The "Deep State" Conspiracy is a Modern Reichstag Fire

The purpose of the conspiracy is to justify the necessary consolidation of power around a strongman to overcome a false enemy.

In Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Ian McDiarmid portrayed Senator Palpatine, who convinces the Galactic Senate to grant him unlimited emergency powers to purge the Jedi Order, having framed them.

The government’s institutions have been seized by a pernicious group of left-wing, identity-politics extremists tied to the Democratic Party, who illegitimately subvert the will of the people and their populist hero, Donald Trump. This is the “deep state” conspiracy that has consumed the imagination of the anti-establishment right.

The Reichstag Fire was a pivotal moment in the Nazi rise to power. On February 27, 1933, shortly after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin was set ablaze. While a Dutch communist named Marinus van der Lubbe was caught at the scene and later executed for the arson, many historians believe the Nazis themselves orchestrated or exploited the fire. Hitler and his party immediately blamed the fire on a communist conspiracy to overthrow the government, using this manufactured crisis to convince President Hindenburg to sign the Reichstag Fire Decree. This emergency decree suspended most civil liberties and constitutional protections in Germany, allowing the Nazis to arrest political opponents, suppress dissent, and consolidate their grip on power. The fire became a pretext for dismantling democratic institutions and establishing authoritarian rule—a classic example of how manufactured crises can be exploited to justify the concentration of power and elimination of democratic safeguards.

Like the Reichstag Fire, the "deep state" conspiracy theory serves as a manufactured crisis to justify the dismantling of democratic institutions—but it operates on a longer timescale and with more sophisticated messaging. Instead of a single dramatic event, it presents a sustained narrative of shadowy bureaucratic resistance undermining the will of the people. This slower-burning crisis creates the same justification for power concentration that the Nazis achieved through the sudden shock of the fire.

The mechanism is similar: identify an enemy within the state that can be blamed for any opposition or setback. Just as the Nazis used the fire to paint communists as an existential threat to Germany, the "deep state" narrative portrays career civil servants as a dangerous fifth column working against American interests. This creates the same emotional logic for dismantling democratic protections—if shadowy forces have infiltrated our institutions, then those institutions themselves must be purged and brought under direct political control.

However, where the Reichstag Fire created an immediate justification for emergency powers, the "deep state" narrative gradually builds toward the same goal. It systematically delegitimizes the professional civil service, independent agencies, and career expertise. Each revelation of supposed "deep state" resistance becomes another small fire, building the case for concentrating power in the hands of a leader who can "drain the swamp." The end goal remains the same—justifying replacing democratic institutions with personal loyalty systems—but achieved through a sustained narrative rather than a crisis.

George Lucas’ critically panned prequels to the original Star Wars trilogy invokes the Reichstag tactic in its third and final installment, when Senator Palpatine, having been elected chancellor to fight a war that he manufactured, frames the Jedi Order, as an unelected and unaccountable group, undermining the will of the people. He convinces the Galactic Senate to grant him emergency rule-by-edict powers (like Presidential executive orders) to root these people out.

The "deep state" conspiracy serves the same function in slow motion as the Reichstag Fire in a single night. Like Palpatine's manufactured threat of Jedi undermining democracy, the narrative portrays career civil servants as a shadowy, unelected force subverting the will of the people. This framing isn't accidental—it creates the emotional and political logic for dismantling democratic institutions in the name of defending them. Just as the Nazis used the fire to justify emergency powers, and Palpatine used the Jedi "threat" to secure rule by executive decree, the "deep state" narrative aims to justify placing the entire federal workforce under direct political control. The goal is to transform professional civil service into a personal loyalty system, eliminating institutional resistance to authoritarian power. By painting career expertise as dangerous elite subversion, the narrative creates popular support for concentrating power in a strong leader who can "drain the swamp." The irony, as with both historical and fictional parallels, is that this manufactured crisis about defending democracy becomes the very tool for dismantling democratic institutions and establishing authoritarian rule.

Today, out of the more than two million federal civil service employees, about 4,000 of them are appointed by the president, and of those, about 1,200 of them require Senate confirmation. Trump has stated he intends to reschedule 50,000 or more civil service employees under Schedule F, under a reclassification, and potentially up to hundreds of thousands of employees under direct political control. Proponents of the Unitary Executive Theory believe that all two million or so federal workers should be directly appointed by the president and that the Pendleton Act and the Civil Service Reform Act that prohibits this, is unconstitutional. In other words, they believe that Trump has every right to fire all two million federal employees and replace them with MAGA loyalists under the Establishment Clause of Article II of the US Constitution. It’s a meritless, insane theory, but Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito seem to believe this is what “the Founders intended.”

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who have been tasked with cutting government waste, are both advocating for the president's unrestricted power to hire and fire all two million civil servants as part of the meme-inspired D.O.G.E. (Department of Government Efficiency).

I don’t believe that anybody should take seriously the proposition that either the “deep state” conspiracy or government waste is a sufficient predicate for giving Donald Trump, or any president, this level of power. Congress restricted this power in 1883, after the assassination of President Garfield, and further restricted it after the Watergate Scandal, after Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre. These restrictions were put in place for good reason. Because a government filled with political loyalists is not necessarily a competent government or one that can be easily bound by law.

The purpose of the “deep state” conspiracy, which people around Donald Trump are cynically weaponizing and through right-wing media, is meant to convince people of the overwhelming necessity to strip away over 100 years’ worth of civil service protections, which were built to check the power of the President to engage in corruption, law-breaking and to base hiring and firing decisions on meritorious standards: an accountant at the IRS should be hired based on their knowledge of tax accounting, not based on the fact they voted for the current President.

The technological infrastructure of modern media enables this manufactured crisis to operate with unprecedented sophistication and reach. Unlike the Reichstag Fire's sudden shock or even Palpatine's carefully orchestrated conspiracy, today's crisis manufacturers can maintain constant narrative pressure through social media algorithms, partisan news networks, and coordinated messaging campaigns. Every perceived slight from a government worker, every policy disagreement with career officials, becomes evidence of deep state conspiracy, amplified and recycled through digital echo chambers that reward emotional engagement over factual accuracy.

This technological amplification combines powerfully with concentrated private power. When figures like Elon Musk, who controls crucial communication infrastructure, align themselves with attacks on civil service independence, they create a dangerous fusion of private and political power. The proposed Department of Government Efficiency isn't just about streamlining bureaucracy—it's about replacing professional expertise with personal loyalty, all while using private platforms to justify this transformation as a necessary reform.

The scale of this proposed transformation is staggering. Converting hundreds or even millions of federal workers, from professional civil servants to political appointees, would fundamentally alter how the American government functions. Every interaction with the government—from tax assessment to environmental inspection, from passport processing to public health monitoring—would become potentially subject to political loyalty tests. This wouldn't just enable corruption but institutionalize it, creating a government apparatus that serves political power rather than public purpose.

This is precisely what the Founders sought to prevent and what Congress repeatedly acted to check—after Garfield's assassination, after the Watergate scandal, and after each crisis that revealed the dangers of unconstrained executive power. The Unitary Executive Theory's claim that the Constitution requires total presidential control over all federal workers not only misreads constitutional text and history but fundamentally misunderstands the Founders' concern with concentrated power. They understood that democracy requires institutions that can resist corruption and maintain professional standards independent of political pressure.

The “deep state” conspiracy is, and always has been, a slow-burning Reichstag Fire.