DEEP STATE: A History of Secret Agendas & Shadow Governments

What are governments for? To protect their citizens from harm and to guarantee them a framework in which to live their lives safely and fairly? But not everyone sees it that way. From deep states, governments are merely the vehicles by which they advance their interests - citizens by contrast are merely pedestrians to be knocked over if they get in the way. The book begins with Ancient Greece and Rome and ends around the time of the election of Donald Trump as President of the USA then the UK's Brexit referendum of 2016. Aristocratic vested interests are the oldest examples we have, arising in the classical world as a reaction to the then-novel experiments in government we call today democracy and republicanism. Military deep states came next and have never really gone away, with a lineage running from the Praetorian Guard of the Roman world to the generals controlling Egypt, Pakistan, Thailand, Myanmar and elsewhere. From there, the bad actors come thick and fast. But who runs our lives and what secrets are governments hiding from us? Are we really being manipulated by a 'deep state'? When democratic governments are elected, do you ever wonder why they don't seem able to change very much? Over time, special interest groups, unfettered by legal norms or public opinion, have formed 'states within a state' to advance their own private agendas. Unaccountable and immensely powerful, they have changed the course of history. Ian Fitzgerald takes us on an incredible journey as we encounter drug traffickers in Columbia and Mexico, the power-brokers of Western democracies, and the military-industrial complexes of Egypt, Pakistan and North Korea. A revealing and informative introduction to the sinister, secret powers that rule the world. 256pp in well illustrated large softback.