Populists position themselves as the enemy of the establishment and global and national elites. Reference to the ‘deep state’ has emerged as a kind of shorthand, allowing populists to contrive an omnipresent, omnipotent force that conspires against the interests of the people. The term seamlessly connects a plethora of seemingly unrelated groups and renders them parts of the same overarching power network. Originating in Turkey (derin devlet) and coined in the mid-1990s to delineate a nebulous web of politicians, bureaucrats, military, mafia and businessmen, the term ‘deep state’ has been taken by populists as an expedient conspiratorial buzzword (Nefes 2018). Despite different interpretations of the concept [Blanuša, N. (2018) ‘The deep state berween the (un)warrant conspiracy theory and structural element of political regimes’, Critique and Humanism, 49(1): 284-369], deep state envisions the secret collusion of rogue and corrupted elements in the state apparatus (civil servants, army officers, secret service agents, etc.) with top-level financiers, business industrialists, mobsters and, eventually, terrorist groups. All together, they destroy governed consent, electoral processes and to foster their own agenda through legal and illegal means. As a state within the state, deep state elements supposedly operate independently of the political authority and are the effective policy makers unfettered from political clout. Such a scheme was first and most vocally crystallised in the notorious Italian P2 Freemasons’ lodge, revealed after police raids in 1981 [Ginsborg, P. (2003) Italy and its discontents, London: Palgrave Macmillan; Rayner, H. (2005) Les scandales politiques: l’opération “Mains propres” en Italie, Paris: Essais].
– ‘Functions and uses of conspiracy theories in authoritarian regimes’, in Routledge Handbook of Conspiracy Theories (2020), p. 324