The Real Deep State (Part 1/7)
How The Right-Wing Captured America
At the request of several readers, this article is part of a multi-part series exposing the real deep state—the corporate-theocratic machine that has quietly reshaped America for decades. Each part breaks down a different aspect of its power structure, revealing how it operates and how we can dismantle it. This is Part [1/7]
If you prefer You can read the entire thing as a single article, you can access it below:
Below are the individual parts for easy access:
The right-wing's favorite boogeyman is the so-called "deep state"—a shadowy cabal of unelected bureaucrats, globalists, and elites supposedly working to undermine democracy from behind the scenes. They scream about government control, whisper conspiracies about secret forces pulling the strings, and insist that the real power in America is hidden within the permanent bureaucracy.
But what if I told you they were half right? That there is a deep state in America—but it's not some liberal government conspiracy. It’s the right-wing power structure itself—a network of think tanks, lobbying groups, corporate billionaires, and extremist legal activists who have spent the last fifty years reshaping the country in their image.
📢 This is a long read, but it might be the most important article I’ve written.
The goal isn’t for you to memorize everything in here—it’s to build an unshakable foundation for the claim that a real deep state does exist. But unlike the fictional one Fox News screams about, it’s the very force that controls Fox News—along with almost every facet of U.S. politics today.
From the corporate capture of the Supreme Court, to trickle-down economics, to culture war issues manufactured to divide and control us, this machine has been shaping America for decades. It’s time to expose it—and weaponize that truth against them.
This is not a conspiracy theory. It’s a documented, deliberate campaign—one that started in the 1970s with the Lewis Powell Memo, took shape through organizations like the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, and ALEC, and culminated in the corporate capture of the Supreme Court and the coordinated assault on democracy, workers’ rights, and social progress.
The real “deep state” isn’t hiding. It’s right in front of us, working through corporate lobbyists, dark-money-funded legal organizations, and a Supreme Court handpicked by billionaires. And it's time we name it for what it is: a corporate-theocratic alliance bent on dismantling democracy and imposing minority rule.
This is an actual painting by artist Sharif Tarabay, displayed at Harlan Crow’s private Adirondacks resort. Crow commissioned the piece to depict himself alongside Justice Clarence Thomas, Federalist Society operative Leonard Leo, and other key conservative figures—all gathered in a casual, secluded setting.
The Architects of the Right-Wing Deep State
The rise of the right-wing deep state wasn’t spontaneous—it was designed. A handful of men, over the span of decades, laid the groundwork for the authoritarian, corporate-theocratic machine we see today. These figures weren’t just influential thinkers or strategists; they were engineers of a movement that systematically dismantled democracy and reshaped America in their image.
Here’s who they are and why they matter.
Lewis Powell: The Blueprint for Corporate Rule
“Business must learn the lesson . . . that political power is necessary; that such power must be assiduously cultivated; and that when necessary, it must be used aggressively and with determination.”
—Lewis Powell, The Powell Memo (1971)
Lewis Powell was not a politician, a media mogul, or a billionaire activist—he was a corporate lawyer and later a Supreme Court Justice. But more than any other figure, Powell laid the intellectual foundation for the corporate takeover of American democracy. His 1971 Confidential Memorandum: Attack on the American Free Enterprise System—now known simply as The Powell Memo—was the spark that ignited the right-wing deep state.
The Powell Memo: A Call to Arms for Corporate America
At the time Powell wrote his memo, corporate leaders were panicked. The Civil Rights Movement had toppled segregation, labor unions were strong, environmental regulations were expanding, and public confidence in big business was at an all-time low. In Powell’s view, capitalism itself was under threat—not by communists, but by the rising tide of progressive activism and government regulation.
His solution? Corporate America needed to go on the offensive.
The Powell Memo was a direct call for big business to stop playing defense and start reshaping American society in its favor. Powell urged corporate leaders to:
✔ Build an ideological infrastructure to defend capitalism and crush progressive policies.
✔ Control the courts by installing pro-corporate judges.
✔ Capture academia by funding right-wing think tanks and university programs.
✔ Dominate the media to shift public opinion in favor of big business.
✔ Influence politics by flooding elections with corporate money.
Powell’s Lasting Impact
Though Powell himself did not execute the plan, his memo became the playbook for the right-wing deep state. Every major institution that has eroded democracy in the past 50 years—the Heritage Foundation, ALEC, the Federalist Society, and the corporate capture of the Supreme Court—traces its origins to Powell’s strategy.
Business Interests Became Political – Powell’s memo convinced corporate leaders that accumulating political power was just as important as generating profits. CEOs, trade groups, and billionaires started pouring money into think tanks and lobbying organizations that would serve as their political weapons.
Right-Wing Think Tanks Took Over Policy – The Heritage Foundation (founded in 1973) and later ALEC became legislative factories, churning out corporate-friendly laws that Republicans would rubber-stamp into policy.
The Courts Were Captured – Powell personally embodied this shift when Nixon nominated him to the Supreme Court in 1971. He would go on to write the opinion in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978), a case that laid the groundwork for Citizens United and the flood of corporate money into politics.
Corporate Media Became a Propaganda Arm – Powell warned that media and academia were too “anti-business.” In response, billionaires and corporations began funding right-wing media outlets, university programs, and conservative scholars to create an endless pipeline of pro-corporate propaganda.
Without the Powell Memo, the corporate deep state would never have become as powerful as it is today. Powell didn’t just predict the rise of corporate rule—he designed it.
Paul Weyrich: The Godfather of the Right-Wing Takeover
" I don't want everybody to vote… As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down. "
—Paul Weyrich, 1980
If there’s one person responsible for turning the conservative movement into an organized, ruthless, and strategic force, it’s Paul Weyrich.
A co-founder of the Heritage Foundation (1973) and the Moral Majority (1979), Weyrich understood that conservatives couldn’t win by appealing to broad public support. Instead, they needed to build institutions, capture key political levers, and play the long game.
Weyrich’s Lasting Impact:
Voter Suppression: Weyrich openly admitted that conservatives win when fewer people vote. He helped Republicans develop voter suppression tactics that continue to this day.
The Religious Right: He weaponized evangelical Christianity as a political tool, making abortion and "family values" core Republican issues—not because conservatives cared about them, but because they needed a single-issue voting bloc.
Right-Wing Institutions: Weyrich built the Heritage Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and other think tanks that churned out policy, legislation, and talking points for Republican lawmakers.
Every piece of the modern right-wing political machine—from gerrymandering, dark money, the Federalist Society’s judicial coup, to Christian nationalism—can trace its roots back to Paul Weyrich’s vision.
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Join the fight. Become a supporter. Every contribution keeps this mission alive.
Because silence is surrender. We do not surrender. We are #TheRelentless.
Milton Friedman: The Prophet of Corporate Rule
" Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable."
—Milton Friedman
The right-wing war on government, unions, and economic equality didn’t emerge from nowhere. It was Milton Friedman, the godfather of neoliberalism, who sold the idea that unregulated capitalism wasn’t just efficient, but morally good.
A Chicago School economist, Friedman’s ideas were simple:
Government is the enemy
Corporations should rule society
Privatization solves everything
The free market should decide all policy, no matter the human cost
Friedman’s Lasting Impact:
Reaganomics: His trickle-down economics theory led to massive tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation that gutted workers’ rights.
Corporate Power: He pushed for the idea that corporations only exist to generate profits for shareholders, leading to mass layoffs, union busting, and wealth consolidation.
The Shock Doctrine: He advised right-wing dictators like Pinochet in Chile, showing how economic crises could be used to destroy social safety nets and privatize entire economies—a strategy Republicans have used in the U.S. for decades.
Without Milton Friedman, there’s no Reaganomics, no Wall Street takeover, no corporate deep state controlling our democracy.
Jerry Falwell & Ralph Reed: The Theocrats Who Built Christian Nationalism
" I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them."
—Jerry Falwell, 1979
Before the 1970s, evangelicals weren’t political. They were suspicious of government, opposed to getting involved in elections, and didn’t even care about abortion. That changed because of Jerry Falwell and Ralph Reed.
Jerry Falwell: The Megachurch Mogul
Founded the Moral Majority (1979) to fuse Christianity with right-wing politics.
Helped Republicans capture white evangelicals, turning them into a reliable voting bloc.
Created the abortion hoax: Before 1979, evangelicals were mostly neutral on abortion. Falwell weaponized it—not because he cared about fetuses, but because he needed a mobilizing issue to keep evangelicals voting Republican.
Built a fundraising empire, funneling millions from churches into right-wing politics.
Ralph Reed: The Political Operative
The strategist behind the Christian Coalition, which took Falwell’s Moral Majority and turned it into a political machine.
Helped integrate Christian nationalism into the GOP, ensuring that every Republican leader must answer to the religious right.
Pioneered data-driven evangelical voter turnout operations, ensuring that churches became Republican political operations.
The Lasting Impact of Falwell & Reed:
Christian Nationalism: The belief that America is a Christian nation and must be governed by biblical law.
Gutting Separation of Church & State: They made religious extremists dominant in courts, schools, and politics.
Weaponizing Abortion & LGBTQ+ Issues: They created moral panic issues to distract voters from economic inequality.
Without Falwell and Reed, there’s no Trump, no Dobbs decision, no Supreme Court packed with religious extremists.
Leonard Leo: The Man Who Stacked the Supreme Court
"It is a pleasure to stand before 1,500 of the most little known and elusive of that secret society or conspiracy we call the Federalist Society"
—Leonard Leo
If you want to understand why the Supreme Court is now an unaccountable right-wing super-legislature, look no further than Leonard Leo.
Leo built the modern Federalist Society, the dark-money operation that handpicks judges and justices to ensure that corporate power and Christian nationalism always win in court.
Leonard Leo’s Lasting Impact:
Handpicked at least SIX Supreme Court justices, including:
John Roberts
Samuel Alito
Neil Gorsuch
Brett Kavanaugh
Amy Coney Barrett
Oversaw the gutting of Roe v. Wade.
Took hundreds of millions in dark money to place far-right judges in lower courts, ensuring right-wing rulings for generations.
Leo is the most powerful unelected figure in America, controlling the judiciary without ever facing voters.
Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes & Rush Limbaugh: The Propagandists Who Warped Reality
"People don’t want to be informed. They want to feel informed."
—Roger Ailes
If Paul Weyrich built the machine, Milton Friedman justified the greed, Falwell & Reed provided the foot soldiers, and Leonard Leo captured the courts, then Murdoch, Ailes, and Limbaugh made sure the public never figured out what was happening.
Together, they engineered a right-wing media empire that detached millions of Americans from reality, bombarding them with fear, grievance, and manufactured outrage. They transformed conservatism from a political ideology into a cult of paranoia, resentment, and blind loyalty to power.
Rupert Murdoch: The Media Mogul Who Weaponized Disinformation
"I challenge anybody to show me an example of bias in Fox News."
—Rupert Murdoch, lying through his teeth
Murdoch didn’t just build a media empire—he built an alternate universe, where billionaires were the underdogs, white men were the oppressed, and any challenge to corporate power was “Marxism.” His media network became the largest right-wing propaganda operation in history, fueling climate denial, white nationalism, election fraud conspiracies, and anti-democratic authoritarianism.
Murdoch’s Lasting Impact:
Fox News as a 24/7 Propaganda Machine: He launched Fox News (1996) under the guise of "fair and balanced" journalism, when in reality, it was a weaponized political operation designed to manipulate public perception.
Mainstreaming Conspiracies: Murdoch’s media empire flooded the public with misinformation, from climate change denial to anti-vaccine hysteria, ensuring that fact-based reality was always under attack.
Global Disinformation Network: Murdoch’s influence wasn’t just in the U.S.—his media empire spread far-right extremism across the UK, Australia, and beyond, fueling xenophobia, anti-immigrant hysteria, and attacks on democracy worldwide.
Without Rupert Murdoch, there’s no Fox News, no Tucker Carlson, no right-wing disinformation ecosystem keeping millions trapped in a parallel reality.
Roger Ailes: The Mastermind Who Turned News into Right-Wing Propaganda
"People don’t want to be informed, they want to feel informed."
—Roger Ailes
Murdoch funded Fox News, but Ailes made it a psychological weapon. A Nixon-era media strategist, Ailes understood that fear and outrage were more effective than truth. Under his leadership, Fox News became a daily outrage machine, conditioning its audience to see every political issue as an existential war against their way of life.
Ailes’ Lasting Impact:
Turning the News Into a GOP Super PAC: Fox News didn’t just report the news—it created it. Ailes dictated GOP talking points, ensuring that Republican politicians, conservative media, and right-wing donors operated in total coordination.
Weaponizing Fear and Victimhood: Ailes knew that fear sells—so Fox permanently framed white conservatives as victims, bombarding them with manufactured culture wars over race, immigration, and “wokeness.”
Polarizing America: Before Fox News, political disagreement didn’t mean living in separate realities. Under Ailes, the network deliberately radicalized its audience, ensuring that fact-based journalism could never penetrate the conservative bubble.
Without Roger Ailes, Fox News is just another network. With him, it became a cult indoctrination machine.
Rush Limbaugh: The Shock Jock Who Taught Conservatives to Hate
"Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society."
—Rush Limbaugh, misogynist, racist, bigot
Before Fox News, before Facebook algorithms, Rush Limbaugh was the original outrage merchant. He perfected the formula of modern right-wing media:
Find an enemy (liberals, women, Black people, LGBTQ+ communities, immigrants).
Mock, dehumanize, and vilify them relentlessly.
Convince listeners they are under siege and that rage is the only answer.
His radio empire made hate mainstream, training an entire generation of conservatives to view cruelty, mockery, and bigotry as political virtues.
Limbaugh’s Lasting Impact:
Turning Conservative Politics into Performance Hate: Limbaugh wasn’t just racist, sexist, and homophobic—he made it cool to be those things. He pioneered the politics of bullying, where cruelty wasn’t a side effect—it was the point.
Training a Generation of Right-Wing Media Figures: Without Limbaugh, there’s no Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro, or Alex Jones—every right-wing media grifter learned from him.
Shifting the GOP from Policy to Culture Wars: Limbaugh made grievance politics the GOP’s core strategy—not economic policy, not governance, just owning the libs.
Without Limbaugh, there’s no Trump, no MAGA, no conservative media empire built on rage and resentment.
The Propaganda Machine That Keeps the Right-Wing Deep State in Power
Murdoch, Ailes, and Limbaugh didn’t create conservative ideology—they created the world in which it could thrive without challenge.
Before them, Republicans had to win debates. After them, Republicans just had to control the media.
They created a disinformation ecosystem so powerful that conservatives no longer needed facts—just narratives.
Together, they ensured that millions of Americans would never again trust science, journalism, or democracy itself.
Their Legacy:
Fox News as a permanent right-wing propaganda outlet.
Conservatives living in an alternate media reality, unable to accept truth or facts.
The normalization of hate, cruelty, and authoritarianism in right-wing politics.
A voter base trained to reject democracy in favor of fear-driven tribalism.
Murdoch, Ailes, and Limbaugh didn’t just inform conservatives—they radicalized them.
The Right-Wing Deep State: A Fully Integrated System of Power
Now we see how all the pieces fit together:
Paul Weyrich built the machine (think tanks, policy networks, election strategy).
Milton Friedman justified the greed (neoliberalism, corporate rule, wealth inequality).
Jerry Falwell & Ralph Reed provided the foot soldiers (Christian nationalism, abortion panic, theocratic control).
Leonard Leo captured the courts (the Federalist Society, judicial takeovers, Supreme Court control).
Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes & Rush Limbaugh controlled the narrative (media manipulation, disinformation, propaganda).
They didn’t work alone. They worked together. Did every single one of them explicitly coordinate with one another? That is unclear. What is clear however, is that they have each recognized and played their part.
Each one played a critical role in turning America into an oligarchic theocracy, where billionaires, religious extremists, and corrupt judges hold power, and the people are kept divided, fearful, and angry.
This isn’t just history. This is now.
Join the Fight, Amplify the Truth
Because silence is surrender. We never surrender. We are #TheRelentless.
Excellent substack. I have to say that you really educated me about some of the players I didn’t already know about who were involved in this corporate takeover of our country. As you know how important I feel about education, which is the key to everything, this should be read by everyone to give them the knowledge, background & reasons why this coup is happening here today. And as always, the biggest problem is…how can we get this message out there? Unfortunately, none of the legacy media will allow this to come to light, except, maybe Rachel Maddow? Lawrence O’Donnell? The Atlantic? An op-ed in the NYTimes (I’m not sure they would publish this though). Messaging is everything, and your messaging is always clear and on point. This post in particular is the one that you need to get out there for all to see.
I just managed to get to this. Great stuff, Lukium! I too have been noticing this creeping danger, but only since the '90s when I found some antiabortion propaganda in the house I had just bought. That told me these people have been well organized & operating under the radar for years.
Btw, don't forget Jay Sekulow, who came up with the idea of using abortion as a wedge issue; & Bill O'Reilly, who did his part to spread the propaganda.
I can see I'm going to enjoy this series, no matter how mad it makes me!