The "Deep State" chryon here caught my eye. It's become such a ubiquitous talking point in conservative media. When did American politicians and commentators start using that term? Well, I did a little Twitter digging and here's what I found. A thread. https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1215464542810996738

Between January 1, 2010 and the end of 2014, the phrase "deep state" appeared in tweets with >100 likes exactly 3 times, 2 of them were about a "deep state of grief." The other was a reference to Pakistan.

In the calendar year 2015 there were, likewise, only 3 tweets with >100 likes that used the phrase "deep state," two of them were by this journalist from The Intercept.

Between 1/1/2016 and 11/1/2016 there were 14 tweets that used the phrase “deep state” and got more than 100 likes. Almost all of the tweets were about Pakistan or Turkey, with the exception of this from Michael Tracey (no comment).

There was a significant take-off in the use of the phrase "deep state" between the election and Trump's inauguration--a total of 49 with more than 100 likes. Many were from folks on the left and right edges of American politics.

Tucker and Drudge were also early adopters along with Greenwald and Tracey. Chris Hayes and Jeet Heer are the two progressives who used the term...but in notably different ways.

I then did the same search ("deep state" with >100 likes) for 1/21/2017 to the end of 2017 and came up with far, far too many hits to count. I kept jacking up the "like" number until the result was manageable. That number was >5000, and there were about 40 results.

You'll note how it went from the Infowars fringe to close Trump surrogates, to his son, to Trump himself in a matter of just a few months.

I did a search for just the past year (1/10/2019 to 1/10/2020) and had to increase the minimum "likes" to 10,000 to make it manageable. There were 60 tweets that fit that used the term "deep state" that got that many likes. Such as...

There are plenty of folks who use "deep state" sarcastically, as in "oh yeah, for sure there's a deep state out to get Trump, uh huh."

But also several of the leading conservative brain geniuses, using it totally straight to emphasize just how put upon and oppressed President Trump is by what most people would call "the rule of law."

This is obviously a very cursory way to answer the question about use of the term "deep state." Lots of people have deleted their old tweets. Twitter's importance as a platform has increased rapidly over time. These are just two of the innumerable caveats one could offer.

I'll let you draw your own conclusions about what this all means. One take away, for me, is that the sort of deep cynicism about institutional politics that we saw only on the fringes in 2015 has moved into the mainstream of the GOP.

The irony, of course, is that the GOP controls much of the federal judiciary, the executive branch, and the Senate. Until November 2018 they controlled the House too. And yet, somehow, the American "deep state" was out to get them.

I think it's safe to say that it's not a great thing to have one of a nation's two, major parties using terminology like "deep state" in a derogatory manner usually associated with authoritarian regimes that are seeking to hold on to power.

The way we talk about politics shapes our actual politics. The causality is always slippery and indirect, but it's there. The more significant portions of our political culture keep using the terminology of authoritarianism (like "deep state") the more susceptible we are to it.

So yeah...if you're a conservative (or have influence with conservatives), now might be the time to ixnay the eepday atestay alktay.

Unless authoritarianism is your jam, of course.

Some additional data. Here's the Google search history for "deep state." Picks up dramatically in early 2017, which squares with the Twitter data timing. h/t @Merz

And the related topics that folks search who are interested in the deep state.

Deep State update. Not surprised to see it deployed by the Q folks. The Birchers and other past conservative conspiracy theories have also worried about "the shadow government." https://twitter.com/travis_view/status/1216100902119133185?s=20