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HOW WE CAN COUNTER THE FAR-RIGHT’S DANGEROUS ‘DEEP STATE’
CONSPIRACY THEORIES
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Anja Rudiger
October 15, 2024
Common Dreams
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_ To mobilize people, we must have a compelling alternative vision
for turning government into a force for equity and justice. _
A member of the FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Task Force searches a
flood-damaged property with a search canine in the aftermath of
Hurricane Helene along the Swannanoa River on October 4, 2024 in
Asheville, North Carolina., Mario Tama/Getty Images
Lies and rumors
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about the federal hurricane response serve to build the far-right’s
governing power. At the expense of human lives
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the far-right—which nowadays includes the Republican party, the
Trump campaign, billionaire donors, GOP governors, and the advocates
behind Project 2025—deliberately sows distrust in government,
specifically targeting federal public administration.
Federal agencies’ roles in a disaster are to issue warnings, provide
rescue and relief, and support rebuilding. Across the spectrum of
public administration, agencies’ regular jobs involve the things we
rely on every single day: ensure our tap water is clean, our food and
medicines are safe, our collective bargaining rights are protected,
our retirement checks arrive on time, and much more. Yet the far-right
peddles a dangerous narrative that casts public agencies and civil
servants as the “deep state,” the enemy of the people. By
delegitimizing our government, they pave the way for an authoritarian
takeover.
As we knock on doors to mobilize voters, we must be prepared to
address widespread distrust in government
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whether it manifests in anger or apathy. If people give up on
government—which we formed to solve problems together that we cannot
tackle alone—they retreat or turn to strongmen for answers. How do
we debunk the “deep state” conspiracy and shine a light on the
essential role of government in delivering on our needs?
There is a bleak logic to gutting public protections and public
services: When government is unable to deliver, people become
resentful and receptive to authoritarian fixes.
This summer I worked on a new toolkit
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Race Forward, to help shift the narrative and block the far-right’s
assault on public administration. It offers ideas for talking about
what public administration is, and what it can be. While we know that
the federal government produced or maintained many of the inequities
and injustices we see today, it can also be part of the solution.
Throughout history, movements for civil rights, workers’ rights,
women’s rights, and many others taught us how to bend government
towards justice.
We must begin by taking people’s affective responses to government
seriously. Working class and poor people feel disaffected and
disempowered because government hasn’t delivered for them. The class
divide is real, the power and wealth gap between the rich and the rest
of us is growing, racial injustice remains entrenched, misogyny is on
the rise. Decades of neoliberal policies, pushing the
commercialization of everything, have produced a full-blown crisis for
working class people, disproportionately people of color.
Privatization, disinvestment, and corporate capture have hollowed out
public institutions and dismantled public goods. Our human rights are
violated on a daily basis by unaffordable, commoditized housing and
healthcare, food deserts, grocery price gauging, and hazardous
workplaces, thereby shortening the lifespans
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of people pushed to the economic margins. Public administrative
agencies are seen as bureaucratic barriers at best, and as
controlling, coercing, and policing Black, brown, and poor people at
worst.
This crisis has produced a fertile ground for a far-right plan, laid
out by Project 2025
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to capture the institutions of public administration. By
delegitimizing government and setting it up to fail, authoritarians
make it easier for themselves to take it over and turn government
against communities.
Lying about federal disaster response fits neatly into this strategy.
Rumors about the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) seizing
people’s property and spending aid dollars on migrants sow distrust,
division, and hate
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and undercut the agency’s ability to deliver. This sets the stage
for the far-right’s goal to end any government action to address the
climate crisis. Project 2025 plans
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to drastically shrink federal disaster aid, shift costs to localities,
privatize federal flood insurance, and terminate grants for community
preparedness. Because climate research and planning are seen as
harmful to what Project 2025 calls “prosperity,” the plan is to
break up
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the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), including
the National Weather Service that sends out hurricane warnings, and
commercialize weather forecasting, likely putting warnings behind
paywalls.
There is a bleak logic to gutting public protections and public
services: When government is unable to deliver, people become
resentful and receptive to authoritarian fixes.
This is particularly painful because it comes at a time when the
Biden-Harris administration has taken some steps toward making federal
agencies more responsive to people’s needs. This includes not only
climate-related investments
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and jobs [[link removed]],
but also new regulations that advance environmental
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protect workers from heat exposure
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eligibility [[link removed]], ban
non-compete clauses
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and limit credit card penalty fees
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actions often remain invisible, obscured by bureaucratic procedures,
buried in the tax code, or held up in courts. We can surface these
tangible efforts when we talk to potential voters and point to the
purpose and possibilities of public administration.
A Trump presidency would reverse both recent progress and systemic
protections embedded in the work of federal agencies. Project 2025 is
not shy about terminating the enforcement of hard-won civil rights
laws and privileging the narrow interests of corporations that price
gauge, pollute, and exploit our communities. It would staff agencies
with white Christian nationalists who seek to divide and dominate us.
These threats cannot be averted through a merely defensive stance. By
calling on people to defend “democracy,” establishment politicians
ignore popular anger, rooted in persistent experiences of inequity and
injustice. Promoting an “opportunity economy” that relinquishes
the goal of equitable outcomes simply doesn’t cut it. We can only
block a far-right power grab if we tackle the injustices that fuel
resentment. To mobilize people, we must have a compelling vision for
turning government into a force for equity and justice. The job of
public agencies is to protect our rights and deliver on our needs, and
we can make them do just that—as long as we stand together, united.
In this election and beyond, we must contest the far-right narrative
that undermines government and public administration. When people are
reluctant to engage because the system is not working for them,
let’s raise their expectations of government as a protector of
rights, a provider of public goods and services, and a site for
exercising our collective power.
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Anja Rudiger is a political theorist working to advance equity and
justice. As an independent researcher and policy analyst, she has
supported groups such as Race Forward, Partners for Dignity & Rights,
the Tribal Education Alliance, International Budget Partnership, and
the Vermont Workers' Center.
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Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel
free to republish and share widely.
* Far Right; Deep State; Democracy; Project 2025;
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