and SAIC, Seventy percent of intelligence budgets are now outsourced to private companies like Booz Allen Hamilton (owned by the Carlyle Group) and SAIC, the company that, as I wrote in American War Machine, helped get the US to fight in Iraq) 2) the much older power of Wall Street, referring chiefly to the powerful banks and law firms located there, but also to the cartels and other corporate alliances established there, and also Wall Street’s think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations." 8) The State, The Deep State, And The Wall Street Overworld - "At the end of 2013 a New York Times Op-Ed noted this trend, and even offered a definition of the term that will work for the purposes of this essay: "DEEP STATE: n. A hard-to-perceive level of government or super-control that exists regardless of elections and that may thwart popular movements or radical change. Some have said that Egypt is being manipulated by its deep state. The political activities of the deep state are the chief source and milieu of what I have elsewhere called “deep politics:” “all those political practices and arrangements, deliberate or not, which are usually repressed rather than acknowledged." 9) The Huffington Post - The War on Democracy: The Deep State - "For years, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was a stalwart of the U.S. deep state, regarded as a patriotic leader whose behavior was beyond reproach...For most liberals, none of this should be surprising. Since the sixties, writers such as Peter Dale Scott and Noam Chomsky systematically unveiled the nefarious actions of the deep state. Now, Mike Lofgren expands the term...Because of the recent revelations by Edward Snowden, the deep state has become a concern of the right as well as the left...The central question is what we can do to thwart the deep state." 10) The Financial Times - "CIA Report is a strike back against the deep state" 11) The New York Times - "A former C.I.A. officer with experience in Turkey wrote a provocative essay this summer about the “deep state.” The phrase refers to a parallel “secret government” embedded in the military and intelligence services, whose purpose is to provide a check on electoral democracy. But Turkey wasn’t the target of the essay, written by Philip Giraldi. He was aiming, as his headline declared, at “Deep State America.” Mr. Giraldi... called the American deep state of today an “unelected, unappointed, and unaccountable presence within the system that actually manages what is taking place behind the scenes.”...In contrast to Turkey, where Mr. Giraldi said a covert “deep state” had taken root in the security realm, the American deep state of his description consists of visible people like the Clintons and the former C.I.A. director David H. Petraeus, concentrated around New York and Washington, who live at the fertile nexus of government and corporate power: Capitol Hill aides and legislators who cash in as lobbyists; former politicians who earn millions speaking to banks, or landing sinecures with them; technocrats who ricochet between Goldman Sachs and the Treasury Department; billionaire kingmakers dangling political donations; thinkers whose tanks are financed by corporations with a financial stake in their research...now if this sounds like the rant of a lefty conspiracy theorist, consider the article’s home: a magazine called The American Conservative, a contrarian thorn in the side of the establishment right. The “deep state” metaphor seems to be ascendant as a way to explain present American realities." 12) The New York Times - "As Leaks Multiply, Fears of a 'Deep State' in America" - "So is the United States seeing the rise of its own deep state? Not quite...but the echoes are real — and disturbing...Issandr El Amrani, an analyst who has written on Egypt’s deep state, said he was concerned by the parallels, though the United States has not reached authoritarian extremes...“As an American citizen I find it really quite disheartening to see all these similarities to Egypt,” Mr. El Amrani said...Though the deep state is sometimes discussed as a shadowy conspiracy, it helps to think of it instead as a political conflict between a nation’s leader and its governing institutions." 13) Hans J. Morgenthau - "The Impact of the Loyalty-Security Measures on the State Department" - refers to a "dual-state", describing the same idea referred to as a "deep state" in later literature. 14) The Huffington Post - "The Deep State is a Very Real Thing" by George Friedman. "The deep state is, in fact, a very real thing. It is, however, neither a secret nor nearly as glamorous as the concept might indicate. It has been in place since 1871 and continues to represent the real mechanism beneath the federal government, controlling and frequently reshaping elected officials’ policies....The point is that the idea that there is a deep state hidden from view that really controls things is absolutely true, except for the fact that it is not only visible to everyone who looks but is written into law. It exists not because of conspiracy, but because of the desire to shield government from politics. I understand the logic, but the result has unexpected and unpleasant consequences." 15) Salon - "Is Michael Flynn the first casualty of a "deep state" coup? It's not unthinkable" - "Take a listen to former Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich, who represented the Bernie Sanders left before Sanders did. He makes a reasonable case that Flynn’s departure was essentially the first shot fired in a "deep state" coup against Trump." 16) Essay: Anatomy of the Deep State - "There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections. The subsurface part of the iceberg I shall call the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power...The Deep State does not consist of the entire government. It is a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies...As the indemnification vote showed, the Deep State does not consist only of government agencies. What is euphemistically called “private enterprise” is an integral part of its operations. In a special series in The Washington Post called “Top Secret America,” Dana Priest and William K. Arkin described the scope of the privatized Deep State and the degree to which it has metastasized after the September 11 attacks...The Deep State is the big story of our time. It is the red thread that runs through the war on terrorism, the financialization and deindustrialization of the American economy, the rise of a plutocratic social structure and political dysfunction." 17) NPR - "The Man Who Popularized the 'Deep State' Doesn't Like The Way It's Used" - "Lofgren wrote an essay called, "Anatomy of the Deep State." The essay is not partisan. Lofgren criticizes both parties, along with the national security community, Wall Street and Silicon Valley. And he takes pains to point out that he's not a conspiracy theorist." 18) The Guardian - "The 'deep state' is real. But are its leaks against Trump justified?" - "the deep state, which is a real phenomenon, has long been both a threat to democratic politics and a savior of it...the deep state has been blamed for many things since Donald Trump became president, including by the president himself. Trump defenders have used the term promiscuously to include not just intelligence bureaucrats but a broader array of connected players in other administrative bureaucracies, in private industry, and in the media...but even if we focus narrowly on the intelligence bureaucracies that conduct and use information collected secretly in the homeland...there is significant evidence that the deep state has used secretly collected information opportunistically and illegally to sabotage the president and his senior officials – either as part of a concerted movement or via individuals acting more or less independently." 19) Vox - "The “deep state” is real. But it’s not what Trump thinks it is" - "And Trump’s deep state obsession isn’t a new thing...it has always been a diversion, whether it was coming from Trump or Fox News. But here’s the thing: The deep state isn’t exactly a phantasm. There are parts of the US government that wield real power outside the conventional checks and balances of the system. It’s not a conspiracy against Trump, but the term does refer to something that exists." 20) ACLU - "Do U.S. Politicians Need to Fear Our Intelligence Agencies?" - "We know that the security establishment is enormously bloated, that it abuses its secrecy powers to advance its own interests, and that it engages in abuse of whistleblowers and others who challenge it. We know that it sometimes wantonly violates the law, and that it has a frightening degree of surveillance power. But what these reports hint at is that these powers have become a dangerously independent and significant force within our democratic system...we are about to find out how much power the Deep State “constituency” really has." 21) Real Clear Politics - "...former Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) said the "deep state" within the bureaucracy is trying to destroy Donald Trump's presidency. "The political process of the United States of America being under attack by intelligence agencies and individuals in those agencies..." 22) Asia Times - "It's time to abolish CIA & FISA: How to defend the Republic against the Deep State" - "America’s Intelligence agencies are the deep state’s deepest part, and the most immediate threat to representative government." In addition, several books have been written about the concept. A non-exhaustive list: 23) Ambinder, Marc; Grady, D.B. (2013). Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry. Wiley. 24) Priest, Dana; Arkin, William M. (2011). Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State. Little, Brown and Company. 25) Scott, Peter Dale (2014). The American Deep State: Wall Street, Big Oil, and the Attack on U.S. Democracy. 26) Lofgren, Mike (2016). The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government. Viking. 27) Rohde, David (2020). In Deep: The FBI, the CIA, and the Truth about America's "Deep State". W. W. Norton & Company. 28) Good, Aaron (2022). American Exception: Empire and the Deep State. New York: Skyhorse Publishing. There are plenty of others, but I think I've made my point: this is an issue about which RS are divided. And a cursory reading of these sources shows that they are analyzing the "deep state in the United States" in a way that is completely different from Russell's Teapot. Numerous RS do indeed treat a "deep state in the United States" as 'plausible', or, at minimum, as a useful term for conceptualizing a real phenomenon in American politics, rather than a baseless conspiracy theory. Treating the concept purely as a "conspiracy theory", by putting that term in Wikivoice, is a violation of WP:NPOV, which instructs us to "fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, (represent) all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic." So, argument 1 is simply false. 2) - This article is not about the concept of a "deep state in the United States", it is exclusively about Donald Trump's conspiracy theories about the deep state. @Valjean said "...the claims by Trump and Co. (that they are the victims of a deep state) are a conspiracy theory, and that's what this article is about." @Newimpartial - "this article is not about all possible meanings of "the Deep State in the United States"...rather, it is about the clandestine network of members of the federal government (especially within the FBI and CIA), working in conjunction with high-level financial and industrial entities and leaders, to exercise power alongside or within the elected United States government, which is regarded by scholarly consensus as a conspiracy theory." @HandThatFeeds - "This page is about the conspiracy theory, not the concept of a deep state in general. That has its own article. This is not the place to argue about the general concept, this is a page specifically about the conspiracy theory that the USA is actually being run by a "deep state". @Objective3000 - "Yes it should be called "US deep state conspiracy theory" as that's what the article is about." "...(there is) no reason to redefine the article as though the existence of this shadowy network of intelligence officials and financiers were a simple matter of opinion, or an issue on which the HQRS are divided." The argument here is that the article "Deep state in the United States" is not about the concept of a deep state in the United States. Instead, these editors allege that the article is, despite the title, actually only about one narrow aspect of the concept - the conspiracy theories promulgated by "Trump and Co" since 2017. That is simply not the case, and if it were the case, it would be a violation of policy. Of course, Donald Trump's use of the term is important and covered quite a bit by RS, but it is absolutely not the only way the term has been discussed by RS, as a literature review conclusively demonstrates and as @Alaexis has pointed out. Multiple RS actually take care to note that, while many of Trump's claims about the deep state are based on conspiracy theories, the underlying concept is valid - failing to do this is an equivocation fallacy. Any attempt to make this article exclusively about "Donald Trump's conspiracy theories" would be problematic on WP:WEIGHT grounds, POV-pushing grounds, and WP:RECENTISM grounds (I am aware of zero sources use the term "conspiracy theory" prior to 2017). It would also prompt the obvious question "if this article is only about the "conspiracy theory", what do we do with the dozens of sources about "deep state in the United States" that are not about Donald Trump's conspiracy theories?" Perhaps this article could be renamed "deep state conspiracy theories in the United States", as O3000 suggested. But be a violation of WP:POVFORK, which says "all facts and major points of view on a certain subject should be treated in one article." Argument #2, therefore, is completely untenable. 3) - No reliable sources have explicitly said "the deep state is NOT a conspiracy theory", so it is an uncontested factual assertion. @Hob Gadling - "Reliable sources that do not mention those terms do not cancel those that do. Such canceling could only be done by reliable sources that explicitly say the terms do not apply" This a rather dubious interpretation of WP:WEIGHT. WEIGHT does not imply in any way that labels should be mechanistically applied any time they are are not explicitly rejected by RS. If that was how WEIGHT was handled, it would lead to an orgy of POV-pushing across the encyclopedia. Other editors have rejected this line of reasoning, such as when @Newimpartial, to their credit, said "Sources must be read for content, not for keywords only" and "Editors should bring the best sources from all viewpoints to the discussion of weight, so they can be assessed as RS or HQRS and categorized in whether or not they support the proposed characterization. And supporting the characterizarion (sic) doesn't depend on keywords." Hob Gadling's method for determining the WEIGHT of labels would lead to some absurd outcomes, as I've discussed elsewhere. I'm happy to expand on why this is absurd if any editors find Hob Gadling's interpretation of WEIGHT to be compelling. But even if we entertain Hob Gadling's interpretation of WP:WEIGHT, the description "conspiracy theory" is still not an uncontested factual assertion, as there are multiple sources, including but not limited to source #5, source #11, source #12, source #17, source #19 above, that engage explicitly with the terms "conspiracy", "conspiracy theory", and "conspiracy theorist", and do not accept that framing of the concept. 4) - If we look at ALL the available RS, not just the ones cited in the article, we will find that there is a clear consensus among RS that the deep state concept is purely a "conspiracy theory". @Newimpartial - "Philomathes' methodology is fatally flawed. Their approach excludes sources not used in the article - which is most of the good ones...the answer to the question posed in the RfC - at least the real question, do the sources support "conspiracy theory" in wikivoice - is therefore "yes" Newimpartial presents no sources. Since these hypothetical sources have not been examined and discussed by other editors, their hypothetical existence is irrelevant to the RFC until Newimpartial presents them. Newimpartial also makes the logical leap that if ALL sources were considered, an uncontested consensus would emerge that the "deep state in the United States" is a conspiracy theory, and only a conspiracy theory. There is no evidence for that assertion, and Newimpartial has not shown evidence that he has conducted a literature review on the topic. It also fails to take into account the fact that there are many source un-cited in the article that treat "deep state in the United States" as something quite distinct from a baseless "conspiracy theory". So, argument #4 is speculative conjecture. WEIGHT should be determined by a rigorous literature review, not by feels and vibes. 5) - It is my personal opinion that a deep state does not exist in the United States/I think Philomathes is a POV-pusher @Valjean - "There is no good evidence for the existence of any form of effective deep state in the United States. The existence of an extensive free press and lack of a dictatorship make it impossible. We have leaks, and they would undermine attempts to establish such a deep state." @Objective3000 - " Yes - Surely there would be leaks from the massive number of people it would require to hide the “fact” that the country is controlled by a cabal." and "WP:SEALIONING" (referring to me) @HandThatFeeds - " It is a settled matter. The idea there is a "deep state" running things behind the scenes is utter conspiracist nonsense." and "I'm accusing you of bad faith at this point. I'm also removing this article from my watchlist, because I have enough stressors without dealing with a conspiracist POV-pusher." These are personal opinions with no bearing on the RFC. They do not address the topic of WP:WEIGHT and make no reference to any sources or policies. At best, they are off-topic per WP:NOTFORUM. At worst, they are violations of WP:CIVIL and WP:NOTHERE. The other comments on the RFC do not present any arguments, but I will mention them briefly for the sake of thoroughness: @Tryptofish - "but I've read the talk section directly above this one, and it seems obvious to me that there is sufficient sourcing "out there" to describe it as a "conspiracy theory" No mention of WP:WEIGHT or any other policies, and no mention of any sources. In fact, when this comment was made, zero sources supporting the term "conspiracy theory" had been posted in the talk section, so Tryptofish's methodology for reaching this conclusion is unclear. Perhaps they will amend their comment to explain their methodology and demonstrate that it is more sound than mine. @Lukewarmbeer and @Binksternet did not make arguments, simply adding a +1. Conclusion: So, even though the "vote" is currently 9-2, I do not think that any of those 9 votes have presented a factually coherent, source and policy-based argument that justifies the vote. Instead, the votes consist of dubious and verifiably false statements, personal attacks, substance-free +1s, and some tangential personal opinions about the deep state. None of the "yes" votes have demonstrated that the weight of reliable sources supports using the term "conspiracy theory" in Wikivoice. The 9 "yes" voters have directly cited a cumulative total of zero policies to support their view. I have given a careful source and policy-based argument that "conspiracy theory" is a term that represents the views of a minority of RS, and a plurality of recent RS, and should therefore be covered in extensively the article, but should not be the exclusive framing of the article. I have argued that limiting this article's scope only to Donald Trump's conspiracy theories, as some editors suggest, would violate WP:RECENTISM, WP:NPOV in general & WP:WEIGHT in particular, and WP:POVFORK. Please note that I have in no way suggested that the article should cover the deep state as a "fact" - that would be POV pushing - I am simply saying that we must follow WP:NPOV and cover, by applying WP:WEIGHT, all of the views expressed by RS. I hope that the "yes" voters will show integrity and class by respecting the time and effort I have put into thinking this matter through, and by rebutting my points with a similar level of detail and rigor, basing their arguments on Wikipedia's policies. I also hope this comment makes it clear that I am a serious editor who is trying to think these things through carefully, and will put to rest the insinuations that I am nothing but a kooky bad-faith POV-pusher, as multiple editors have inappropriately suggested. If I was a POV-pusher, I would not have dedicated multiple hours of intense focus to write this comment. If you still think I am a POV pusher, you are free to make your case at ANI. We are all here in good faith, including the editors who I've quoted above - even though some of my assessments of their work have been harsh, I do not question their good faith, their intelligence, and their desire to improve Wikipedia in service of our readers, I merely question the validity and rigor of their arguments. I hope that the closing admin will keep in mind that, despite the appearance of consensus here, Wikipedia is not a democracy, that NPOV "cannot be superseded by consensus", and that consensus itself is "ascertained by the quality of the arguments given on the various sides of an issue, as viewed through the lens of Wikipedia policy". I rest my case. Philomathes2357 (talk) 00:57, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Responses and discussion of the collapsed section above

My !vote was based on perusal of Google Scholar and the media consensus that it is a conspiracy theory, which is why I didn't bother to itemize the reasoning. But here is some of what I found: The Journal of Politics and Society called it a "trope" and a conspiracy theory in January 2024, a chapter within the Routledge textbook of Philosophy and Ethics published in 2023 presents the deep state as a conspiracy theory, a 2021 Routledge textbook with a chapter talking about the deep state as a "myth", The Journal of Applied Social Theory talking in 2021 about how the deep state conspiracy theory serves as a weapon against normal bureacrats doing their jobs as best they can, a 2022 book about Trump's presidency detailing how he attacked democracy with the myth of the deep state, the journal of Intelligence and National Security writing in 2024 about the deep state as a conspiracy theory. There are many more than this. Binksternet (talk) 01:23, 29 May 2024 (UTC) Thank you. I totally see where you are coming from, and those look like good sources that should be added after the RFC. I readily concede that there are quite a few RS, some of them HQRS, that use the term "conspiracy theory". My response is: 1) there are many other ways that the subject has been characterized by RS, and only minority of sources have characterized it exclusively as a "conspiracy theory", so characterizing the subject with only that term violates WP:NPOV 2) despite many sources discussing the deep state in the USA, the term "conspiracy theory" was not used until 2017, so putting exclusive focus on the term would be WP:RECENTISM. 3) Using Wikivoice to characterize the entire subject, and trying to make this article only about the "conspiracy theory" angle violates WP:POVFORK. This article is about "deep state in the United States", not "the deep state conspiracy theory". I would absolutely support a sentence in the introduction that says "since 2017, many observers have characterized Donald Trump's statements about the deep state in the United States as "conspiracy theories", or even "since 2017, many observers have characterized the deep state in the United States as a "conspiracy theory". Upon a thorough literature review of post-2017 RS, we might even be able to say "most" instead of "many". That would be a much more reasonable way to characterize how the term has been used by RS than the status quo. Philomathes2357 (talk) 02:13, 29 May 2024 (UTC) Philomathes' WP:1AM WALLOFTEXT is unlikely to move anyone, especially an unINVOLVED closer. However, since Phil has misquoted or otherwise distorted my comments in constructing their points 1, 2, and 4, I feel compelled to clarify. I'll begin with argument 2, which I take to be fundamental in the false dichotomy it poses. Phil states the argument I make alongside other editors as, This article is not about the concept of a "deep state in the United States", it is exclusively about Donald Trump's conspiracy theories about the deep state, as though those were the two alternatives at hand. They then quote me as saying (this article) is about the clandestine network of members of the federal government (especially within the FBI and CIA), working in conjunction with high-level financial and industrial entities and leaders, to exercise power alongside or within the elected United States government - but except for the opening parenthesis, this isn't what I'm saying the article is about - I am quoting from the lead sentence. This is what the article says it is about. And what's more, I don't tie this definition to Trump in any way, and neither do three of the four other editors Phil quotes in this section. According to its opening section, this article is about a specific formulation of what "the Deep State in the United States" is understood to be, and that formulation (which is not "the Military-Industrial complex", which is not "a Double government") - that formulation is known in RS to be a conspiracy theory (or a right-wing trope, or a set of unfounded claims, or whatever). The conspiracy theory (or trope) is neither limited to nor defined by whatever Trump says or tweets about it. So the article isn't about either of the forced alternatives Phil has placed in point 2. Argument 1, then, is a straw man and an irrelevancy. The question whether some sources have taken the concept of the deep state seriously in connection with the United States is only relevant if they have employed the structure connecting the FBI and CIA to the leaders of finance and industry as an unelected parallel government. Phil presents a Gish gallop of sources under this heading, a few of them reliable and perhaps a handful of real quality. I won't pretend to have read all of them, but I've read most (and all of the pull-quotes), and none of them make the connections identified in the lead of this article and say that they represent real phenomena. Most of the sources Phil cites are actually talking about Yes, Minister!-level bureauratic obstinacy rather than any kind of shadow power. That simply isn't the topic of this article, even if a journalist or scholar happens to use the phrase "deep state", because they aren't talking about the COMMON meaning of that phrase in relation to the US. This takes me to argument 4. This is another straw man where Phil depicts me as arguing that no RS has ever used the phrase "deep state" in the US to talk about anything but a conspiracy theory, because if I admitted that, I would supposedly have to admit that there isn't consensus that the topic of this article is a conspiracy theory. Once again, this article is about a specific set of deep state claims about the US, and that set of claims is universally understood as a conspiracy theory according to the WP:HQRS. Good sources may talk about other things in the US as a "deep state" - though they are much more likely to address "double government" or the military-industrial complex - but when they do (and this is a minority usage), they are not addressing the topic of this article. This whole discussion runs strangely parallel to the usual round at Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory, where new editors constantly arive on the Talk page to claim that (i) sometimes people use the phrase "cultural Marxism" when they aren't talking about a conspiracy, and therefore (ii) that article should address "real Cultural Marxism" alongside the conspiracy theory. In both instances, though, editors need to defer to the sources about what the main topic is under that heading, and in both cases HQRS are quite clear that the main topic is the disinformation campaign/right-wing trope/conspiracy theory. Newimpartial (talk) 02:32, 29 May 2024 (UTC) It is correct to note that it's not true that "no RSs" have taken the deep state to be a real thing. It nonetheless remains the case that those that do represent a drop compared to the ocean of RSs that see it as a conspiracy theory. In fact, some of the RSs displayed here show how you have to really scrape the barrel to find them. For example: (2) "Bureaucratic Resistance and the National Security State" is largely an argument against the deep state "narrative" framing; (5) "Vote all you want. The secret government won’t change" doesn't use the term "deep state" but rather "double government"; (9) "The War on Democracy" is a blogpost by a very fringey HuffPo "contributor", i.e. SPS status not RS status; (11) is about Philip Giraldi and the wingnut conspiracy theorists at The American Conservative using the "metaphor" of the deep state, so it confirms the conspiracy theory take rather than undermines it; (12) asks if the US has a deep state like Turkey and answers "no"; (15) is another fringe contributor to Salon, not an RS; (21) RealClearPolitics is not an RS, and I think we already include Kucineh's (fringey) views in our article; (28) is a trade book by a non-academic author with minor publisher. BobFromBrockley (talk) 05:38, 29 May 2024 (UTC) Thanks for your extensive contribution. My +1 is based on the validity of the arguments put forward by the editors who had replied previously. I always try to keep all talk page contributions as brief as possible as they quickly become impenetrable forests of text. As stated above "This page is about the conspiracy theory, not the concept of a deep state in general. That has its own article. This is not the place to argue about the general concept, this is a page specifically about the conspiracy theory that the USA is actually being run by a "deep state"." That is why your proposal isn't something I can support. Lukewarmbeer (talk) 08:01, 29 May 2024 (UTC) Except... the article title, and body, and its sources suggest that the article is neither about merely the conspiracy theory, nor the concept of a deep state in general. It's apparently about the 'deep state in the United States', a concept which has legitimate usage outside of the conspiracy theory, because the term 'deep state' as applied to the United States is used to mean everything from fairly bland analysis that is obviously correct, to wild conspiracy theories promoted by Trump and others. Either the article needs to be renamed (to 'Deep State conspiracy theory' or similar) and the then-irrelevant content removed in a body-follows-lede kind of solution, or the lede needs to be changed to reflect the title, body, and current sources. It's not really clear what sort of article the original author had in mind when this article was first created.  Tewdar  09:32, 29 May 2024 (UTC) Don't fucking ping me back to a page when I explicitly said I was removing it from my Watchlist. This screed isn't going to do you any favors either. Your argument was not persuasive, get over it, WP:DROPTHESTICK. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 12:56, 29 May 2024 (UTC) I pinged you because I quoted you, and I felt that it would be improper to quote you without your knowledge. Thanks for the advice, but I am going to continue to pursue my concerns (and the concerns of Tewdar and Alaexis) about WP:NPOV and WP:RECENTISM issues, within the confines of established dispute resolution procedures, Wikipedia's policies, and Wikipedia's code of conduct. Your incivility and baseless personal attacks do not convince me that those issues do not exist - in fact, they reaffirm my concerns. If you think I am in violation of Wikipedia's PAG or code of conduct, you're welcome to start a thread at ANI and make that case. Philomathes2357 (talk) 00:11, 30 May 2024 (UTC) Is this some sort of record? Philomathes2357's post is actually longer than the entire article. Drop the sequoia. O3000, Ret. (talk) 13:06, 29 May 2024 (UTC) I will echo what other editors have said about the need to drop the stick. I will also object to how my RfC comments (as someone who simply came here from the RfC listing) have been mischaracterized. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:46, 29 May 2024 (UTC) I also consider the header for the now-collapsed arguments by Philomathes to be non-neutral and misleading. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:44, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Additional sources

[4] “Deep State in the US: What is the conspiracy theory and what has Donald Trump said?”

[5] “The imaginary 'deep state' conspiracy theorists”

[6] “Conspiracy Theories in Digital Environments " "Deep state phobia”

[7] “the Deep State conspiracy theory.”

[8] “Trump’s obsession with Deep State conspiracy”

[9] “Trump embraces deep state conspiracy theory”

[10] “Team Trump’s ‘deep state’ paranoia fans conspiracy theories”

[11] "Until recently, the fringe conspiracy theory known as QAnon was largely an American phenomenon — a belief that U.S. President Donald Trump is secretly battling a ‘deep state’ cabal of pedophiles that control the world.”

[12] “The ‘deep state’ is President Trump’s most compelling conspiracy theory”

[13] “trump-begins-openly-embracing-and-amplifying-false-fringe-qanon-conspiracy-theory “ “so-called deep state”.

[14] QAnon, conspiracy theory originating in forum posts on the website 4chan in October 2017. Conspiracy adherents believed that U.S. Pres. Donald Trump was waging a secret war against a cabal of satanic cannibalistic pedophiles within Hollywood, the Democratic Party, and the so-called ‘deep state’ within the United States government.”

[15] “what-is-the-qanon-conspiracy-theory” “QAnon exists as a kind of parallel history, in which a "deep state" took over decades ago.”

[16] “The Deep State conspiracy theory is making us all play defense”

[17] “The Deep State A common claim among QAnon conspiracists is that a shadowy network of politicians and bureaucrats secretly collaborate to control the government behind the scenes.”

[18] “Is Fauci A’Deep State’ Doctor?” “The Conspiracy Theory That Is Sickening America” O3000, Ret. (talk) 21:01, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

The above RFC is about the current stable version of the article, but these sources would be interesting to add to the article once the RFC is over, and might affect weight (although there are many other sources from a variety of POVs that should also be added, so what the hypothetical weight of RS would be in the future is unclear). Philomathes2357 (talk) 21:31, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

1) - this source makes a distinction between Trump & associates' use of the term "deep state" and other usages - the following passage makes that clear: "Although deep state has been used by some Republicans to avoid taking responsibility for their failings, David Rohde, an editor at the New Yorker and the author of In Deep: The FBI, the CIA, and the Truth About America’s “Deep State,” says it does point to something real. Speaking to Vox, Rhode said that a California Berkeley professor named Peter Dale Scott used the term in his 2007 to describe the military-industrial complex. Rhode said: “Scott wrote about a sense that the military and defence contractors had driven the country repeatedly into wars and maybe helped fuel 9/11 and the wars that followed. “For Scott, it also applied to large financial interests, like Wall Street banks.” However, he said that the term has since been “co-opted and vulgarised into what it is today, which is a shorthand for a conspiracy against Donald Trump.” So, this source supports the statement that many of Trump's statements about the deep state are based on conspiracy theories, but does not support the statement that the concept is, per se a conspiracy theory. The article is careful to distinguish between those two things, and we should follow suit.

2) - this source is written by David Rohde, who wrote the book "In Deep: The FBI, The CIA, and the Truth about America's Deep State". He was also quoted in the above article, so this source appears to further emphasize that there are two different issues at hand - the concept of a deep state in the United States, per se, and Trump's conspiracy-theory based invocations of the term. Again, we should be distinguishing between these two things in the article, by saying something like "Trump's use of the term has been widely characterized as based on conspiracy theories". I would not object to that in the slightest. That would be FAR preferable to the status quo.

3) - interesting source. The quote that addresses the "deep state" concept most directly is this: "The concept of the Deep State, to which it refers, first emerged in Turkey, a country with a long history of coups, as a term for a parallel government of bureaucrats and military officials that exert influence on the elected government later to be used in the American context by the noted conspiracy theorist and Trump supporter Alex Jones (Den Bulk and Hyzen, 2019; Gingeras, 2010). In fact, noted scholars have even gone so far as to claim that, while “continuities persist [with] similar theories of the past […] the Deep State narrative is unique to the Trump era” (Phillips and Milner, 2021: 12). Whether or not this claim is historically correct, it certainly speaks to the centrality of the “deepstate” hashtag within our dataset—and perhaps to the concept of the Deep State more generally, in the post-Trump era." - although it's fairly disingenuous to single out Alex Jones here, given the numerous reliable sources that discussed the "deep state" concept pre-Trump, the thrust of this passage seems to be that, while "continuities persist with similar theories of the past" (i.e. the Turkish deep state), the term has taken on new connotations in the Trump era, many of which are based on conspiracy theories. That is a totally fair point to make, and this is definitely a high-quality academic source, but I still see a lot more subtlety here than a Wikivoice characterization would imply.

4) - this opinion piece discusses the concept of a "deep state" purely within the context of Trump's invocation of it. That implies that the author is ignorant of the term's previous usage. The author also makes the rather novel claim "So when we talk about the Deep State, we are essentially talking about the Illuminati. Because if that's not what we're talking about, there's no way the winking, knowing, saying-it-while-not-saying-it commentaries in defense of Trump can remain coherent". One of the less-compelling sources listed here, in my view, but would be usable for characterizing, specifically, Trump & associates' use of the term.

5) - an interview with retired Republican politician John Boehner. Two passages that stand out to me are: "Donald Trump’s obsession with the Deep State conspiracy theory, which holds that a permanent secret government of bureaucrats and intelligence officials existed to thwart his agenda in office, was destructive and delusional, John Boehner says in a new book." and "Boehner says there is indeed “an entrenched bureaucracy that likes to protect the status quo”. But he says posturing against it took a “nastier turn” under Trump." - so it appears that Boehner is not addressing the concept of a deep state, per se, and even concedes that an "entrenched bureaucracy that likes to protect the status quo" exists. Instead, the article narrowly defines the concept of a deep state as something that "existed to thwart (Trump's) agenda in office". As I've already noted, it is perfectly reasonable to note that many commentators have characterized Trump/MAGA's idiosyncratic use of the term as "conspiracy theory", and we can certainly add John Boehner to that list of commentators. But to characterize the concept of a deep state in the United States purely in terms of Donald Trump erases all journalistic and scholarly commentary on the concept that predates or is unrelated to Trump.

I'll take a look at the other 10 later, and I'll start adding some other sources, too. This is a step in the right direction, for sure. Philomathes2357 (talk) 22:22, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

I read all of the articles in depth and disagree with your synopses. But like user The Hand That Feeds You, I don't find discussions with you useful. I agree with Newimpartial's last comment. Please read WP:BLUDGEON. O3000, Ret. (talk) 22:28, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

That's fine, you are free to disagree and express your disagreements in a collaborative manner, just as I am free to disagree with you and express those disagreements constructively in order to clarify the matter, as I am currently doing. Trying to push me out of the collaborative process through the use of snark, spurious accusations, and vague allusions to my supposed "POV" is not a good look for anyone here. Rather than focusing on me, how about we focus on the sources that you just posted here - how would you summarize them, if you disagree with my synopses? Philomathes2357 (talk) 23:43, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

WP:SEALIONING O3000, Ret. (talk) 23:57, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

You've now made a direct accusation of POV pushing. What POV are you accusing me of pushing?

I wish we could have a discussion about the sources you've just posted (under the heading "discussion", no less). What was the purpose of posting these sources, if you're not willing to engage in a "discussion" with someone who might have a different interpretation of them than you do? Philomathes2357 (talk) 00:04, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Philomathes: this article is not about all possible meanings of "the Deep State in the United States" - in particlar, it is not about the Military-industrial complex concept. Rather, it is about the clandestine network of members of the federal government (especially within the FBI and CIA), working in conjunction with high-level financial and industrial entities and leaders, to exercise power alongside or within the elected United States government, which is regarded by scholarly consensus as a conspiracy theory.

It is true that some sections of the current status quo version of this article are dreck and are unclear what they are talking about. However, the inclusion of bad and/or tangential sources is no reason to redefine the article as though the existence of this shadowy network of intelligence officials and financiers were a simple matter of opinion, or an issue on which the HQRS are divided. Newimpartial (talk) 21:47, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

I guess we fundamentally disagree on those two points - I do not think it is at all reasonable to conclude that the concept of a deep state in the United States is "regarded by scholarly consensus as a conspiracy theory". The sources, both those cited here and those not cited, seem very clear that this is, indeed, "an issue on which the HQRS are divided".

If you want, I think it would be wise to analyze that question together and review the scholarly sources. I would love to do that, and would be happy to be proven wrong if I am wrong about my assertion.

However, I will readily concede this: the claims about and characterizations of the deep state that have been promoted by Donald Trump & associates are generally regarded as conspiracy theories. We are on the same page there.

My objection is that there is a subtle, insidious equivocation fallacy at play here. We can all agree to characterize Trump & associates' claims about the deep state as conspiracy theories, but making the leap to "scholarly consensus is that the entire concept is a conspiracy theory" is definitely not supported by the HQRS, completely erases all journalistic and scholarly commentary about the "deep state" concept that has nothing to do with Donald Trump, and honestly feels like an attempt at POV pushing in order to "dunk" on Donald Trump.

I'm all for dunking on Donald Trump, in person, on a blog, or on a website like X/Twitter. He's ridiculous. But Wikipedia is not the appropriate venue. Philomathes2357 (talk) 22:37, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

It is absolutely the appropriate venue, within the confines of WP:NOT. That is, anything that's encyclopedic that incidentally has the effect of debunking Trump/MAGA cannot be suppressed just because it happens to have that effect. It's correct per WP:NOT#FORUM and WP:NOT#ADVOCACY, of course, that material that has this effect/intent but is not encyclopedic should not be included here, and that a "mission" to include it is apt to be disruptive.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:33, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

Two ideas in conflict with each other above: 1) to characterize the concept of a deep state in the United States purely in terms of Donald Trump erases all journalistic and scholarly commentary on the concept that predates or is unrelated to Trump; and 2) this article is not about all possible meanings of "the Deep State in the United States". Of these, the second is correct, and the first not terribly pertinent, because the scope of this article is not "every possible use of the phrase", especially former uses that have been eclipsed and are no longer current. We can probably address them in a short paragraph about how the interpretation and use of the phrase has changed, but we all know that the current Trumpist meaning is what 99.99% of readers are going to be expecting.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:33, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

• "The A to Z of US politics". The Economist. 1 January 2024. Retrieved 28 May 2024. Deep state: The alleged shadowy network of members of the armed forces, government departments and spy agencies working with non-elected elites. The term was bandied about heavily during the Trump administration, when the president accused bureaucrats in law-enforcement and national-security agencies of supporting his predecessor, Barack Obama, and undermining him.
• Willmetts, Simon (23 February 2024). "Forbidden history: CIA censorship, The Invisible Government, and the origins of the "deep state" conspiracy theory". Intelligence and National Security. 39 (2): 281–297. doi:10.1080/02684527.2023.2291871. ISSN 0268-4527. This article explores the context, legacy and influence of David Wise and Thomas Ross’ influential history of the CIA, The Invisible Government. It highlights how the book broke the silence in the American media on CIA covert operations. It documents the CIA’s attempts to censor the book upon its publication. It will also show how the book was reinterpreted by conspiracy theorists, Soviet propagandists, and leading figures within the decolonization movement. Finally, it argues that the book’s ultimate legacy, although a misreading of their original argument, can be found in the ‘deep state’ narrative so prevalent among conspiracy theorists today.
• Horwitz, Robert B. (2 February 2022). "Trump and the "deep state"". The Trump Administration. London: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781003259923-5. ISBN 978-1-003-25992-3. Donald Trump and his loyalists invoked the concept of the deep state when confronted with resistance to the president’s agenda. The hazy concept of the deep state was tied to the long-standing conservative critique of the administrative state and the growth of the federal bureaucracy. Together, they conveyed reproach that Trump was subverted by a shadowy network of unelected bureaucrats that illegitimately holds the levers of real power in the United States. But there is no deep state.
• Berg, Winston (25 January 2024). "Origins of the "Deep State" Trope". Critical Review: 1–38. doi:10.1080/08913811.2023.2305537. ISSN 0891-3811. The term “deep state” has enjoyed political prominence in recent years, especially in movements around former President Donald Trump. However, the term emerged in the activist milieu after the founding of Students for a Democratic Society, which sought to engender political realignment in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination. Those on the far right who use the term to level accusations of conspiracy at supposed subversives in the administrative state are unwittingly drawing on a long-running but little-analyzed intellectual tradition... Conspiracy theories allowed activists to mobilize around shared gaps in public knowledge about traumatic events like the assassination, activating public dissatisfaction with official explanations of those events.
• O'Donnell, S. Jonathon (1 October 2020). "The deliverance of the administrative state: deep state conspiracism, charismatic demonology, and the post-truth politics of American Christian nationalism". Religion. 50 (4): 696–719. doi:10.1080/0048721X.2020.1810817. ISSN 0048-721X. Situating spiritual warfare demonology in relation to narratives of ‘post-truth politics’ as the destabilisation of neoliberal consensus reality, the article explores how charismatic evangelicals position Trump’s election as a divine assault on a demoniac status quo, epitomised in the conspiratorial figure of the ‘Deep State.’
• Moynihan, Donald P. (2020). "Populism and the Deep State: The Attack on Public Service Under Trump". SSRN Electronic Journal. doi:10.2139/ssrn.3607309. ISSN 1556-5068. One aspect of the politicization of norms is Trump’s enthusiastic embrace, and creation, of norms of public sector delegitimization. Trump genuinely seems to believe the deep state conspiracy theories he gave frequent voice to. It is impossible to find a President since the civil service was constructed who is so taken with the idea that career officials are a force of evil he needs to control.
• Barkun, Michael (19 August 2021). "Donald Trump and the myth of the deep state". Exposing the Right and Fighting for Democracy. London: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781003137276-20. ISBN 978-1-003-13727-6. Donald Trump’s belief that a conspiracy lay buried in the depths of the federal government pre-dated his election. As president, his fear of this “deep state” allegedly at war with him and his policies intensified. In the waning days of his term, he became enamored of the ideas linked to QAnon, the mysterious figure who claimed that Trump was leading a counter-conspiracy that would destroy the deep state. The result was a quasi-occult scenario predicting a dramatic final conflict between light and darkness.
• Olmsted, Kathryn; Willmetts, Simon (6 February 2024). "State Secrecy Explains the Origins of the 'Deep State' Conspiracy Theory". Scientific American. Retrieved 28 May 2024. From election denial to QAnon, the origins of our age of misinformation too often go unexamined. That’s too bad, because unraveling the roots of one popular conspiracy theory—of a “deep state”—might reveal something important about the cynicism now infecting U.S politics.

BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:24, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 6 January 2025

Deep state in the United States → Deep state conspiracy theory in the United States – As provided by the numerous sources in a prior RfC on this article's talk page (and a simple Google search), multiple reliable sources are calling the deep state in the United States a political conspiracy theory. While the page for deep state itself discusses use of the term in historical and contemporary instances where there is and is not an actual "deep state", the overwhelming number of sources in regards to the United States explicitly state that such claims are a conspiracy theory. A brief paragraph in a background section can discuss use of the term in pre-Trump years, but such discussion is eclipsed by the amount of sources describing its use in more contemporary sources. I propose that the article title be renamed to better reflect the consensus of reliable sources. BootsED (talk) 02:02, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:CONCISE. That's something for the body of the article to discuss in depth. Not every fact about a topic must appear in the title. There is no other article about a deep state in the United States that is not a conspiracy theory, so the title is not ambiguous. Station1 (talk) 07:04, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

But we do often put "conspiracy theory" or "hoax" or "claims" or "allegations" or something similar in the titles of articles that are about similarly fringe topics, as we don't want to give readers the impression that the subject is generally accepted as valid. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 07:56, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Yes, we do sometimes, but looking at List of conspiracy theories, it seems mixed. Sometimes it's necessary for disambiguation, such as John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories vs John F. Kennedy assassination, or New World Order conspiracy theory vs things on the New world order dab page. Other times we have titles like Black helicopter and International Jewish conspiracy. I don't see many where a more concise title just redirects back to a longer title. Station1 (talk) 19:32, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose. Scrolling through the 65 reference titles, nearly half, 31, use the term "Deep State" alone to describe the topic and only 5 have "Deep State" and "conspiracy." 5Q5|^✉ 12:16, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

  See the RfC above, which presents numerous sources that describe it as a conspiracy theory. Also, are you simply looking at headlines? BootsED (talk) 17:14, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

  An article title is analogous to a headline, a brief phrase in bold at the top of the article that simply gives the reader a basic idea of details that follow. Station1 (talk) 19:32, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

• Support we should be clear this is fringe—blindlynx 02:27, 8 January 2025 (UTC)
• Support – For clarity's sake. Having the article title merely as "Deep state in the United States" makes its existence sound definitive. Yue🌙 08:56, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Support. I agree that the article name it directly conspiracy, and create redirect. Onikaburgers (talk) 19:19, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose - Not supported by the sources in the article. PackMecEng (talk) 01:13, 11 January 2025 (UTC)